COP30 – A critical moment for global climate action

Ten years after the Paris Agreement was concluded, global climate action is at a critical juncture. Up to now, global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have not been sufficient to put the world on track to achieving the targets of the Paris Agreement, holding 'the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C'. Instead, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Emissions Gap Report 2024 finds that the current national efforts put the world on a trajectory for a 2.6 to 3.1 °C temperature rise during this century. This would lead to a surge in damages ranging from extreme weather events, to sea level rise, to risks to food security and a danger of crossing climate tipping points.

Delayed climate action has already led to a significant increase in GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, and average global temperature rise exceeded 1.5 °C in 2024. Scientists warn that five more years of current GHG emissions would lead to breaching the goal to limit global warming to 1.5 °C over the longer term. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted the need for global emissions to peak before 2025 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 °C.

Nationally determined contributions (NDCs) are key to the global climate negotiations. Ahead of the conference of the parties (COP), the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) shares a synthesis report based on latest NDCs, showing progress or shortfalls in Parties' combined contributions, providing a factual basis for talks. Parties must submit their third round of NDCs (NDC 3.0), with targets for 2035, by September 2025, before the November COP30 in Belém, Brazil. On 19 August 2025, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago urged Parties to submit their NDCs in time for inclusion in the UNFCCC 2025 Synthesis Report and suggested the high-level event on 24 September 2025, on the margins of the 80th United Nations (UN) General Assembly, as a platform for unveiling the new 2035 targets. As of 1 September 2025, only 30 out of 195 Parties have submitted their NDC 3.0. COP30 will take place in a context of eroding trust in international climate cooperation, amid long-standing disputes about climate finance between developed and developing countries, geopolitical tensions, and the recent withdrawal of the United States (US) from the Paris Agreement.¹

An analysis of major economies' NDCs 3.0, provided in the annex, is meant to inform the EU's discussions on its 2035 target. It shows that, among the 10 largest global emitters ² in 2022, only Brazil, Japan and the US submitted their NDCs³ by 1 September 2025. Canada and the United Kingdom (UK) – respectively the 11th and 23rd largest emitters – also submitted their NDCs ahead of the extended deadline. Together, these major economies account for around two thirds of global GHG emissions. Their NDCs 3.0 are valuable documents to compare the national target-setting processes and planned means of implementations, in alignment with international discussions and long-term goals. With the US withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the US NDC will not be analysed in detail.

NDCs under the Paris Agreement

NDCs are the core mechanism for implementing the goals of the Paris Agreement, which uses a bottom-up process in which each country sets its own targets for emissions reductions and adaptation to climate change, with stricter requirements for developed countries.⁴ However, the agreement's voluntary nature constitutes its central dilemma, as each Party determines the scope and ambition of its contribution to the collective effort. Moreover, NDCs are neither legally binding nor enforceable. To ensure progress, the Paris Agreement introduced a 'ratchet mechanism', which requires that NDCs must communicate increasingly ambitious efforts with a 10-year horizon every five years.⁵

In 2015, before the Paris Agreement was concluded, countries submitted intended NDCs with a timeframe to 2025. These became NDCs as soon as a country joined the agreement. The second round of NDCs (NDC 2.0), with a timeframe to 2030, started in 2020; however, the coronavirus pandemic caused delays and the postponement of COP26 in Glasgow by one year to 2021. The 2021 Glasgow Climate Pact requested 'Parties to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets in their NDCs as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022'. Among the countries studied, Canada, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the US have not updated their NDC 2.0. The EU updated its NDC 2.0 in October 2023 to reflect the fit for 55 package. The deadline for the third wave of NDCs was extended from February to September 2025, leaving just enough time to analyse data and publish the UNFCCC synthesis report to inform COP30 negotiations in November.

Source: UNFCCC NDC Registry. Graphic by: Samy Chahri, EPRS.

The EU has traditionally been among the first Parties to submit an NDC, demonstrating leadership by setting ambitious targets. Since unilateral ambition of one Party leads to costs for that Party while benefiting all other Parties, many tend to wait until other NDCs have been submitted (see Figure 1). The EU's NDC 3.0 was delayed by concerns about the competitiveness of European industry, a reset of the European Green Deal, and the link with the EU's proposed 2040 climate target (see page 8).

The transparency framework to monitor NDC delivery also feeds into the global stocktake, the periodic assessment of collective progress towards achieving the Paris Agreement's goals, starting in 2023 and recurring every five years. In turn, the outcomes of the global stocktake guide Parties in updating and strengthening their NDCs. The first global stocktake called on Parties to contribute to a list of eight global efforts in their next NDCs (see Box 1) and to align NDCs with national long-term strategies. Some Parties, including Brazil, mention their intention to reflect outcomes of the global stocktake in their next NDCs. Other Parties have more binding processes, such as the EU with its Climate Law explicitly linking the process of setting a climate target for 2040 to the global stocktake.

Under the Paris Agreement, all Parties should strive to formulate and communicate long-term low GHG emissions development strategies, which can include target years for peaking emissions and climate neutrality, and low GHG emissions trajectories. The 2050 Pathways Platform published a guide for aligning NDCs with long-term strategies, to ensure that short-term plans such as NDCs incorporate and support the long-term systemic transformations specified in long-term strategies. Only half of Parties' NDCs 2.0 provided long-term visions for emissions reductions.

The EU submitted its long-term strategy in March 2020, in line with the European Climate Law that sets a climate neutrality target by 2050. However, the updated EU NDC 2.0 does not refer explicitly to the long-term strategy. Under the EU Governance Regulation, Member States must submit to the European Commission national long-term strategies with a 30-year perspective, and update them every five years where necessary.

Third wave of NDCs

Under the Paris Agreement, new NDCs should represent a progression. The Climate Action Tracker (CAT), an independent scientific project, provided a guide to a good 2035 climate target. According to this guide, current NDCs 2.0 would lead to 2.5 °C warming by 2100, while breaching the 1.5 °C target by the early 2030s, and the 2 °C target by 2040. To achieve the targets, NDCs 2.0 need be revised to close the 2030 emissions gap, and NDC 3.0 targets should accelerate emissions reductions.

Reflecting NDCs' bottom-up nature, Parties take different approaches to updating their NDCs, from expansions in scope and coverage to changes in target type. Nevertheless, the global stocktake specifically encouraged the Parties to come forward in their NDCs 3.0 with 'ambitious, economy-wide emission reduction targets, covering all GHGs, sectors and categories'. Among the five major economies studied that have submitted an NDC 3.0, ambition levels differ. While none have enhanced their 2030 targets, they all set enhanced targets for 2035, although Canada's upper target for 2030 is the same as its lower one for 2035 (45 % below 2005 levels). Japan's 2035 target assumes a linear trajectory between its 2030 target and its climate neutrality goal. Russia has not yet published an NDC 3.0 but adopted an executive order that sets a 2035 target of reducing net GHG emissions by 65-67 % below 1990 levels, which is less ambitious than its previous target of 70 % by 2030 and effectively allows emissions to grow, since current levels are already below this target.

CAT provides feasible domestic emissions reduction pathways for each country and found that only the UK's 2035 target is aligned with its 1.5 °C pathway, which is a clear improvement from the previous NDC. For Canada, a substantial gap remains between the 2035 target's upper range and its 1.5 °C pathway; the gap has widened compared with Canada's 2030 target. Japan pledged a 60 % net reduction by 2035 compared with 2013 but would need to increase this target to at least 81 % to align with its 1.5 °C pathway. Finally, CAT considers Brazil's NDC 3.0 incompatible with its 1.5 °C pathway, acknowledging uncertainties with regards to emissions and removals in the land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector. For comparison, CAT rated the EU's 2030 target as 'insufficient', because global warming would reach between 2 and 3 °C if all Parties were to adopt the same approach.

Parties use a variety of target types, and sometimes multiple ones (see Box 2). More than 80 % of Parties have economy-wide targets covering almost all sectors, with an increasing share adopting absolute emissions reduction targets in updated NDCs. The International Energy Agency (IEA) highlighted that countries with higher gross domestic product (GDP) per capita have mostly set absolute emissions reduction targets, while countries with low to medium GDP per capita have mostly adopted baseline scenario targets, which offer greater flexibility to pursue economic development but are less predictable in terms of actual emissions outcomes. Nevertheless, the IEA points out that several higher-income countries also set intensity or business-as-usual scenario targets. For instance, Saudi Arabia's target is to reduce or avoid 278 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (MtCO₂e) annually by 2030, supposedly below a 2019 baseline scenario but without providing a relative baseline projection.

Economy-wide targets should include all sectors: energy (including in transport and buildings), industrial processes and product use, agriculture, forestry and other land use, and waste.⁶ Parties studied include all or almost all sectors. However, CAT warns that a combined target for emissions reductions and GHG removals can mask inadequate overall action, and recommends Parties to communicate separate targets for emissions reductions and removals. For instance, Brazil's NDC 3.0 lacks details on the expected contributions of the land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector to the 2035 target, which has vast implications on the level of decarbonisation required for other sectors. Conversely, the EU's updated NDC 2.0 communicated an enhanced separate target for LULUCF removals (310 MtCO₂e in 2030). Indonesia's NDC 2.0 provided separate sectoral targets relative to its business-as-usual scenario, including for LULUCF removals. However, neither the EU nor Indonesia seem on track to reach their LULUCF targets. Targets should also cover seven GHGs.⁷

Dividing the global carbon budget

The IPCC estimated the maximum amount of cumulative net emissions that would result in limiting global warming to 1.5 °C and 2 °C – the carbon budget.⁸ To limit global warming to 1.5 °C with a 50 % likelihood by 2100, there is a remaining carbon budget of 500 gigatonnes of CO₂ (GtCO₂) from 2020 onwards. The UNFCCC further determined that, if all NDCs 2.0 were implemented, the remaining 1.5 °C carbon budget⁹ from 2030 onwards would be around 70 GtCO₂, as shown in Figure 2. This corresponds to approximately two years of projected global emissions by 2030. The NDC 3.0 targets from Brazil, Canada, Japan and the UK would take up 17 % of this remaining post-2030 budget (36 % if including the US), while the Parties concerned were only responsible for around 7.5 % of global emissions in 2022 (19.2 % if including the US).

Source: UNFCCC 2024 NDC Synthesis Report, UNFCCC NDC Registry. Graphic by: Samy Chahri, EPRS. Parties' emissions between 2031 and 2035 are calculated on the assumption of linear annual reductions between the 2030 target (NDC 2.0) and the 2035 target (NDC 3.0). For targets stated as a range, the middle value was used. All except Canada include LULUCF. Russia set its 2035 target in an executive order of August 2025, but has not yet submitted an NDC 3.0. The US NDC 3.0 was submitted before the Trump administration announced the country's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement; therefore actual US emissions between 2031 and 2035 are likely to be higher. The carbon budget concerns carbon dioxide (CO₂) whereas countries' targets include CO₂ equivalent (CO₂e) greenhouse gases.

There is no agreed definition of national 'fair shares' of global carbon budgets. Some approaches combine various equity principles into one fair-share allocation scheme, while others, such as CAT, determines a fair share range for each country based on a broad spectrum of views. CAT uses seven effort-sharing categories: historical responsibility; capability/need; equality; equal cumulative per capita emissions; capability; cost (welfare loss); and right to development. In that way, CAT rates NDC 2.0 unconditional targets from Indonesia, Russia and Saudi Arabia as 'critically insufficient' against their fair share, and as 'insufficient' for all other Parties studied, except for Brazil, whose NDC 2.0 target is considered as 'almost sufficient'. Moreover, UNEP stresses that G20 members must cut emissions faster than the global average, to be aligned with fair share pathways.

The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change gives three perspectives on the EU's fair share: 'legal' under the Paris Agreement and domestic law; 'ethical', considering several equity approaches; and 'practical', accounting for historical, per capita and consumption-based emissions.

Delivery on NDC targets

Along with the ambition gap, there is also an implementation gap regarding both emissions reductions and adaptation to climate change (see Box 3). A 2025 assessment found an increasingly widening gap between national ambition and actual policy performance. Moreover, UNEP's Emissions Gap Report 2024 found that the G20 member countries would exceed their NDC 2.0 targets by 1 GtCO₂e in 2030 under current policy projections, with 11 members off track. India, Türkiye and Mexico are the most likely to reach their (comparatively weak) targets, followed by China, the EU and Russia.

Under the Paris Agreement, Parties should 'intend to achieve' their NDCs and 'pursue domestic mitigation measures' with this aim. In practice, Parties will establish a national system comprising legislation, administrative procedures, sectoral plans, financial resources and enforcement mechanisms, with higher expectations for developed country Parties. More than 90 % of NDCs 2.0 have provided information on means of implementation, although with significant variation in structure and depth. Canada and the UK's NDCs 3.0 mention legal acts implementing their targets, while those of Brazil and Japan highlight their national plans but no legally binding provisions. NDCs 3.0 also indicate the presence of national advisory bodies that inform the climate policies of Canada, Japan and the UK (see annex). CAT rated NDC 2.0 policies and actions from the four Parties studied, as well as the EU, as 'insufficient' against modelled domestic pathways.

Implementation of conditional targets depends on international climate finance (see Box 4), and NDCs increasingly mention that it can flow through voluntary cooperation under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. UNFCCC reports that 78 % of Parties intend to use at least one of the three Article 6 approaches, with 52 % referring to cooperative approaches (Article 6.2). Parties can trade emissions reductions bilaterally, through internationally transferred mitigation outcomes (ITMOs) that the buyer country uses to fill gaps in its nationally determined emissions reduction target.

The UK's NDC states that it does not currently intend to use these approaches but might do so in the future. Canada goes further, saying it may potentially use them, but without giving any details. CAT considers this a lack of transparency and clarity. Japan's NDC 3.0 mentions the creation and implementation of its Joint Crediting Mechanism (JCM), a bilateral initiative to support quantified emissions reductions and GHG removals in partner countries. Japan intends to use JCM credits (around 100 MtCO₂e by 2030 and 200 MtCO₂e by 2040) to achieve its own NDC targets. It wants to take the lead in the development of international rules for such market mechanisms, including to avoid double counting of emissions reductions. Conversely, Brazil considers enhancing its NDC 3.0 target (from -59 % to -67 % by 2030 relative to 2005) using ITMOs generated in Brazil to attract international investment. However, any mitigation outcomes transferred to third countries cannot be counted towards Brazil's NDC target.

The EU's NDC 2.0 specifies the domestic nature of its 2030 target and does not refer to the use of international credits. The Commission proposal for a 2040 climate target states that international credits could possibly contribute towards EU climate goals starting from 2036.

Setting the EU NDC 3.0

The EU submits a single NDC on behalf of all Member States; it will be formally adopted by the Council. Wopke Hoekstra, the EU Climate Commissioner, stated the intention of aligning the NDC 3.0 target for 2035 with the EU's climate target for 2040. On 2 July 2025, the Commission tabled its proposal for a 2040 climate target,¹⁰ as a targeted amendment to the European Climate Law. The Commission's proposal for the 2040 target is a reduction of net GHG emissions by 90 % below 1990 levels, with limited use of international credits from 2036.

The legislative timeline is rather tight. The Environment Council is expected to discuss the proposal and the EU NDC 3.0 on 18 September 2025. In Parliament, the Committee on the Environment, Climate and Food Safety (ENVI) plans to adopt its position on the EU 2040 target on 23 September, and the vote in plenary is scheduled for the October I session, together with a resolution on COP30.

Regarding international climate cooperation, the Commission plans to table the EU's global climate and energy strategy for 2025-2029 in the third quarter of 2025. A public consultation is open until 11 September 2025. On 24 July 2025, the EU and China published a joint statement on climate, reaffirming their intention to finalise their NDCs 3.0 before COP30 and to deepen collaboration on energy transition, adaptation, methane reduction, carbon markets, and low-carbon technologies.