1.5°C of warming unavoidable, but not unstoppable

The latest UNEP report confirms that current projections would see global warming exceeding this level of warming, which is the long-term goal under the Paris Agreement. Without more ambitious policies, warming would reach 2.6°C¹ by 2100, with peak warming being higher by 0.1°C every five years.

Make no mistake about it: just because it is inevitable now does not mean it was always meant to be unavoidable.

The Paris Agreement was adopted more than a decade ago. Yet during that time span, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions actually increased, such that the lowest achievable peak temperature increased by 0.2°C.

The world missed at least a decade to avoid what many of us feared and probably predicted would happen. How can we not, when thirty years of global climate negotiations and countries are either too afraid or outright ignore the need to mention the term "fossil fuels" in any decision text?

It took a global pandemic for a decrease in annual GHG emissions to occur at any point in this past decade, back in 2020. Should it take another global catastrophe to even make a dent at what could become an even worse global catastrophe?

This represents nothing short of a global failure to accelerate solutions to address this crisis. It is due to the failure of high-emitting countries to sufficiently decrease their emissions. It is due to the failure of developed countries to provide sufficient finance - by a factor of up to six times below what is needed by vulnerable countries - along with technologies and other much-needed resources.

Warning signs

Time and again, climate-vulnerable countries and communities have repeatedly and disproportionately taken the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

In the past few weeks alone, Southeast Asia has been hit by opposing ends of the climate extremes spectrum: the wildfires in Indonesia that caused haze to travel into neighbouring countries, and the weeks of persistent rainfall and flooding in the Philippines brought by monsoons and tropical cyclones.

This is not to mention the tragedy that has unfolded in Nepal, with villages washed away in minutes due to the collapse of glacial ice on its mountains. It has forced the country to make a request to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) – placing even more pressure on a global funding mechanism that was built to learn from lessons from older multilateral funds but has yet to disburse a single cent.

Even developed countries themselves are now feeling the impacts of the climate crisis on a more frequent basis - from the record-breaking heatwaves across Europe to destructive winter storms and severe flooding in the United States. While it is unlikely to force the latter to decisively respond to this - given its current leadership - maybe this is the wake-up call that other developed nations need.

If you think these countries have used every excuse they can find to not fulfil their obligations under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement, the harsh realities of a crisis of largely their making now hitting them could add another reason for them not to.

Obviously, protecting lives is of utmost importance, regardless of the country. But if developed countries actually believed that, then maybe the developing, vulnerable world would not find themselves suffering from the climate crisis time and again.

The odds are anthropogenic global warming - currently at around 1.4°C above pre-industrial levels - has influenced the occurrences of all these calamities, directly or indirectly. As important as the continuing advancements in attribution science are, we already have enough evidence to know that unfortunately, we can expect more of these hazards to happen in the near-future.

Not irreversible

None of this means that we should simply accept the inevitable. It certainly does not invalidate the 1.5°C limit; instead, it is only strengthened as the benchmark with which the world must measure the success of global climate action moving forward.

Consequently, this also increases the significance of the 2025 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on climate change (ICJAO), as reaffirmed under this year's UN General Assembly resolution. Every degree of warming avoided means losses and damages averted, lives saved, and ecosystems protected from even worse climate risks. It means keeping the window open for a low-emissions, climate-resilient, and sustainably-developed future where no one is left behind.

This responsibility applies to all countries, especially developed countries that must further enhance net-reductions of their emissions to enable as short of an overshoot as possible; even the most optimistic pathway places the impact of current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) at 1.8°C of warming.

They must also live up to their obligation to provide sufficient means of implementation to aid developing countries not just through the FRLD, but rather in enhancing adaptive capacities, minimising losses and damages, and enabling their decarbonisation actions.

Developing countries are not exempted from their differentiated responsibilities in meeting the 1.5°C benchmark, however. They must not only pressure developed nations to deliver the needed resources, but also properly implement their respective climate plans – including through NDCs – with the highest possible ambition and avoid false solutions.

These findings place a greater spotlight at the upcoming COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye. Remember back in Bonn at SB64, when nations such as Saudi Arabia and India pushed back against minimising 1.5°C overshoots as a viable pathway in the resulting conclusions of the conference? There should be no more delays. It is hard to address a problem when folks refuse to even acknowledge its existence or possibility.

After all, as of this writing, 44 countries still have yet to submit their updated NDCs – nearly a year-and-a-half after the February 2025 deadline. No more excuses.

The long-term goal of the Paris Agreement is still 1.5°C of warming at most. Overshooting it may be unavoidable, but the fight for climate justice is unstoppable.

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