COP30 president urges countries to submit updated climate targets
With just over 80 days before the start of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in the Amazon city of Belém, North Brazil, around 80 percent of the 197 countries that signed the Paris Agreement have not yet updated their targets for reducing greenhouse gases.
The warning was issued by Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, president designate of COP30, in his sixth letter to the international community on Tuesday (Aug. 19). These targets are called nationally determined contributions, or NDCs.
“Parties know how important it is that the UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] receive NDCs in time to be reflected in the synthesis report. No action is a stronger demonstration of commitment to multilateralism and to the climate regime than the NDCs our countries present as a national determination to contribute to the Paris Agreement. First and foremost, NDCs are demonstrations of governments’ commitments to their people,” the document reads.
“As we crossed the 100-day mark before COP30, around four-fifths of the membership of the Paris Agreement have yet to come forward with new 2035 NDCs,” the diplomat warns.
The Paris Agreement – the world’s largest treaty signed to prevent the worsening of climate impacts and limit global warming to 1.5ºC – celebrates its tenth anniversary this year, but nations have failed to comply with it.
Warming of 1.5°C above the average temperature on Earth in the pre-industrial period in the 19th century is considered the limit for the consequences of climate change to be contained. Above that, researchers point out that there may be a “point of no return.”
To stabilize temperatures at this level by 2035, it will be necessary to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 57 percent, according to the United Nations Environment Program.
Most of the countries that have not yet submitted their NDCs are expected to do so by September 24, 2025, when a special event will be held by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York.
