UNEP climate overshoot report 'risks being call to apathy, not to arms'

The United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) long-delayed report on climate overshoot, published today, sets out the multiple dimensions of the problem but comes up short of properly analysing the solutions, comments Climate Analytics.

Originally scheduled for release in June, the UNEP report is based on science showing that due to governments’ repeated failure to cut greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, it is now inevitable that the 1.5°C global warming limit agreed in Paris will be breached, taking the world into ‘climate overshoot.’

‘As UNEP sets out very clearly, overshooting the 1.5°C limit will make life difficult on many fronts,’ said Bill Hare, CEO of Climate Analytics and a former lead author on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessments.

‘It will exacerbate climate impacts, especially in the least developed countries and small island developing states – it will increase the number of impacts that are beyond our capacity to adapt to, and will increase the risk of major tipping points such as irreversible ice-sheet melt or rainforest die-off.

‘However, although UNEP does a good job of describing the hole we’ve dug ourselves into, it does a poor job of showing us that there is a way out, and ultimately the report’s neglect of some fundamentally important mitigation analysis risks turning it into a call to apathy rather than a call to arms.’

Climate Analytics finds the UNEP report:

• makes just a single passing reference to the need for a fossil fuel phase-out, and not a single mention of the process set in train at last year’s UN climate summit (COP30) by more than 50 countries to pursue a transition away from fossil fuels (TAFF)
• sidelines analyses showing that many sectors of the economy can reach ‘real zero’ emissions by mid-century, and that if governments act with the highest possible ambition on cutting emissions now, they can halt global warming by mid-century and bring it back well below 1.5°C by the end of the century
• refrains from reminding governments of their responsibility to deliver on commitments they have made in multiple international fora, notably the UN climate convention negotiations and Paris Agreement.

A secondary concern with the report is the emphasis it places on ‘transformational adaptation’ as the central way for countries to deal with escalating and cascading climate impacts.

‘Transformational adaptation is distinct from the urgent and growing need to address present and future losses and damages,’ said Dr Rosanne Martyr, Climate Analytics’ scientific Group Lead for Adaptation and Loss and Damage.

‘Responses to profound losses such as uninhabitability or permanent submersion of land will need to be systemic, equitable and just. Transformational adaptation has to be just one component of a coherent and just response to escalating impacts, which must also encompass urgent reduction of emissions by countries most responsible and redress for losses and damages.’