Last week’s Nationally Determined Contributions Synthesis Report made it clear that the world is off track from staying within the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees C temperature limit. Tuesday’s United Nations Environment Programme Emissions Gap Report declared that overshoot of 1.5 degrees C will happen, very likely in the next decade.
Despite these challenges, the Paris Agreement is working, with significant progress made to bend the curve of emissions over the last ten years. Now the outcomes of Paris must focus on limiting the scale and duration of temporary overshoot, to bring the temperature down to 1.5 degrees C as soon as possible.
The Paris Agreement has already set several targets and put in motion initiatives that need to be implemented fully — one low hanging fruit is the target to accelerate the substantial reduction in methane emissions globally by 2030, agreed in COP28’s global stocktake decision.
The sharp reduction of methane emissions in this critical decade is crucial to limiting global heating. Short-lived and with a high warming potential, methane is responsible for a third of global temperature rise since the industrial revolution and accounts for 17 percent of global emissions.
159 countries and the European Commission have already signed on to the Global Methane Pledge to reduce methane emissions 30 percent by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. Countries are increasingly setting national methane emission pledges and national methane regulations.
While the Global Methane Pledge is a promising first step, it should represent the floor, not the ceiling, for global ambition. The IPCC advised the world must further reduce methane emissions — 34 percent by 2030 compared to 2019 levels and 45 percent by 2045 — in order to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal.
In September, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley suggested a short agreement or treaty on methane that could be modeled after the successful Montreal Protocol. The Montreal Protocol, established in 1987, is widely regarded as one of the most successful international environmental agreements, having led to the near-complete phase-out of ozone-depleting substances. Given methane’s potent warming effects in the short term, a similar global framework for its reduction could have transformative impacts on climate change mitigation, particularly if it is structured to be both flexible and enforceable.
As countries prepare to gather in Belém, Brazil for COP30, they could consider exploring the feasibility of a legally binding agreement on the reduction of methane emissions.
It will be important that COP30 sends strong signals on mitigation, including signals on non-carbon-dioxide emissions like as methane. The tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement marks the completion of the first ambition cycle. This a moment for countries to show that they are working to achieve the targets set out in the first global stocktake and further enhancing international cooperation.