Claims by wealthy nations that their new emissions reduction targets for 2035 are compatible with limiting global warming to 1.5C have been questioned by experts concerned about fairness.
In Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) plans submitted to the United Nations in recent months, countries including the UK, Canada and Switzerland have argued that if every nation cut emissions as fast as they aim to, then the Paris Agreement goal of keeping warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial times would be achieved.
But scientists and campaigners – as well as the Canadian government’s official climate advisers – say this view overlooks the fact that historically the people of these rich countries have done, and continue to do, more to cause climate change than those in poorer nations – and so should reduce emissions more sharply than average.
Commenting on the NDC claims of 1.5C compatibility, Imperial College London climate scientist Robin Lamboll noted that “the Paris Agreement requires wealthier countries to lead the way towards net zero much faster than the world as a whole”.
He added that reaching net zero emissions globally by 2050 “should have been enough to keep us below 1.5C if everyone started moving towards it in 2015”. “Unfortunately, global emissions have yet to clearly peak, and every year of rising emissions makes staying below 1.5C harder,” he added.
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Most developing countries do not have goals to reach net zero by 2050, citing a lack of funding to invest in the green transition, their low responsibility for climate change, and the need to develop economically. China – today the world’s biggest emitter – aims to reach net zero by 2060, for example, while India targets 2070.
Meanwhile, 2024 marked the first calendar year that global temperature rise topped 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, although scientists said that does not mean the 1.5C Paris goal has been breached because that refers to an average over at least two decades.
Fears of ‘1.5-washing’
At the COP28 climate summit in Dubai in 2023, all countries agreed that their next round of NDC climate plans, due to be issued this year before COP30, would be “aligned with limiting global warming to 1.5C, as informed by the latest science, in the light of different national circumstances”.
Just over a dozen of these NDCS have been published to date, with a mandatory section on how the government considers its plan “fair and ambitious in light of its national circumstances”.
Most developed countries so far have used this section to argue their plans are 1.5C-aligned, based on a 2018 recommendation by scientists working with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that the world should reach net zero by 2050 to have a good chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C.
The UK, New Zealand, Canada and Switzerland say in their latest NDCs that because they plan to reach net zero by 2050,