COP30 climate summit in Brazil: Not on track to reach the goal?

Climate change is to be curbed: This was decided by almost 200 countries ten years ago with the Paris Agreement. They all committed themselves to the goal of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. The aim is to limit the rise in global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius if possible – but in any case to significantly less than 2 degrees Celsius.

Is it even still possible to achieve this? What progress and setbacks are there worldwide in the fight against global warming? All of this will be discussed at the COP30 climate summit, which begins on November 10 in the Brazilian city of Belém. The Science Media Center (SMC) invited experts in advance to a discussion about the state of climate policy worldwide and what to expect from the conference.

Even before the meeting, it became clear that the countries were "not on track in any relevant sector" to achieve at least the interim targets for 2030 on the path to greenhouse gas neutrality. "In many countries, national policy no longer seems to consider reducing greenhouse gas emissions as an urgent task for curbing climate change," the SMC stated.

While China has announced for the first time that it will actually reduce its emissions – by seven to ten percent by 2035 compared to national record levels – and increase the share of non-fossil energy to over 30 percent, only a third of countries have so far provided information on what national contributions they intend to make in the coming years to meet the Paris Climate Agreement.

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Furthermore, Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree allowing Russia's emissions to be up to 22 percent higher in 2035 than in 2021. According to the SMC, the country currently produces the fourth-highest number of emissions. And the US withdrew from the Paris Agreement again after the start of Donald Trump's second presidency. Despite all the progress made in expanding renewable energies, global coal consumption has also recently reached a record high, as a report by the International Energy Agency shows.

Ahead of the conference, EU countries agreed on the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 90 percent by 2024 compared to 1990 levels. However, there is a loophole: five percent of the reductions can be achieved through the purchase of emission allowances from third countries. This means that EU countries can also pay for emissions reductions elsewhere instead of reducing them themselves.

The EU's decision is disappointing, said Niklas Höhne, professor of greenhouse gas emission reduction at Wageningen University in the Netherlands and head of the New Climate Institute think tank. "The EU's Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change clearly recommended a 90 percent reduction, and that this should actually be implemented at home. The current decision is far less ambitious," Höhne said. "For me, this decision is a clear step backward in the European Union's climate policy."

Lambert Schneider, research coordinator for international climate policy at the Öko-Institut (Institute for Applied Ecology), also criticized the EU's decision. The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change had proposed reducing emissions within the EU by ninety percent. Achieving five percent through certificates outside the EU may sound like a small amount at first. However, calculations have shown that this would result in approximately 50 percent more greenhouse gas emissions within the EU than without these certificates.

Furthermore, the certificates often fail to deliver on their promises. Frequently, the stated amount of emissions is not actually reduced: "We know from the past that the certificates often have very significant quality problems," said Schneider.

Experts believe that the US's current deviation from the Paris Agreement's targets will not jeopardize its goals. "The US's share of global greenhouse gas emissions is no longer so large that it completely changes the picture," said Höhne. If the US were to abandon its climate targets entirely, this would result in a maximum temperature increase of 0.1 degrees Celsius by the year 2100.

But it doesn't necessarily have to come to that: While the Trump administration rolled back many climate protection policies in the US, there are still states that are sticking to them. And things could change again if there's another change of government in the US.

And while the US is taking a step backward, China is "moving forward," said Höhne. China accounts for a large share of global emissions and has a particularly high number of coal-fired power plants. According to SMC, China nevertheless aims to become climate-neutral by 2060. Renewable energies and electromobility are being expanded so rapidly in China that emissions will likely soon plateau and then decline, Höhne added.

Reflecting on the ten years since the Paris Agreement, Lambert said he was "hopeful" that all countries except the USA had remained committed and that "very constructive discussions" and cooperation continued.