Climateupdated 1h ago3 min read
UN Environment Programme Says World Will Exceed 1.5°C Goal, Sets Overshoot Pathway
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Global warming will exceed 1.5°C this century, according to UNEP. A pathway would cap peak at 1.7–1.8°C and return to 1.5°C later.
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“Many scientists are hugely sceptical that the lowest possible overshoot scenario is politically and technologically feasible”
“This is possible.”
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1.5°C window closes
The UN Environment Programme said on Wednesday that the world will exceed the 1.5°C goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement, and it framed the new task as limiting how long temperatures stay above the threshold and how far they go beyond it. The UN’s Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return set a “lowest possible” overshoot scenario in which peak warming by around mid-century is limited to 1.7-1.8°C and global temperature rise is returned to or below 1.5°C by 2100, with about a 50 per cent chance. Inger Andersen, UNEP’s executive director, told reporters, “We are now saying this window has closed, but we can open it again by making the overshoot as brief as possible,” as the report redefined the gap around overshoot pathways.
The report also warned that every additional fraction of a degree of warming above 1.5°C “raises the risk of irreversible changes including in ice sheets, permafrost carbon, ocean circulation, and coral systems, along with devastating human impacts.” The UN said the emissions cuts needed for that lowest-possible pathway are 18 per cent by 2030, 45 per cent by 2035, and 69 per cent by 2040, all relative to 2025 levels.
Plan B for COP31
The UN’s proposed “plan B” pathway, as described in coverage of the Emissions Gap Report, limits global warming to 1.7-1.8°C and then eventually brings temperatures back to 1.5°C by the end of the 21st century. Anne Olhoff, director of the UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre, said, “The U.S.A. no longer has a net-zero emissions goal or target,” linking the new projections to the impacts of the “new U.S. administration under President Donald Trump.” The report’s messaging was also framed as a first-time UN acknowledgement that breaching 1.5°C is “imminent and unavoidable,” with the annual Emissions Gap report designed to inform decision makers headed into COP31 in Turkey.
Inger Andersen stressed the overshoot approach in a statement, saying, “This is about how to find a way back as shortly and as quickly as possible with as limited an overshoot as possible.” The UN’s projections contrasted the lowest-possible overshoot pathway with the emissions reductions expected from existing pledges, which the report said would only yield 5-to-8% emissions cut by 2030 and an 11-to-15% reduction by 2035.
What happens next
The UN said that if current policies continue, warming could reach 2.8°C within this century, while full implementation of Nationally Determined Contributions would limit warming to 2.6°C.
The UNEP report warned that the “lowest possible” 1.5°C overshoot scenario creates a need for the removal from the atmosphere and permanent storage of roughly 320 gigatonnes of CO2 over the course of this century, but it said socioeconomic and technological challenges make the chances of achieving this uncertain.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a message accompanying the report, “Overshoot is not surrender. We can still keep it as small and as short as possible – and bring temperatures back below 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.”
The UN also tied the stakes to timing, warning that “Every five years of CO2 emissions at current levels pushes peak warming up by around 0.1 C,” and it said that without urgent action the lowest possible 1.5°C overshoot pathway will quickly fade.
The UN’s Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return positioned the next climate negotiations around COP31 in Turkey as the venue where countries would need to “pull out all the stops” to minimize peak warming and return to 1.5°C by the end of the century.