UNEP Report Admits that Global Warming will Break the 1.5°C Benchmark – What Now?

Image - Alexandre P. Junior

Earlier this month, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a groundbreaking climate policy report. It has received significant attention due to its overt acknowledgement that we will surpass the 1.5°C warming threshold within ‘the next few years’. The expected failure to exceed the Paris Agreement goal will not come as a surprise to most readers who keep up with climate news. However, this report represents a more important shift in international policymaking, an epistemic one: the necessity of planning for what a post-1.5°C world will look like and how we can begin to navigate a pathway that protects the possibility of returning to a safer climate. As the report states: ‘Overshoot is therefore not an argument for resignation, but for urgency’.

‍Does this symbolize abandonment of the Paris Agreement?

In short – no: the report assures that 1.5 is still the ‘legal and ethical imperative’. However, the potential to stay under this threshold is thinning. What the report is calling for, then, is renewed urgency and a repositioned imperative that: 1. Rapidly slows down our approach to 1.5°C; 2. Limits the exceedance and duration spent at peak temperatures; 3. Puts in place measures that will enable a slow retreat back to temperatures below 1.5°C.

Based on recent scientific findings, the report warns that our current warming levels are approaching around 1.4°C increase in relation to pre-industrial levels. On average, the global temperature is rising by roughly 0.25 degrees per decade. Given this trajectory, unless this direction is suddenly altered, we can expect to meet the 1.5 threshold by 2030. In fact, despite some positive efforts, emissions are at record highs. Projections show that even the most ambitious mitigation pathways constrain our best outcome to at least 0.2 degrees above 1.5.

In this scenario, some changes will be irreversible including the West Antarctic, Greenland ice sheets, and the Amazon Rainforest. Overshoot draws out the interrelated risks which can have cascading effects, which will be felt disproportionately by small islands, coastal areas and undernourished populations.

‍A way out or bottomless pit?

‍Climate Analytics have critiqued the report for its inadequacy at ‘showing us that there is a way out’. They state that it neglects ‘fundamentally important mitigation analysis’ putting it at risk of being read as a ‘call to apathy rather than a call to arms’. Specifically, they are critical of the absence of reference to fossil-fuel phase-outs, which was one of the main outcomes of COP30. Climate Analytics are not wrong that governments should be held accountable to deliver on their commitments from 2015. However, the purpose of this report has a broader ambition that goes beyond detailing specific mitigation strategies.

Most notably, Overshoot stresses the importance of pursuing transformative adaptation alongside mitigation efforts. Contributor to the report, Professor Harrison, noted that ‘incremental adjustments will not be enough’. Instead, there should be greater investment in preventative adaptation which will soften the cost burden in the coming worsening climate and prevent diverting resources from mitigation strategies. ‘Transformational’ adaptation means shifting towards system-based approaches with a long-term vision of resilience.

More broadly, what Overshoot does is introduce a new timeframe rather than simply judging against a 1.5 degree threshold. Effective governance and international cooperation must begin before we feel the consequences.  It calls for creating the necessary political space before further tensions due to displacement, resource stress, inequity and capacity only worsen.

As the NetZero Investor writes, the report confirms the reality of constrained remaining prospects of limiting warming. Therefore, we can expect a ‘disorderly transition’ to net zero, under riskier physical and economic conditions. Investors and governments, in the near term, should focus on the following: avoiding investments in high-emission infrastructure, acceleration of the renewable energy revolution, and demand reduction. The report also carefully explores the issue of Carbon-dioxide Removal methods (CDR). It stresses the reality of needing the support of CDR to accompany mitigation strategies, whilst warning against relying on its uncertain potential.

In its section on how infrastructure should adapt, the authors encourage a move away from the paradigm of optimization, replacing this with the principles of ‘reliability and survivability’. This section is sobering: it states that societies have to ‘rebaseline’, asking questions about ‘what gets abandoned’ and how to manage a retreat from ‘permanently changed landscapes’. Perhaps, these sorts of questions will become more familiar and feel less apocalyptic. Arguably, they should be asked before it is too late.

‍Deriving the political will:

‍For small island nations, who were key drivers behind the Paris Agreement goal, the acknowledgement of inevitable failure is particularly devastating. According to small island officials, this is not a moment to give up but the international community should recognize their responsibility and agency as a matter of justice. The president of Palau, termed the report “a fork in the road”. The decisions made now to minimize every fraction of a degree of warming are imperative.

From heatwaves across Europe to the tragic flash flooding in Nepal, climate risks are more visible everywhere. The report does not gloss over how these will be amplified in an overshoot scenario nor understate the limitations of our ability to return temperatures after exceedance and stabilization. While it does not spell out the solution, its very purpose is to ask crucial questions which deglamorize the uncertain future we are about to face.