Global Climate Justice at Risk: Nations Slow to Act Ahead of COP30

Wed Oct 29 2025 20:16:31 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

As the COP30 climate summit approaches, only 64 nations have submitted updated climate plans to cut carbon, far below what is needed to avert dangerous global warming.

With just days to go until the COP30 summit in Belém, Brazil, the United Nations has reported that only 64 countries have submitted new climate pledges, raising concerns over the global commitment to tackle climate change. Current pledges are insufficient to keep global warming under the critical threshold of 1.5C, heightening the urgency for nations to update their plans and take more significant action.

Only 64 countries have submitted new plans to cut carbon, the UN says, despite all being required to do so ahead of next month's COP30 summit.

Added together these national pledges would fail to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C, a key threshold to very dangerous levels of climate change.

While the UN review does show progress in curbing carbon emissions over the next decade, the projected fall is not enough to stop temperatures surging past this global target.

The report underlines the scale of the task facing world leaders who head to Belém in northern Brazil next week for the COP30 climate gathering.

Ten years after the Paris climate pact was agreed in 2015, the efforts of countries to restrict the rise in global temperatures are under renewed scrutiny. Every signatory agreed to submit a new carbon-cutting plan every five years, covering the next decade.

However, only 64 countries managed to put a new pledge in place this year, despite many extensions of the deadline. These represent around 30% of global emissions.

In addition, the UN's review includes statements from China and the EU on their future plans made at Climate Week in New York in September.

Taken together, the efforts mean that global emissions of carbon dioxide should fall by around 10% by 2035. However, scientists say that such a drop is nowhere near enough to keep the rise in temperatures under 1.5C.

To keep that goal alive will require steep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, up to 57% by 2035, according to the UN last year.

This report shows that we are going in the right direction but too slowly, said Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation. It is essential to acknowledge the missing national pledges and confront the persistent gap between ambition and actual implementation.

The 1.5C limit, agreed at Paris, is pivotal. In 2018, scientists outlined the significant benefits of maintaining this threshold compared to allowing temperatures to rise to 2C, which includes more frequent heatwaves and severe storms.

UN leaders are increasingly accepting that the threshold will likely be breached permanently by the early 2030s at current rates.

The upcoming COP30 summit is seen as a critical opportunity for nations to strengthen their commitments as many are expected to present their plans that have yet to be unveiled, impacting future projections for global carbon emissions.