PARIS: The United Nations said on Wednesday the 1.5C target would be missed and outlined how global temperatures might be brought back down in a first-of-its-kind assessment met with dismay in climate-vulnerable nations.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres last year acknowledged the inevitability of overshooting 1.5C in the next few years but this assessment is the first by a UN agency to unambiguously state the target would be breached.

Scientists agree that warming above 1.5C relative to pre-industrial times poses grave risks and nearly 200 nations committed a decade ago to try and keep global temperature rises to this safer threshold. But in a much-anticipated report involving dozens of scientists, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said the best remaining option had shifted “from avoiding overshoot to navigating it”.

“It’s a reality check. We have to live with this warmer world... but there’s still a lot we can do to limit warming,” said report co-author Richard Betts from the University of Exeter.

The report “was about responses rather than just sort of saying it is happening”, he told journalists. Fellow author Debra Roberts said it was important for policymakers “to realise the rules of the game are now changing”.

“I think for me that’s the clarion call... we now have to reconfigure our climate governance around dealing with an overshoot pathway. None of our plans are prepared for that,” said Roberts from the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

‘Dangerous waters’

UNEP had warned that meeting the 1.5C target was becoming increasingly unlikely as heat-trapping emissions rose year after year and global temperatures steadily climbed. But its latest report marks a departure, stating in no uncertain terms that “global action to cut greenhouse gas emissions has not been fast enough to avoid global warming crossing 1.5C”.

The blunt message “really struck those who live in low-lying atolls”, said Climate Minister Maina Talia of Tuvalu, a Pacific nation threatened by rising sea levels.

Marshall Islands climate envoy Tina Stege said “with the overshoot that is now certain ahead of us, we are fighting against a very strong current that’s sweeping us into very dangerous waters”.

The Alliance of Small Island States, a grouping of 39 developing coastal nations, said the report “must be a wake-up call to act with far greater urgency.” “Fundamentally, it must be made clear that 1.5C is not an arbitrary goal that countries can waffle on or walk away from,” it said.

‘Heartbreaking’

“1.5 to stay alive!” is a familiar rally cry at the annual COP summits and the target has been a north star for the climate movement. “This is a heartbreaking moment, but overshoot is not the reason to give up and surrender 1.5C”, said Jasper Inventor from Greenpeace International.

Rachel Cleetus from the Union of Concerned Scientists said breaching 1.5C was “a monumental climate injustice that will impose the worst harms on those who have contributed the least to the climate crisis”. The report said it was “theoretically possible” to reverse global warming once the 1.5C threshold is crossed but great uncertainty remains.

Even under the most optimistic scenario, global temperatures would still need to peak at 1.8C to have any chance of returning to 1.5C this century. And to achieve this, carbon dioxide removal — such as planting trees or using technology to pull carbon from the air — would be required at enormous scale alongside major, rapid cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. Guterres said such an effort would require “an overshoot of ambition”. “The fight for 1.5 degrees is the fight for humanity,” he said on Wednesday.

Published in Dawn, September 3rd, 2026