UN climate report says world will fail 1.5-degree Paris goal but argues for keeping overshoot brief

A new United Nations climate report released Wednesday said that while global temperatures are set to exceed 1.5-degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels, urgent and steep cuts to emissions can help reduce the overshoot.

The Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return published by the U.N. Environment Programme , looks at the “lowest possible” overshoot scenario, in which peak warming can be limited to 1.7-1.8 degrees Celsius in the middle of the century, according to a press release from the U.N.

“The chance to keep global warming below 1.5°C with no overshoot is gone,” the UNEP wrote in a post on social platform X. “But urgent action can still limit the overshoot and bring warming back to 1.5°C by 2100.”

To achieve the target of limiting overshoot and returning to the 1.5-degree Celsius target laid out in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, global greenhouse gas emissions would have to be reduced by 18 percent by 2030, 45 percent by 2035 and 69 percent by 2040, relative to 2025 levels, according to a press release from UNEP .

“By contrast, the full implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) would only reduce emissions by 5-8 per cent by 2030 and 11-15 per cent by 2035, relative to 2025 levels,” the release said.

The report found that if countries follow their current policies, warming levels could reach 2.8 degrees Celsius within the century and increase after. If all existing emissions reduction pledges are fulfilled, warming would be limited to 2.6 degrees Celsius, projections that the UNEP said are “are worse than last year’s projections due to the withdrawal of the United States of America from the Paris Agreement and revised estimates of historical emissions.”

Earlier this year in January , President Trump’s move to pull the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement took effect. The president signed an executive order to withdraw U.S. from the agreement soon after he took office last year. Trump, in his first term, also withdrew the U.S. from the agreement before former President Biden rejoined the pact.

In the U.N. release, UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen warned that every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5 degrees Celsius increases the chance of climate impacts and risks.

She pointed to “the deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires that have plagued many nations this year.”

“So, we must pull out all the stops to minimize peak warming and return to 1.5°C by the end of the century”, she said.