PARIS, Oct 28, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The UN estimated Tuesday that nations' 
carbon-cutting pledges imply a far-from-sufficient 10-percent emissions cut 
by 2035, cautioning that it was unable to provide a robust global overview 
after most countries failed to submit their plans on time.

With just days to go before tense COP30 climate talks in Brazil, vulnerable 
small island nations slammed an "alarming" lack of new climate pledges, 
especially from major polluters.

UN Climate Change was unable to include crucial targets announced by China 
and the European Union in its formal assessment of national 2035 pledges 
because neither has officially submitted detailed plans.

Instead, it incorporated these announcements in a rough calculation alongside 
its report, showing the world is for the first time setting heat-trapping 
emissions on a falling trajectory -- but nowhere near fast enough.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said last week that slow action from 
nations meant it was "inevitable" that efforts to limit temperature rise to 
1.5C would fail in the short term, unleashing devastating impacts during a 
period of overshoot as countries worked to pull temperatures back down again 
by the end of the century.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said emissions must 
fall 60 percent by 2035, from 2019 levels, for a good chance of limiting 
global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels -- the more ambitious goal 
of the Paris climate deal.

"The science is equally clear that temperatures absolutely can and must be 
brought back down to 1.5C as quickly as possible after any temporary 
overshoot, by substantially stepping up the pace on all fronts," UN climate 
chief Simon Stiell said in a statement.

- 'Limited picture' -

The two-week COP30 climate negotiations in the Amazon, which start on 
November 10, are tasked with galvanising momentum in the face of a hostile 
United States, geopolitical tensions and economic concerns.

They also come as the uptake of renewable energy across the world -- driven 
by China -- has given impetus to countries' 2023 promise to "transition away" 
from polluting fossil fuels.

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) noted the "alarming lack of 
updated targets, especially from bigger countries with significantly more 
resources than developing countries which bear the disproportionate burden of 
a climate crisis they did not cause".

It added that the pace of progress should "send shock waves through every 
citizen".

Under the 2015 Paris Agreement countries committed to limit global warming to 
well below 2C since the pre-industrial era (1850-1900) -- 1.5C if possible. 

With average warming already around 1.4C today, many scientists believe that 
the 1.5C threshold will likely be breached before the end of this decade as 
humans continue to burn oil, gas, and coal.

If temperatures overshoot 1.5C, experts say humanity would probably have to 
try to pull warming back down by using technologies to remove carbon from the 
atmosphere that are not yet operational at scale.

Countries are supposed to provide increasingly ambitious plans known as 
Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years, with plans to 
2035 due in this year.

The UN on Tuesday said just 64 of the nearly 200 parties to the Paris 
Agreement had submitted their NDCs by its end of September cut-off date for 
the official annual report.

As a result Stiell said the document "provides quite a limited picture", 
compelling the UN to attempt a more general calculation suggesting a 10 
percent fall by 2035.

The estimate included the US submission made before the return of Donald 
Trump as US president in January.

He has since announced he is pulling the United States out of the Paris deal 
for a second time, called climate change a "hoax", and has moved to curb 
scientific study and data collection.

The estimate also incorporated a pledge by China, the world's biggest 
polluter, to reduce emissions by 7-10 percent by 2035, its first absolute 
national target.

The European Union's "statement of intent" to cut emissions between 66.25 
percent and 72.5 percent by 2035 compared to 1990 levels was also taken into 
account.

It was announced in September as the 27-nation bloc grappled with internal 
disagreements about its climate ambitions.

"We are still in the race, but to ensure a liveable planet for all eight 
billion people today, we must urgently pick up the pace, at COP30 and every 
year thereafter," Stiell said.