UNEP said climate pledges put the world on course for 2.6°C warming this century.
The projection comes from the agency’s 2026 Emissions Gap Report.
UNEP said part of the higher pledge-based projection versus last year reflects the U.S. exit from the Paris Agreement and updated historical emissions data. The current-policy estimate did not change.
The Paris Agreement aims to keep warming well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. UNEP says a temporary overshoot of 1.5°C is now unavoidable, though a return to that level or lower by 2100 remains possible. Its lowest-overshoot case reaches 1.7°C to 1.8°C near mid-century, with about a 50% chance of returning to 1.5°C or less by 2100.
That pathway requires large-scale carbon dioxide removal and permanent storage. UNEP estimates about 320 gigatons of carbon dioxide would need to be removed and stored over the century, a scale the agency says faces socioeconomic and technological challenges.
If governments meet their pledges, global emissions would fall 11% to 15% by 2035 from 2025 levels, according to UNEP’s estimate of emissions cuts under national pledges. The pathway to return warming to 1.5°C calls for a 45% reduction by 2035 from the same baseline. It also requires emissions to fall 18% by 2030 and 69% by 2040.
COP31 is scheduled to take place in Türkiye in November.
