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UN warns global warming will exceed 1.5°C, but says the limit can still be restored
🇵🇾 Paraguay /Environment & Climate

UN warns global warming will exceed 1.5°C, but says the limit can still be restored

From ABC Color · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

News Documents & data Context piece
  • The UN Environment Programme said global warming will exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in coming years, making climate impacts more dangerous.
  • UNEP said the overshoot could be limited and temperatures could return below 1.5°C this century, although some communities would face irreversible losses.
  • The report called for rapid fossil-fuel reductions, renewable-energy expansion, methane cuts, ecosystem protection and adaptation measures.

Global warming will cross the 1.5°C threshold in the coming years, but the world can still limit the overshoot and bring temperatures back below that level, the UN Environment Programme said.

In a report issued from Nairobi, UNEP said crossing the Paris Agreement’s preferred limit would expose people and ecosystems to increasingly dangerous risks. The agreement seeks to keep warming well below 2°C and ideally limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the overshoot must be kept as small and brief as possible. “We must make the overshoot as small and short-lived as possible, limiting both the temperature increase and the time temperatures remain above 1.5°C,” he said in a statement.

We must make the overshoot as small and short-lived as possible, limiting both the temperature increase and the time temperatures remain above 1.5°C.

— António GuterresThe UN secretary-general called for efforts to limit the scale and duration of warming above the Paris Agreement threshold.

Guterres called for faster action to move away from fossil fuels, expand renewable energy, sharply reduce methane pollution and protect land, forests and oceans. UNEP also said emissions cuts must accompany adaptation policies designed to reduce harm to vulnerable communities.

Even the most optimistic scenario described in the report would reach 1.8°C before returning below 1.5°C later this century. UNEP said that path would still leave some communities facing “irreversible losses” and “permanent changes” in their conditions. The report called it the best remaining option, not an acceptable or preferred one, after global efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions failed to move quickly enough.

The agency warned that extreme weather, ecosystem destruction, threats to small island developing states and low-lying coastal cities, and risks to health, food, water and nature would increase with every fraction of a degree. It recommended simultaneous action on immediate response, adaptation and containment, and long-term resilience.

This is not, by any means, an acceptable or preferable pathway: it is simply the best option left to us.

— UN Environment Programme reportThe report described the most optimistic scenario after warning that some communities would still suffer irreversible losses.
About this summary

Originally published by ABC Color in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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