As it happens in the run-up to the annual climate change conference every year, several assessments and reports have been published over the last few days, recording the progress made in the fight against climate change. Like every year, they have had little excitement to offer.

• Global emissions are still on the rise, and concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere touched new record levels in 2023. There is no real hope to arrest global rise in temperatures within 1.5 degree Celsius from pre-industrial times, even though some theoretical possibilities are still being discussed. The 2030 emissions reduction targets are going to be missed by a wide margin.
• In two weeks, countries are assembling for this year’s climate conference in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. During the summit, the most important item on the agenda will be the finalisation of a new agreement on finance that would enable more ambitious climate actions in the coming years.
• Financial matters have always been the toughest part of climate negotiations, leading to a stalemate in most situations. This year, countries are aiming to finalise an overarching agreement that is supposed to allocate financial resources for all kinds of needs for climate action.
• Lack of adequate money has been one of the biggest hurdles to more ambitious climate action. Thus, any hopes of countries making more efforts to fight climate change in the coming years hinge heavily on the success of the Baku meeting.

Unabated rise of emissions

• More than 20 years after countries began attempts to reduce their emissions, and nine years after the Paris Agreement, global emissions are still on the rise. This year’s Emissions Gap Report, an annual publication of the UN Environment Programme, says emissions in 2023 reached 57.1 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, about 1.3 per cent higher than the 2022 levels. There might be some correction in this figure at a later stage, since exact emission data take several years to calculate. But global emissions have spiked every year except in 2020, which registered a small dip due to the economic disruption brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.
• According to the Paris Agreement targets, the world needs to keep the rise in temperatures below 2 degree Celsius — preferably 1.5 degree Celsius — compared to pre-industrial levels. To meet these goals, global emissions should peak by 2025 and begin to decline steadily after that, dropping to a level that is at least 43 per cent below that of 2019.
• The Emissions Gap Report said if current trends of deployment of clean energy sources continued, and some additional effort was made to cut the non-carbon dioxide emissions such as methane, there was “a 70 per cent chance that emissions will decline in 2024”.
• “If this materialises, 2023 could mark the peak of global GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, though this can only be verified after several years of steady emissions decline… Peaking before 2025 remains possible but hinges on the acceleration of the energy transition and curbing of fossil fuel supply and demand,” the report said.

No quick relief from warming

• But even if emissions peak in the near future, and hopefully begin to go down after that, the problem of global warming is not going to go away immediately. The warming effect on the planet is caused not by the amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted, but by their accumulated stock in the atmosphere. These gases do not go away immediately — for instance, carbon dioxide, the main pollutant, can remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years before disintegrating. As a result, their concentrations would continue to increase for several years, even after the annual emissions begin to reduce.
• The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) reported that the concentrations of greenhouse gases in 2023 had touched new peaks. Carbon dioxide concentrations have now reached 420 parts per million, more than 150 per cent of pre-industrial levels. Concentrations of other gases, methane and nitrous oxide, are also at record levels.
• The increase of carbon dioxide concentration in 2023 was higher than that of 2022, though lower than three years prior to that.

Missing the targets

• The rising concentration of greenhouse gases has led to a rise in global temperatures. Last year was 1.45 degree Celsius hotter than pre-industrial times, the hottest year so far. Average global temperatures in the 2014-2023 decade have been 1.2 degree Celsius higher than pre-industrial times. The WMO has estimated that the average annual temperature was almost certain to breach the 1.5 degree Celsius threshold in the next couple of years.
• Even the decadal averages are likely to exceed that threshold within five to ten years. To prevent this eventuality, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body that advances scientific knowledge about climate change, recommended at least a 43 per cent reduction in global emissions over 2019 levels in 2030. That is supposed to be the first milestone on the road to achieving global net-zero status by 2050.
• The 2030 milestone is almost certain to be missed. All the climate actions that countries are taking, or plan to take, are projected to reduce emissions only slightly by 2030, according to a new assessment by United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat. Therefore, global emissions in 2030 are likely to be 2.6 per cent below 2019 levels, nowhere close to the required 43 per cent reduction.
• However, this is still a marginal improvement over the projections made in a similar assessment done last year. That assessment had put 2030 emissions to be about 2 per cent lower than 2019 levels. This small improvement is a result of some new climate actions promised by a few countries, or better than expected progress on some of these actions.
• The minimal progress made in the period up to 2030 would leave countries with the task of making deep cuts at a later stage. But that is exactly how the world has been tackling climate change till now — doing the bare minimum, or even less, in the present, and leaving the bulk of the work for some other time.