Less than one-third of countries have submitted updated nationally determined contributions to the UN, exposing a major gap in global climate action

A year meant to be crucial in the fight against climate change is coming up short.

Most of the nations that signed the Paris agreement a decade ago have failed to carry out one of the accord’s fundamental duties: submit new plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

So many have missed both the original and extended deadlines that a United Nations assessment released Tuesday could offer nothing more than a “limited” picture without “global-level conclusions” about the planet’s trajectory.

“What has been officially been submitted so far doesn’t change the picture, and that is very unfortunate,” said Niklas Höhne, a co-founder of the Germany-based NewClimate Institute and contributor to U.N. emissions reports. “There seems to be very little political appetite to come forward with ambitious climate commitments.”

The report was able to take stock of just 64 pledges — representing about one-third of signatory nations. If those 64 countries follow through with their plans, the report said, their emissions would fall 17 percent by 2035, compared to 2019 levels. That is far shy of the 37 global percent reduction that the UN says is necessary to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The projection also has a huge caveat. It includes a U.S. plan submitted in the final weeks of the Biden administration that President Donald Trump has said he has no intention of fulfilling.

The report underscored how addressing climate change has diminished as a global priority amid political backlash to green goals. In the latest marker of a tonal shift, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates — who once warned of “catastrophic” consequences from climate change — released a lengthy essay Tuesday reassuring that humanity will be able to “thrive” for the foreseeable future, and that some of the emphasis on emissions-cutting is misplaced.

“Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise,” Gates wrote.

Under the Paris agreement, countries are supposed to update and strengthen their national-level plans every five years. The pledges due this year cover the period up to 2035. Last year, the U.N. had called for a “quantum leap” of ambition, with the world on track for a “debilitating” temperature rise of between 2.6 and 3.1 degrees Celsius (4.7 to 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Höhne said the submission rate has been particularly low because smaller and developing countries tend to wait for larger nations to take the lead. Some of the heaviest-polluting countries — including India and Saudi Arabia — haven’t yet turned in their plans.

The European Union, which in the past promoted itself as a climate leader, squabbled for months about its pledge, and has so far managed only an unofficial statement about its intentions. The E.U. says it is within range to meet an earlier target of reducing emissions 55 percent (compared to a 1990 baseline) by 2030. The new statement suggests the bloc will aim for a decline of between 66.25 and 72.5 percent by 2035, again compared to 1990 levels.

China vowed days before the deadline to cut emissions by 7 to 10 percent over the next decade, a landmark pledge for the world’s largest emitter. But that plan, too, hasn’t been formally submitted.

If plans such as China’s and the E.U.’s are taken into account, the U.N. said, emissions would be on track to fall about 10 percent by 2035.

“Humanity is now clearly bending the emissions curve downwards for the first time, although still not nearly fast enough,” said Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

A 2021 U.N. report assessing an earlier round of plans — known as nationally determined contributions — said countries were on track to reduce emissions by only 1.4 percent by 2030, compared to 2019 levels.

Stiell said the pledges for 2035 “differ in pace and scale to any that have come before.”

But a coalition of small-island nations decried what they saw as an “alarming” lack of ambition.

“The overall sluggish progress should send shockwaves through every citizen,” said Ilana Seid, of Palau, who is the chair of that coalition.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/10/28/climate-pledges-united-nations-ndc/