Dozens of nations have failed to strengthen their climate targets — a requirement of the Paris Agreement — as they race toward global negotiations next month with planet-warming pollution on the rise.
Two weeks before climate talks begin in Brazil, the lapse by more than 100 countries in submitting new United Nations plans for tackling global warming is colliding with rising enmity by President Donald Trump, who has eviscerated climate measures in the U.S. while urging, and threatening, other nations to abandon the fight against climbing temperatures.
The EU is struggling to fill the vacuum left by America’s reversal on global climate cooperation. And China, while pledging to cut its world-leading carbon pollution, has announced a target that analysts say is too low to prevent catastrophic climate impacts.
The COP30 climate conference in the Amazon port city of Belém is facing perhaps the biggest political pushback since negotiations started 30 years ago, with the Trump administration openly working to undermine measures aimed at reducing climate pollution from cargo ships and other sources.
“The rest of the world knows they have to deal with Trump, and they’re trying to figure out, particularly in this [climate] sphere, how do you make progress when he’s driving so hard in the opposite direction of where everyone else wants to go,” said John Podesta, who served as senior adviser for international climate policy under President Joe Biden and is now chair of the board at the Center for American Progress.
Trump is not the only challenge. Energy demand is soaring globally, complicating the transition away from fossil fuels, while political divisions and the high cost of goods are shaking Europe’s commitment to tackle climate change.
The clearest warning sign is captured in the raft of pledges that countries have so far failed to submit to the United Nations. The first deadline passed in February. Then another in September. Fewer than 70 nations, out of 195, have now offered new climate targets. (The U.S. rushed its in last year before Biden left office.)
The pledges, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution, offer a snapshot into how governments plan to lower their greenhouse gas pollution over the next 10 years. With just a fraction of nations submitting them, they offer an incomplete picture of global momentum toward holding temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the stretch goal of the Paris Agreement.
“It’s not really surprising to me that countries are saying, you know, why would I put our country on the hook for some big and ambitious set of actions that would be hard on a good day,” said Jonathan Elkind, former assistant secretary for international affairs at the Department of Energy, referring to the uncertainty created by the U.S. reversing course.
Instead, he looked to the future for action.
“The real issue is can we sustain over time — and I mean over decades — attention and focus and creativity and capital, capital, capital, given that there will be economic upturns and downturns, wars and pandemics,” he said.
So far, no other countries have followed Trump’s move to leave the Paris Agreement, the 2015 pact that requires nations to submit regular carbon-cutting plans.
But other nations did bend to U.S. pressure earlier this month when Trump threatened to impose tariffs on countries that supported what would have been the world’s first carbon tax on shipping. The vote was delayed a year in response. That move drove the EU into a temporary impasse on its COP30 negotiating position last week.
Podesta believes most countries will eventually strengthen their climate targets, in part because they see economic benefits from investing in clean energy, and financial dangers from extreme weather.
But time is running low.
“What I think we’re feeling now is the proverbial clock is ticking, and I think that what we don’t have a sense of is what is it going to take to make this all go faster,” he said.
Still falling short
A U.N. climate summit in New York last month was meant to spur countries to announce new emission-cutting plans for 2035 ahead of COP30. Under the Paris Agreement, they’re required to update their targets every five years.
Some climate advocates viewed the presence of more than 100 countries there as a signal that nations remain committed to tackling global warming, despite Trump’s calls for them to abandon their efforts. The United Kingdom, Japan and Brazil have all submitted stronger targets, and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, said the EU would submit one before COP30.
But fractures were also revealed. India, the world’s third-largest climate polluter, didn’t show up. And 10 nations in the Group of 20, the largest economies that account for three-fourths of global emissions, have not offered new targets.
The likelihood is low that several of those nations will meet their 2030 targets. A recent study found that Japan, India and the U.S. have no chance of meeting their NDCs, based on current progress.
“It’s like hope in the face of a terribly challenging reality, which is that we’re not anywhere near where we need to be,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. It submitted its NDC before the February deadline.
This round of climate plans is meant to include stronger targets than those for 2030.
“Maybe that’s why some of them are late,” said Rachel Kyte, the U.K.’s special representative on climate, during an event last month in New York. “And if they’re a little late, I’ll take that as long as they are as comprehensive and as politically owned as I think some of these are.”
Altogether, 62 countries have submitted new carbon-cutting plans through 2035, according to the World Resources Institute.
That does not include China’s pledge to cut its emissions 7-10 percent from an undefined peak, since it was announced but not submitted. The U.S. goal submitted under Biden sought to cut emissions 61-66 percent compared to 2005 levels. Some of that could be achieved through state-led action, but it’s likely irrelevant because the U.S. will officially exit the Paris pact in January.
The White House referred questions to the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, which did not respond to a request for comment.
“It’s very clear that very few countries are taking the convex path to net zero,” said Neil Grant, senior climate and energy analyst at Climate Analytics, a nonprofit that tracks government climate action.
The analysis by WRI found that the 62 climate plans submitted so far would cut roughly 1.4 gigatons of emissions compared to the same countries’ plans for 2030. To meet the 1.5 C goal, emissions would need to fall by 29.9 gigatons.
“Ambitious commitments (particularly from the highest emitters) could narrow the emissions gap,” said another WRI analysis. “Or, if their pledges fall short, they could leave the world locked into a trajectory that puts global temperature targets out of reach.”
The climate plans are meant to inform a report the U.N. will release this week to assess their collective impact on preventing temperatures from surpassing 1.5 C compared to 150 years ago. It will likely offer an incomplete picture.
U.N. climate change head Simon Stiell, who said last year the NDCs were “the most important documents of this century,” has called on nations to submit them ahead of COP30.
Last year, the report found that even if nations delivered on their plans for 2030, carbon pollution would fall less than 3 percent compared to 2019 levels. It needs to drop 43 percent to avoid major climate tipping points, according to a U.N. panel of scientists.
“If you’re just measuring the success of a COP by the strength of the NDCs, I think it’s going to fall below what’s necessary for sure,” Podesta said. “Whether that gives people a kick in the pants or whether it means they walk away is still an open question.”
China factor
The refrain around China is that its pledges don’t always align with reality. The world’s largest emitter dominates clean energy generation globally, and its investments in electricity sources like wind and solar have led to lower costs in the developing world.
Climate action aligns with China’s commercial interests, said Li Shuo, director of the China Climate Hub at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Its investments in emerging economies — and markets — such as Brazil and Indonesia could begin to drive down carbon emissions more than countries’ climate plans, he said.
But China is also treading cautiously by offering modest climate targets. It could be a nod to fraught geopolitics and their impact on energy, trade and economic growth. In announcing its new targets earlier this month, China said it would strive to overshoot its climate goals, but achieving that hinges on a “supportive and open international environment.”
That lack of global ambition as the U.S. backslides could hurt the effort to slow rising temperatures, said Podesta. A veteran of U.S.-China diplomacy, he helped devise a joint statement between then-President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014 that’s credited with getting countries to unite around the Paris Agreement.
“Now we’re in a situation where the reverse is true,” Podesta said. “Where particularly the United States, but the combination of the United States and China are kind of a drag on ambition.”
Lisa Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Center on Sustainable Investment, said countries’ climate plans are insufficient signals for the financial sector, which makes decisions based on actual policy and the cost of capital.
But the targets can show businesses “the direction of travel” for climate policies such as government incentives and regulations, said Andrew Prag, managing director for policy at the We Mean Business Coalition, made up of business-focused climate groups.
Next month it will be up to Brazil to determine how the shortcomings of nations’ climate targets are incorporated into COP30 negotiations.
“We will have to talk about it,” said André Aranha Corrêa do Lago, the president-designate of the global talks, during a press briefing in New York last month. “Because if we believe in science, and we have to believe it, then we have less and less time to do what is necessary.”
