Countries not on track to meet needed climate targets: Report

By Burak Bir

ANKARA (AA) - Despite last month's landmark UN report stressing the urgency of the climate change crisis, countries are not on track to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) sufficiently, according to a new report on Wednesday.

"Even countries with strong targets are mostly not on track to meet them (needed action to reduce GHGs), while more have failed to bring forward stronger commitments for 2030," said Climate Action Tracker, an independent scientific analysis that tracks government climate action and measures.

Evaluating the countries' Nationally Determined Contributions as part of the Paris climate accord, the report indicated that Australia, Brazil, Indonesia Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, Switzerland, and Vietnam are countries that have failed to lift ambition.

The countries "submitted the same or even less ambitious 2030 targets than they had put forward in 2015. These countries need to rethink their choice. There are still over 70 countries that have yet to submit an updated target," it added.

The study also stressed that nearly all developed countries need to further strengthen their targets to reduce emissions "as fast as possible" to implement their national policies to meet them.

- '2030: Most important target date'

Developed countries also need to support developing countries to enable the required transition to mitigate climate change.

Defining 2030 as "the most important target date," the report pointed out that global emissions must be cut by 50%, however, governments are not close to achieving this threshold.

"We estimate that with current actions global emissions will be at roughly today’s level in 2030, we would be emitting twice as much as required for the 1.5°C limit. ... The wave of national mid-century net zero targets give reasons for hope, but will fail without sufficient 2030 reductions," it noted.

The West African nation of Gambia is the only country complying with Paris Agreement’s 1.5 C target, according to data in the report.

The report by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, published in August, highlighted that global temperature will likely rise 1.5 degrees Celsius by around 2030.