The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) on 21 October 2026 released its Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return, warning that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be slashed by 18 per cent by 2030, 45 per cent by 2035, and 69 per cent by 2040 — all relative to 2025 levels — to minimise warming overshoot and return temperatures to or below 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Without these cuts, the world faces peak warming of up to 2.8 degrees, with devastating consequences for climate stability, economies, and societies.

What the Report Finds

The report models a 'lowest possible' 1.5 degrees overshoot scenario, in which peak warming is limited to 1.7–1.8 degrees around the middle of the century before returning to or below 1.5 degrees by 2100, with approximately a 50 per cent probability. Achieving this pathway requires average annual emissions reduction rates of 5.7 per cent for the period 2025–2035 — steeper than the roughly 5 per cent annual cuts prescribed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) pathways.

By contrast, the full implementation of existing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) would reduce emissions by only 5–8 per cent by 2030 and 11–15 per cent by 2035, falling far short of what is required. Even the most optimistic scenario — where all NDCs plus net-zero targets are fully achieved — would limit warming to no better than 2.1 degrees this century.

The Carbon Removal Challenge

The report also flags a significant carbon removal burden. Even under the lowest possible overshoot scenario, roughly 320 gigatonnes of CO₂ — equivalent to approximately eight years of 2024's total global CO₂ emissions — would need to be removed from the atmosphere and permanently stored over the course of this century. Socioeconomic and technological uncertainties, however, make achieving this scale of carbon dioxide removal far from guaranteed.

Critically, every five years of CO₂ emissions at current levels pushes peak warming up by around 0.1 degree, making early action disproportionately valuable.

What World Leaders Said

UN Secretary-General António Guterres struck a cautiously optimistic note, stating: 'Overshoot is not surrender. We can still keep it as small and as short as possible — and bring temperatures back below 1.5 degrees by the end of the century.' He stressed that achieving this requires cutting global GHG emissions by 18 per cent by 2030 and 45 per cent by 2035 compared with 2025 levels.

Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, underscored the human cost of delay: 'Every additional fraction of a degree and additional year of warming above 1.5 degrees increases climate impacts and risks, such as the deadly floods, heatwaves and wildfires that have plagued many nations this year.' She added that a return to 1.5 degrees remains achievable, calling on nations to urgently deploy policies that enable 'fast, deep and sustained emissions reductions.'

Progress Made — and Where It Falls Short

The report acknowledges genuine advances since the Paris Agreement was adopted. Renewable energy has boomed globally, total energy supply growth from coal and oil has been slower than earlier projections, and targeted climate policies have already cut emissions measurably across multiple countries. More than 220 policy evaluations are cited, with electricity-sector policies reducing emissions by an average of 9 per cent, and economic instruments such as carbon cap-and-trade schemes and carbon taxes achieving reductions of 5–13 per cent across sectors during the periods evaluated.

Yet these successes remain concentrated in specific sectors, countries, and time periods. Scaling and sustaining them globally is the central challenge.

Why Projections Worsened Since Last Year

This year's outlook is notably worse than the 2025 edition of the same report. UNEP attributes the deterioration primarily to the withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Agreement and to revised estimates of historical emissions. New NDCs submitted since the previous report have made, in the report's own assessment, a 'negligible difference' to the overall trajectory. Without urgent corrective action, keeping peak warming below 1.7–1.8 degrees will quickly become physically impossible, the report warns.

The findings arrive as pressure mounts ahead of upcoming global climate negotiations, with the gap between pledged and required action wider than at any point since the Paris accord was struck.