Ten years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, the world is still struggling to meet its climate promises. A new UN report warns that while global policies have helped slow the rate of warming, current efforts remain dangerously insufficient to prevent catastrophic temperature rise.
The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) 2025 Emissions Gap Report, released ahead of the UN Climate Conference (COP30), paints a sobering picture: if all existing national climate pledges, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) are fully implemented, the world is still heading toward 2.3–2.5°C of warming this century. Under current policies, temperatures are likely to rise by 2.8°C, far exceeding the Paris goal of keeping warming “well below 2°C” while striving to limit it to 1.5°C.
The report acknowledges that the Paris Agreement has spurred significant climate action. Global warming projections have fallen from 3–3.5°C in 2015 to 2.3–2.5°C today. This progress is largely due to a surge in renewable energy adoption, declining costs of clean technologies, and the emergence of net-zero pledges, which now cover about 70% of global emissions, up from zero in 2015.
However, these gains are dwarfed by continued global inaction. “Nations have had three attempts to deliver promises made under the Paris Agreement, and each time they have landed off target,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP. “While national climate plans have delivered some progress, it is nowhere near fast enough, which is why we still need unprecedented emissions cuts in an increasingly tight window.”
The report highlights that the world’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached 57.7 gigatons (GtCO₂e) in 2024, a 2.3% increase from 2023 levels. This spike is more than four times the average annual growth rate during the 2010s. Alarmingly, over half of the increase came from deforestation and land-use changes, especially in tropical regions.
Asia remains at the heart of the emissions challenge. The report notes that G20 countries account for 77% of global emissions, with India and China recording the largest absolute increases in 2024. South Asia, home to more than a quarter of the world’s population, is among the regions most vulnerable to rising temperatures, erratic rainfall, and severe weather events.
In Pakistan, climate impacts are already acute. The country, which contributes less than 1% of global emissions, has suffered disproportionately from climate-related disasters. The 2022 floods, for instance, submerged a third of the country and displaced over 30 million people. UNEP’s report warns that such events will become more frequent and intense as global warming surpasses 1.5°C.
Regional experts say South Asia’s response remains constrained by economic limitations and lack of international support. While countries like India have made strides in expanding solar capacity, others, including Pakistan and Bangladesh, struggle to transition from fossil fuels due to financial and infrastructure constraints.
The report calls for massive financial and technological support for developing nations, emphasizing that “delivering faster cuts requires navigating a challenging geopolitical environment and redesigning the international financial architecture.”
The UNEP analysis delivers a stark verdict on the G20, whose collective actions or inactions will determine the planet’s fate. Despite having the capacity and resources, most G20 nations are off track to meet their own 2030 targets, let alone the new 2035 goals.
Only seven G20 members are currently on course to meet their unconditional 2030 targets through existing policies. The European Union was the only major emitter to record a reduction in emissions in 2024. In contrast, the United States, which plans to withdraw from the Paris Agreement in January 2026, could wipe out part of the modest global progress made this year.
Seven G20 members including the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Brazil, Canada, Russia, and Australia have submitted new mitigation targets for 2035, while three others, including China and the EU, have announced upcoming ones. Collectively, these efforts would reduce emissions by around 4 GtCO₂e by 2035 compared to current trajectories still a fraction of what is required.
Under the Paris Agreement, all countries were required to submit updated NDCs by February 2025, but as of September 2025, only 60 parties covering 63% of global emissions had done so.
Many of these new pledges lack meaningful expansion in scope or ambition. Just 62% of the new NDCs include a target to reduce fossil fuel use in the electricity mix, and fewer than 30% include coal phase-down commitments. None set clear goals for reducing oil and gas production or ending fossil fuel subsidies.
In fact, the UNEP report warns that investment signals in new NDCs remain weak, with limited detail on financing needs, capital flows, or implementation plans. “Most NDCs still lack clarity on capital requirements, sectoral pathways and implementation plans,” the report notes.
Perhaps the most alarming conclusion of the report is that global temperatures will exceed 1.5°C, at least temporarily, within the next decade. This overshoot expected to reach around 0.3°C will bring devastating consequences: irreversible damage to glaciers, more frequent heatwaves, and severe losses for ecosystems and livelihoods.
The report warns that every year of delay “locks in carbon-intensive infrastructure” and increases dependence on costly and uncertain carbon dioxide removal technologies later in the century.
Still, UNEP insists that returning to 1.5°C by 2100 remains technically possible, but only through “immediate and unprecedented” emission reductions. “Proven solutions already exist,” Andersen said. “From the rapid growth in cheap renewable energy to tackling methane emissions, we know what needs to be done. Now is the time for countries to go all in and invest in their future with ambitious climate action.”
Climate scientists and policy advocates reacted to the report with a mix of alarm and urgency.
“This report’s findings, confirming that a crucial science-based benchmark for limiting dangerous climate change is about to be breached, are alarming, enraging and heartbreaking,” said Rachel Cleetus, Senior Policy Director at the Union of Concerned Scientists. She blamed the “grossly insufficient action from richer nations and continued climate deception by fossil fuel interests” for the current crisis.
Catherine Abreu, Executive Director of the International Climate Policy Hub (ICPH), cautioned against declaring the Paris Agreement a failure. “It isn’t the Paris Agreement that’s failing, it’s a handful of powerful countries in the G20 who are failing to do what they’ve promised,” she said. “COP30 has to deliver an unambiguous signal that now is not the time to retreat, it’s the time to accelerate efforts and safeguard prosperity by avoiding every possible fraction of a degree of warming.”
Richard Black, Director of Policy and Strategy at Ember, struck a cautiously optimistic note, emphasizing that renewable energy trends are more positive than political commitments suggest. “National renewable energy plans paint a more optimistic picture. Whatever a government’s motivation economic growth, security, cleaner air, the clean energy economy offers more opportunities than sticking with the fossil fuel model,” he said.
For Pakistan and its neighbors, the implications of the report are profound. The region stands at the intersection of vulnerability and opportunity. On one hand, South Asia faces escalating heat extremes, glacial melt, and erratic monsoons; on the other, its renewable energy potential, particularly solar remains largely untapped.
Pakistan’s updated NDC, submitted in 2021, pledged a 50% reduction in projected emissions by 2030, conditional on receiving international financial and technological support. However, limited access to climate finance continues to hinder progress. Experts argue that unless wealthy nations fulfill their commitments to mobilize $100 billion annually in climate finance, developing countries like Pakistan will remain unable to decarbonize effectively.
The UNEP report underscores this imbalance, warning that “without adequate financial flows to developing nations, the global transition to net zero will stall.”
The 2025 Emissions Gap Report concludes with a stark warning: global emissions must decline by 35% by 2035 to align with a 2°C pathway, and by 55% to meet the 1.5°C goal. Given current trajectories, this would require transformative changes in energy, industry, agriculture, and finance, changes that have yet to materialize.
Despite the bleak data, UNEP emphasizes that hope lies in action, not despair. The world now possesses the technologies, policies, and economic incentives to bend the emissions curve. Solar and wind power are cheaper than ever; climate-smart investments can generate millions of jobs and reduce health costs.
Time is slipping away. As world leaders prepare for COP30, one message rings louder than ever: every fraction of a degree matters. The decisions made in the coming years will determine whether the vision of a safer, more sustainable planet can still be achieved or whether humanity will cross irreversible climate thresholds.