Sharjah24 – AFP: The world's current climate pledges are far off track to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius and will steer a world already wracked by increasing floods, heatwaves and storms towards "catastrophic" warming, the UN said Wednesday.
In a report released just over a week before high-stakes climate negotiations, the United Nation's climate change organisation, said combined commitments from nearly 200 nations put Earth on track to warm around 2.5C compared to pre-industrial levels by the century's end.
With the planet already battered by weather extremes after 1.2C of warming, experts say the world is failing to act with sufficient urgency to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
"We are still nowhere near the scale and pace of emission reductions required to put us on track toward a 1.5 degrees Celsius world," said UN Climate Change chief Simon Stiell.
"To keep this goal alive, national governments need to strengthen their climate action plans now and implement them in the next eight years."
The UN's climate experts have said emissions -- compared to 2010 levels -- need to fall 45 percent by 2030 in order to meet the 2015 Paris climate deal's more ambitious 1.5C goal.
Current commitments from governments around the world will in fact increase emissions from the 2010 benchmark by 10.6 percent by 2030, the UN said. This was a slight improvement from a similar analysis a year ago.
UN chief Antonio Guterres stressed that the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C was still within reach, but warned that the current trajectory of countries' climate commitments was "catastrophic".
For an optimal experience, please
