The international community is falling "far short" of the Paris Agreement to address climate change, with "no credible pathway" to the goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius, said a U.N. report Thursday.
Instead, the world is on track for temperatures to rise by 2.4 to 2.6 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, according to the Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window – Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies.
The report calls on institutional investors and other members of the global financial system to enable the transformation to a low-emissions economy. While it would require investments of at least $4 trillion to $6 trillion each year, that amount represents less than 2% of total financial assets managed but would provide at least 20% of additional annual resources, the report said.
"Most financial actors, despite stated intentions, have shown limited action on climate mitigation because of short-term interests, conflicting objectives and not recognizing climate risks adequately. Governments and key financial actors will need to steer credibly in one direction: a transformation of the financial system and its structures and processes, engaging governments, central banks, commercial banks, institutional investors and other financial actors," the report said.
As countries prepare for the next U.N. climate conference beginning Nov. 6 in Egypt, the United Nations Environment Programme report said that pledges made since last year's conference in Glasgow, Scotland, are "woefully inadequate," reducing greenhouse gas emissions less than 1% when at least 45% is needed to achieve the 1.5-degree goal.
Improving that bleak situation would take a "large-scale, rapid" and "fossil fuel-free shake-up," the report said. The transformation toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions is underway in electricity supply, industry, transportation and buildings, but it needs to move "much faster," the report said. It found that countries making the most progress on transforming electricity supply saw "dramatically reduced" renewable electricity prices.
"This report tells us in cold scientific terms what nature has been telling us all year, through deadly floods, storms and raging fires: We have to stop filling our atmosphere with greenhouse gases, and stop doing it fast," said Inger Andersen, executive director of UNEP, in a news release. "We had our chance to make incremental changes, but that time is over."
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was even more blunt about the report's findings. "We are headed for economy-destroying levels of global heating. We must close the emissions gap before catastrophe closes in on us all," he said on social media. Mr. Guterres also called for "massive" investment in renewable energy.
