On October 27, the Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window was released by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Key highlights
- The report is the 13th edition in an annual series that provides an overview of the difference between where greenhouse emissions are predicted to be in 2030 and where they should be to avert the worst impacts of climate change.
- The report shows that updated national pledges since COP26 – held in 2021 in Glasgow, UK – make a negligible difference to predicted 2030 emissions and that we are far from the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, preferably 1.5°C.
- Policies currently in place point to a 2.8°C temperature rise by the end of the century. Implementation of the current pledges will only reduce this to a 2.4-2.6°C temperature rise by the end of the century, for conditional and unconditional pledges respectively.
- The Emissions Gap Report 2022 finds that the world must cut emissions by 45 per cent to avoid global catastrophe.
Per capita emissions
- At 2.4 tCO2e (tonne carbon dioxide equivalent), India’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions were far below the world average of 6.3 tCO2e in 2020, according to the report.
- World average per capita GHG emissions (including land use, land-use change, and forestry—LULUCF) were 6.3 tCO2e in 2020.
- The US remains far above this level at 14 tCO2e, followed by 13 tCO2e in the Russian Federation, 9.7 tCO2e in China, about 7.5 tCO2e in Brazil and Indonesia, and 7.2 tCO2e in the European Union.
