Opinion Express view on missed Paris Pact deadline: A climate letdown
Sluggish response from more than 90 per cent of signatories reflects a lack of political will.
UNFCCC now expects all countries to submit their plans by September when the targets will be tallied in the run-up to to CoP30 in Brazil. 
The most important part of the Paris Climate Pact is that every country must renew its pledge, or the Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), every five years. All stocktakes have shown that the last set of NDCs were inadequate to meet the treaty’s target of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Last year, a UNFCCC study showed that the combined NDCs would bring down temperatures only by 2.6 degrees by 2030. Countries were slated to submit their new pledges by February10. However, only 12 countries have adhered to this deadline. Most G20 countries have missed out — the UK, Brazil, Japan and the US are among the notable exceptions. However, the US’s document is largely academic given that President Donald Trump has withdrawn his country from the Paris Pact. The
UNFCCC now expects all countries to submit their plans by September when the targets will be tallied in the run-up to to CoP30 in Brazil.
The sluggish response from more than 90 per cent of the signatories of the Paris Pact reflects a lack of political will to tackle the climate crisis. Countries should now use the extra time to draft responses that reflect substantially elevated ambitions compared to their first NDCs. More importantly, the NDCs should have detailed road maps of how the Paris Pact signatories plan to translate their words into action. These should not be a replica of the Net Zero plans of the Western world. A frequent — and valid — criticism of some of these plans is that they are short on details on ways to reduce emission. Critics have also pointed out that the overwhelming reliance on carbon credits — companies can “buy” such credits by funding projects that theoretically offset their emissions — will undermine direct action to reduce emissions. A large number of Net Zero plans rely on technologies such as carbon capture and storage, whose efficacy has been called into question by scientific agencies such as the IPCC.
A new reckoning of the global warming challenge will have to factor in the disruption caused by the US President. Given the impetus in the US behind green technologies, the country’s emissions trajectory may not change for some time. However, the absence of the world’s second highest polluter from climate negotiation will require other countries to do more. The question is will they have the resolve to do so, keeping the imperatives of climate justice in mind, especially since the tariff barriers erected by the US President have added to the global economic uncertainties? The record-breaking temperatures of January are a warning that the window is closing fast.
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