Primary Forests, Ecosystem Integrity & Climate Change
The global impacts from the 1.1°C of global warming we are currently experiencing are already devastating, including fire disasters, widespread flooding, droughts, and massive coral die-offs. Allowing global warming to increase beyond 1.5°C of warming will result in far greater impacts, and risks of irreversible loss and damage.
Unfortunately, the response to global warming to date has been far from sufficient. The Global Stocktake report concluded that much more ambitious targets are needed in NDCs to reduce global GHG emissions by 43% by 2030, and by 60% by 2035 compared with 2019 levels, and to reach net zero CO2 emissions by 2050 globally. The report concluded that based on current NDCs, the gap to emissions levels consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 °C in 2030 is estimated to be 20.3–23.9 Gt CO2 eq. In the meantime, our remaining global atmospheric carbon budget is around 400 GtCO2e or only about seven years of emissions at current emissions levels.
Achieving these targets means that we must now phase out fossil fuels and generate urgent and drastic emissions reductions across all sectors.