Ten years of the Paris Agreement: Has the world kept its climate promises?

What the report says

Ten years after the Paris Agreement took effect, Al Jazeera reports that the nearly 200 countries in the treaty have made uneven progress on climate promises. The deal, adopted in 2015 and in force since November 4, 2016, set a shared goal of keeping global warming well below 2C above preindustrial levels and trying to limit it to 1.5C. It relies on national climate plans, regular updates and transparency rather than fixed, enforceable cuts for every country.

The article says the agreement has helped push stronger climate policies and a rapid rise in clean energy, but emissions remain near record highs and the world is still not on track to meet the 1.5C goal. Al Jazeera notes that 2024 was the first full year with average temperatures more than 1.5C above preindustrial levels, while the past three years were the hottest on record. The publication also cites UN Environment Programme warnings that the chance of avoiding any overshoot of 1.5C is now gone.

Al Jazeera adds that the outlook is better than it was in 2015, when current policies pointed toward roughly 3.6C of warming by 2100; that estimate has improved to about 2.6C, though progress has slowed since 2021. China, the US and India now account for more than half of annual emissions, with China the largest emitter. The piece highlights that some major economies, including Germany, Japan and the US, have reduced emissions, but growth elsewhere has outweighed those gains.