Fabíola Sinimbú - Reporter for Agência Brasil
Published on Agência Brasil 08/02/2025 - 08:33
Only ten countries have submitted climate targets; the deadline is Monday.
A total of 197 nations have signed a treaty to reduce the greenhouse effect
Nine months before the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém, the deadline set in the Paris Agreement for delivering the third generation of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) will end on Monday (10). Of the 197 countries participating in the treaty, only ten have updated their ambitions for reducing greenhouse gases.
This year, the Paris Agreement, the largest global treaty signed by leaders to prevent worsening climate impacts and limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (ºC), turns ten years old. However, nations have failed in this ambition. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), to stabilize the thermometers at this level above the pre-industrial temperature by 2035, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 57%.
In January, when presenting the United Nations' priorities for 2025, UN Secretary-General António Guterres said that countries should focus their efforts on creating plans capable of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2035, with clear targets for reducing the production and consumption of fossil fuels. He also highlighted the work to boost action “in close collaboration with the host of the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP30, President Lula of Brazil.”
Commitments
Brazil currently accounts for 2.45% of global emissions, according to the 2024 report by the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (Edgar), and was the second country to update its NDC after the United Arab Emirates.
In the new ambition, it has set an emissions reduction range of between 59% and 67% for 2035, compared to 2005. The cut will take the country's net annual emissions from 850 million tons to 1.05 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), the unit used to measure greenhouse gas emissions about their potential to warm the planet.
In the case of the United Arab Emirates, which currently accounts for 0.51% (Edgar) of global emissions, the reduction was less ambitious, with a 47% cut target for 2035 compared to 2019, which would take the country to an annual volume of 103.5 million tons of CO2e.
The third country to submit an NDC was the United States, still in 2024, even before announcing its withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. The contribution presented was consistent with the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases on the planet, which today accounts for 11.25% (Edgar) of global emissions. The ambition is for a reduction of between 61% and 66% by 2035, compared to 2005 measurements.
Uruguay, which accounts for just 0.08% of global emissions, ended its NDCs in 2024, with a commitment to limit greenhouse gas emissions based on measurements of absolute levels of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), which account for 99.3% of the country's emissions. For 2035, the country has set limits on CO2 emissions of up to 9.6 million tons, CH4 emissions of 818,000 tons, and N2O emissions of up to 32,000 tons; as well as limiting consumption of hydrofluorocarbons - synthetic gases found in aerosols and used in refrigeration systems - by 30% compared to 2022 levels.
The country also pointed out the additional progress that can be achieved with the availability of conditions that go beyond what Uruguay has, such as international funding. In this case, the conditional targets would add a further 960,000 tons of CO2, a further 61,000 tons of CH4, and a further 2,000 tons of N2O to the limits; hydrofluorocarbon consumption would be limited by up to 35%.
2025
In the first two months of this year, six more countries presented their targets: Switzerland, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Andorra, Ecuador, and Saint Lucia, which together account for just 1.1% of global emissions. While Switzerland, with 0.08% of global emissions, aimed for a 65% reduction, the United Kingdom - which accounts for 0.72% - went further and committed to mitigating 81% of emissions by 2035. Both use 1990 emissions as a benchmark.
New Zealand, which is responsible for 0.16% of the gases in the atmosphere, pointed to a range between 51% and 55% reduction in emissions by 2035, compared to 2005. Unlike the other countries that have already reached the third generation of NDCs, this was the second ambition update for both Oceania and Switzerland, which had presented their first versions in 2021 and 2017, respectively.
Andorra submitted the third generation of the NDC on time, and despite being a place with very low emissions (370,000 tons of CO2e in 2005), it intends to reduce its emissions to 137,000 tons of CO2e in 2035, which represents a commitment to mitigate 63%.
As in Andorra, the greenhouse gases generated in Saint Lucia do not represent a percentage of global emissions, but the island country has also updated its NDC in its third version, increasing its ambition from 14.7% to 22% for the energy and transport sectors by 2035, based on 2010 measurements. The country has also set a conditional target that could raise this percentage to 32% if resources are available for geothermal energy generation.
The country also qualified its NDC by increasing its capacity to capture greenhouse gases, which should reach 251,000 tons of CO2e per year by 2035, allowing it to remove an additional 10% of the gases already emitted into the atmosphere.
Ecuador used the year 2010 as a reference to point to a 7% reduction in emissions by 2035, which is equivalent to 8.8 million tons of CO2e. The country, which currently accounts for 0.14% of global emissions, also added a conditional target of reaching 8%, which would be equivalent to 10.6 million tons of CO2e.
The ten countries, which together account for 15.3% of global emissions, reaffirmed their net-zero commitment for 2050, which would mean achieving neutrality between emissions and the removal of gases from the atmosphere through compensation measures such as restoring native vegetation and the carbon market itself.
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