Written by Gregor Erbach.
The forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference – COP30 – to be held in Belém, Brazil, in November 2025, is a decisive moment in international climate action. By September 2025, countries have to submit the third round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC 3.0) that will determine whether the targets of the Paris Agreement remain within reach. NDCs are countries’ climate plans, setting national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets and means of implementation. Parties to the Paris Agreement must update them every five years to ensure progress towards the agreement’s temperature target. The updated NDCs cover a timeframe up to 2035 and must align with the outcomes of the first global stocktake and with Parties’ long-term GHG emissions reduction objectives.
Analysis by the United Nations Environment Programme shows that current efforts would lead to global warming of between 2.6 and 3.1 °C by 2100. Therefore, NDCs should demonstrate increased ambition, backed by concrete measures to deliver on the targets. Those major economies that have already submitted NDCs 3.0 (Brazil, Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) have set higher targets for 2035 compared with 2030. However, these pledges would already take up about 36 % of the remaining post-2030 carbon budget for 1.5 °C, while these Parties represent only 19.2 % of global emissions.
The EU needs to submit its collective NDC 3.0 in September 2025, informed by the legislative proposal for amending the European Climate Law with a climate target for 2040.
Read the complete briefing on ‘The third generation of national climate plans: Analysis of major economies’ nationally determined contributions ahead of COP30‘ in the Think Tank pages of the European Parliament.
Comments are closed for this post.