Sustained efforts by the United Nations to curb greenhouse gas emissions by rallying national governments worldwide appeared not to be achieving the desired outcome as many countries globally known to be key polluters apparently ignored calls to submit climate action plan.
News reports indicated that as of Monday, February 10, moat of the world’s biggest polluter nations missed a U.N. deadline to set new climate targets just as efforts to curb global warming suffered a setback following U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement to discontinue US’ support for the implementation of the pact
Based on the decision of the nearly 200 member-countries that signed the Paris Agreement, most of them failed to submit their new national climate plans to the U.N., indicating how they plan to cut emissions by 2035.
According to Reuters, as of Monday morning, many of the world’s biggest polluters including China, India and the European Union (EU) were yet to submit their plans.
Commenting on the worrisome situation, CEO of science and policy institute Climate Analytics, Bill Hare, said: “The public is entitled to expect a strong reaction from their governments to the fact that global warming has now reached 1.5 degrees Celsius for an entire year, but we have seen virtually nothing of real substance.”
The 2015 Paris climate accord commits countries across the world to try to avoid global warming exceeding 1.5 C (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels but actions by the national governments to date fell far short of the deep emissions cuts that would achieve this.
Among the big countries that have announced new climate plans are the U.S., Britain, Brazil, Japan, and Canada, although Trump is expected to scrap the U.S.’s Biden-era contribution following his January order withdrawing the U.S from the Paris Agreement and paused some federal clean energy spending.
In his remarks last week, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Simon Stiell, said that most countries had indicated they will still produce their plans this year.
Citing the $2 trillion invested globally in clean energy and infrastructure last year to support his views, Stiell said: “Countries are taking this extremely seriously, which isn’t surprising given these plans will be key to how much of the 2 trillion boom governments can secure.
“So taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense,” he added.
Despite his optimism, the failure of many countries to submit their climate plans on Monday has continued to heighten experts’ concerns that climate action had been relegated in the affected governments’ greenhouse agendas, with some officials signalling that the U.S. U-turn on climate policy is disrupting other nations’ efforts.
For instance, EU climate policy chief, Wopke Hoekstra, told Reuters last month the bloc’s policymaking cycle did not line up with the U.N. deadline, but that Brussels would have its plan ready for the COP30 U.N. climate summit in November.
India has not yet finished the studies needed to design its climate plan, a government official told Reuters.
China will publish its climate plan “in due course”, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday.
A spokesperson for Indonesia’s Environment Ministry said the ministry was awaiting instructions from the President’s office on submitting its climate target.
The governments of Iran, Russia and South Africa did not respond to requests for comment.
