World set to get warmer by nearly 3°C by end of century, UN report warns before COP28

The world, together, emitted 57.4 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022, a 1.2 per cent increase over the previous year and higher than the previous record achieved in 2019, according to the Emissions Gap Report, an annual publication by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) ahead of the year-ending climate change conference.

The Covid pandemic had caused a dip in global emissions in 2020, due to the abrupt shock to economic activities, but the 2021 emissions had climbed back almost to the 2019 levels.

The emissions of China and the United States, the world’s two biggest emitters, also rose in 2022, as did that of India, the third largest emitter. But the European Union, Russia and Brazil saw emissions go down a bit.

The report said that even if all the climate actions as per the current promises made by the countries were carried out with the highest ambition, global emissions in 2030 would still be at least 19 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent higher than the level required to keep global warming within 1.5 degree Celsius from pre-industrial times (the average of annual temperatures in the 1850-1900 period).

To meet this gap, global emissions would need to drop by at least 8.7 per cent every year from 2024 (instead of the 1.2 per cent rise that happened in 2022), the report said. It said the failure of the world to take early action on climate had brought it into a situation where meeting the 1.5 degree Celsius target looks extremely difficult. Even the Covid19 disruption resulted in only a 4.7 per cent drop in emissions between 2019 and 2020.

“As highlighted in the Emissions Gap Report 2019, the underlying data from the (earlier Emission Gap) reports reveal that had serious climate action been initiated in 2010, the annual emission reductions necessary to achieve emission levels consistent with the below 2°C and 1.5°C scenarios by 2030 would have been only 0.7 per cent and 3.3 per cent on average, respectively,” it said.

“The lack of stringent emission reductions means that the required emission cuts from now to 2030 have increased significantly. To reach emission levels consistent with a below 2°C pathway in 2030, the cuts required per year are now 5.3 per cent from 2024, reaching 8.7 per cent per year on average for the 1.5°C pathway,” it said.

The impacts of inaction are already evident with the year 2023 all set to emerge as the hottest ever, overtaking the previous record of 2016. Almost every month of the year has set one or the other temperature record, with September emerging as the hottest month ever. The report noted that on 86 occasions this year, the daily mean temperature had exceeded the average of pre-industrial times by more than 1.5 degree Celsius. According to an assessment by the World Meteorological Organisation, one of the next four years is almost certain to breach the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold for the annual average as well.

The goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement is to ensure that long-term annual average temperatures do not go beyond a 2 degree Celsius increase, compared to the pre-industrial averages, and preferably be contained within 1.5 degree Celsius rise.