By Jamal Srouji, Taryn Fransen, Sophie Boehm, David Waskow, Rebecca Carter and Gaia Larsen 

By early 2025, countries are due to unveil new national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). These commitments form the foundation of international climate action, establishing emissions-reduction targets and other measures that countries promise to implement.

The Paris Agreement requires nations to put forward new NDCs every five years, with each round stronger than the last. In short, NDCs are important because they are the main vehicle for countries to collectively confront the global climate crisis.

Yet NDCs to date fall well short of what’s needed to avert increasingly dangerous climate impacts and hold global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F). A recent UN report found current commitments put the world on track for a catastrophic 2.5-2.9 degrees C (4.5 – 5.2 degrees F) of warming by 2100.
Key developments since the last round of NDCs in 2020 can help spur countries to step things up considerably this time around. The question is: Will they rise to the occasion?

The Seeds for Stronger Climate Action Are Taking Root

Indeed, the impetus for ambitious national climate action has never been stronger. For instance, most countries now have targets to achieve net-zero emissions by or around 2050. This round of NDCs will extend to 2035 – the midpoint between 2020 (when many countries began implementing their NDCs) and 2050 – making them an important milestone for aligning near- and mid-term action with long-term aspirations. The new NDCs must also be informed by last year’s Global Stocktake, a UN assessment that reveals the shortcomings in current national climate policies and clearly calls for countries to move away from fossil fuels, as well as transform transportation, food and agriculture, and more.

Countries are also increasingly joining global cooperative initiatives on issues ranging from food and forests to renewable energy and methane; translating those commitments into NDCs could unlock stronger ambition. Finally, new scientific evidence like last year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report reveals that the impacts of climate change are leading to more devastating consequences sooner than anticipated, reinforcing the urgent need to curb emissions, drive adaptation and significantly increase financing for both.
In the past, too many NDCs fell short of their potential to set out the ambition and actions needed for truly transformative climate action. This time around, NDCs must evolve to set the sights of government on the pace and scale of change needed and advance implementation to deliver it.

Here, we propose a five-point plan for the next generation of NDCs:

1) Set 2035 and strengthen 2030 emissions-reduction targets aligned with 1.5-degrees C and net-zero emissions goals.

Research shows that preventing increasingly dangerous impacts of climate change requires limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. That means cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by 2030 and 60% by 2035, relative to 2019.

This is a collective goal supported by 194 vastly different countries, so it’s hard to prescribe a single, objective 2030 and 2035 emissions target at the national level (though various tools can help do so).

Two things, however, are clear: First, countries, especially major emitters, must go much further in their emissions cuts than their current NDCs. And second, developed countries — historically the world’s largest emitters — have a responsibility to make the deepest reductions while providing substantially more finance to help developing countries accelerate climate action.

Less ambiguous than the collective 1.5- degrees C goal are the net-zero emissions targets that most countries have now adopted. Those countries should ensure that their 2030 and 2035 targets put them on a realistic path to phasing out emissions entirely by their net-zero target date. The window to align near- and mid-term climate action with long-term goals is finite. Infrastructure, for example, can take decades to turn over. If NDCs continue to lag so far behind, long-term goals will not be met without costly interventions later. The UN invited countries to submit their long-term climate strategies by November 2024, which can help inform countries’ near-term actions in their 2025 NDCs.

Finally, all countries should set targets that include non-CO2 greenhouse gases such as methane. Reining in these potent climate pollutants is among the fastest ways to reduce near-term warming, yet some countries still do not address them in their NDCs. Last year, China made a significant commitment to include non-CO2 emissions for the first time in its new NDC. This is especially important, as China’s non-CO2 emissions alone would rank among the world’s top 10 national emitters of total GHGs.

2) Accelerate systemwide transformations by establishing ambitious, timebound sectoral targets.

Limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C will require immediate action to transform nearly every sector. To spur such far-reaching changes, countries should set sector-specific targets that underpin their topline emissions-reduction goals, as well as jumpstart a process with ministries to integrate these targets into their strategic planning. Doing so can help guide domestic policymaking across the whole of government, signal the direction of travel to public and private sector investors and enable more effective implementation.
While most NDCs currently commit to reducing economy-wide GHG emissions, fewer feature sector-specific goals. But establishing ambitious, timebound targets for the energy system (which includes energy supply and end use sectors like transport), as well as for food, agriculture and land, will be particularly important, as these sectors collectively emit about 90% of GHGs globally.

A just transition to zero-carbon energy

NDCs should commit to phasing down fossil fuels rapidly this decade, while also scaling up zero-carbon power; electrifying buildings, industry and transport; shifting to low- and zero-carbon fuels in harder-to-abate industries like steel and cement; and improving energy efficiency.
Fortunately, countries aren’t starting from scratch. The Global Stocktake, as well as multilateral commitments like the Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge, provide building blocks for national target-setting. At COP28, for example, countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, triple renewable energy capacity by 2030 and advance efforts to achieve net-zero energy systems by mid-century. These political commitments represent significant progress. NDCs should reaffirm them.

But to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C, countries will also need to go further. One study, for example, finds that zero-carbon power sources like wind and solar must account for at least 88% of electricity generation by 2030, while coal and unabated fossil gas should decline to no more than 4% and 7% of power generation by the end of this decade, respectively. Similarly, decarbonizing transport will require bringing jobs, services and goods closer to where people live to avoid motorized travel; doubling public transit infrastructure across urban areas; and increasing the share of electric vehicles in the passenger car fleet to at least 20% this decade.
Countries do not need to progress at the same pace or reach the same target to achieve these global benchmarks. While developed countries have a responsibility to go furthest, fastest, other major emitters also need to decarbonize rapidly to keep the 1.5-degree C limit within reach, though some may require finance and other support to do so. Still, these benchmarks provide a rough approximation of where nations need to be in the near term.

Finally, NDCs should lay the groundwork for a just and equitable energy transition by committing to extend affordable, reliable electricity access to those currently living without it, provide safe and accessible mobility for all, and support those negatively impacted by the shift to zero-carbon energy, such as fossil fuel workers.

A shift to resilient food systems that feed a growing population, help halt deforestation and reduce emissions

Today’s farmers face an enormously difficult task of boosting agricultural productivity to improve food security in the face of intensifying climate change impacts, while also shifting to practices that enhance soil health, safeguard water and mitigate climate change. Agriculture, forestry and other land uses, for example, account for nearly one-fifth of annual GHG emissions globally; when combined with emissions across food supply chains, this share jumps to roughly a third.

Recent years have seen this sector rise up the political agenda, with an increasing number of countries referencing it in their current NDCs, the inclusion of ecosystem conservation within the Global Stocktake and the Global Goal on Adaptation’s target to attain climate-resilient food systems.

Complementary commitments like the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use and the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture, Resilient Food Systems and Climate Action have also received widespread support from countries.

Though these developments are welcome news, NDCs must go further to deliver the Paris Agreement’s goals, including to protect vulnerable farmers, particularly smallholders, from intensifying impacts and to lower food systems’ emissions.
On the demand-side, all countries should set targets to halve food loss and waste by 2030, while those in high-consuming regions (the Americas, Europe and Oceania) should aim to lower per capita consumption of emissions-intensive beef, lamb and goat to two servings per week or less by the end of this decade. Supply-side, 1.5-degree C benchmarks call for reducing global GHG emissions from agricultural production by 22% this decade, while also sustainably boosting crop yields by 18% and building resilience. Pairing these food and agriculture goals with those focused on halting and reversing ecosystem loss, particularly for forests, peatlands, mangroves and grasslands, is also urgently needed to help conserve the world’s carbon sinks and stores.

Critically, efforts to achieve these targets must be pursued in tandem. Failure to do so risks unintended consequences, such as farms expanding into forests and accelerating biodiversity losses, tree-planting across productive croplands that harms farmers’ livelihoods and threatens food security, or adoption of agricultural practices that increase yields but heighten vulnerability to climate change by degrading soil or overdrawing groundwater.