Each year, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report compares where greenhouse gas emissions are headed, against where they should be to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
UNEP first began this process a decade ago to track the climate pledges set in the Copenhagen Accord and formalized in the Cancun Agreements. It is only through a clear-eyed review of the facts that we can hold the world to its promises and suggest new ways to keep them.
This year, UNEP publishes the tenth edition of this report, which lays out what the emissions gap will look like in 2030, based on current policies and promises. The full report will be available in November 2019, to inform negotiators ahead of the 25th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Chile. Today, however, we release a ten-year summary of Emissions Gap Reports, as part of the Global High-Level Synthesis.
Please allow me to present to you five key lessons from this summary.
The first lesson is that ever-growing greenhouse gas emissions point to a “lost decade” of climate action.
Science tells us we are still not on the right trajectory to meet the temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. With the policies currently in place, we are heading for a 3.5°C temperature increase this century. Both the 1.5°C and the below 2°C temperature goals are slipping away. Every delay brings the need for deeper, faster and more far-reaching cuts, which become harder with every passing year.
Nations must at least triple the level of ambition reflected in their Nationally Determined Contributions to get on track for a world below 2°C, and increase it at least five-fold for the 1.5°C target. At the Global Climate Action Summit, at the December Climate COP in Santiago de Chile, in every government office and boardroom every day, we must dramatically raise ambition.
Does this sound familiar?
It should. Scientists have all been saying much the same thing for many years. This is clear when we look at the ten-year summary. Despite the yearly warnings, emissions grew at an average of 1.6 percent per year from 2008 to 2017. Emissions are now almost exactly what early gap reports projected they would be in 2020 under business-as-usual scenarios. We are seeing the impacts of this lack of action: 4.5 billion people were affected by disasters between 1998 and 2017, 96 percent of which were weather-related. Presented in such a way, the facts suggest that nothing has changed. They suggest that humanity has shrugged its shoulders and accepted its fate. But the picture is actually more nuanced.
The second lesson is that progress has been made.
When we look beyond the headline numbers, we can see increasing political and societal focus on the climate crisis, including through the Paris Agreement. G20 nations, among others, are collectively on course to meet their Cancun pledges.
The explosion in renewable energy means that clean energy avoided an estimated two billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions in 2017. The ten-year review makes it clear that the scientific understanding of the consequences of inaction, and the available options for rapid and cost-effective emission reductions, have improved significantly. Meanwhile, voters and protestors are increasingly making it obvious that the climate crisis is their number one issue. So, we may not have affected the headline emissions figures, but we are in a far better place than we were ten years ago in terms of a platform for action.
The third lesson, therefore, is that we can still hit our targets.
Looking only at proven technologies, emissions could be reduced by 33 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year in 2030. This is more than half of today’s emissions. It is more than enough to stay on track for the 1.5°C target. Around two-thirds of this potential is available in areas ripe for rapid progress:
- Solar and wind energy
- Energy efficient appliances
- Energy efficient passenger cars
- Afforestation
- Ending deforestation
Bridging the emissions gap will require the full utilization of these emission reduction options, and more.
The fourth lesson is that we need everyone to start acting, today, to hit our targets.
We need the world to scale up and replicate existing, well-proven policies that simultaneously contribute to the sustainable development goals. We need massive investment, which is why the commitment of over one hundred banks to the newly-launched Principles for Responsible Banking is so important. We need to start backing nature to provide us with sustainable solutions, rather than stripping it away to fuel our development. We need careful management of winners and losers during the transition.
Fundamentally, we require concerted climate action by all stakeholders, at all levels and in all sectors. But, and we can’t say this often enough, all of this has to begin happening now.
The final lesson is that scientific rigor has been, and will remain, crucial to climate action.
It can be frustrating for scientists to have to keep repeating the same message. Down the years, it has probably felt like was nobody was listening. But the world would not even have this opportunity to steer away from climate disaster were it not for science.
The work of UNEP, the WMO, the IPCC and so many others in the climate science space has brought society to the verge of a positive tipping point. As the world sets itself in earnest to the task of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, our work in monitoring progress and seeking out new opportunities for faster action will remain vital.
Thank you for your commitment to creating a better future for people and planet.
Inger Andersen
Executive Director, UN Environment Programme
