Time: 13:15 - 14:20 BRT (GMT-3)
Location: Side Event Room 3, Area C, Blue Zone
Organizer: UNEP and UNFCCC
This joint UNFCCC and UNEP event features high-level opening remarks from the UNEP Executive Director and the UNFCCC Executive Secretary and a presentation of the key findings of the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2025. This is followed by a panel discussion on what the new nationally determined contributions (NDCs) mean for climate projections, and how we can speed up climate action and implementation this decade. The panel discussion also draws on the UNFCCC NDC and BTR synthesis reports.
The event draws on three recent UNEP and UNFCCC reports that both aim to inform countries as they prepare their next NDCs:
• The UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2025: Off target continued collective inaction puts global temperature goal at risk. The 16th edition of UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report provides an updated assessment of the gap between where we are heading in terms of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and where we need to be in 2030 and in 2035 to get on track towards the temperature goal of the Paris Agreement of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, while pursuing limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. This year’s report focuses on the new NDCs.
• The UNFCCC NDC synthesis report 2025 provides valuable new insights, albeit limited in scope, on the basis of the 64 new NDCs submitted by 64 Parties to the Paris Agreement and recorded in the NDC registry between 1 January 2024 and 30 September 2025, covering about 30 per cent of total global emissions in 2019. It is not possible to draw wide-ranging global-level conclusions or inferences from this limited data set. Nevertheless, the report highlights many key lessons, about progress being made and major challenges ahead, emerging from the NDCs synthesized.
• The UNFCCC BTR synthesis report 2025 provides an initial picture of Parties’ progress in implementing the Paris Agreement across mitigation, adaptation and support and identifies areas in which additional efforts are needed to meet its goals, including the barriers and challenges that must be overcome. The report covers over 109 first biennial transparency reports submitted by Parties.
