The most dangerous response to the latest United Nations climate report would be to conclude that the battle has been lost. The second most dangerous would be to pretend that nothing has changed.
The UN Environment Programme’s Emissions Gap Report 2026, published on 21 October, says the opportunity to hold global warming to 1.5°C with no or only limited overshoot has gone. Decades of inadequate action mean that the world is likely to pass that level. That is a serious failure, but it is not a scientific instruction to give up.
There is no safe side of 1.5°C
The Paris temperature goal was never a magic line separating safety from catastrophe. Climate risk rises with every additional fraction of a degree. A world that briefly peaks at 1.7°C is not the same as one that remains at 2.6°C or continues towards 2.8°C.
UNEP estimates that present government policies point to about 2.8°C of warming by 2100. Full delivery of existing national commitments would reduce that to about 2.6°C, while full delivery of net-zero pledges could limit it to about 2.1°C. These are projections, not certainties. They depend upon future policy, technology, economic conditions and the climate system’s response. Their value is not that they forecast an exact temperature in 2100, but that they show the consequences of different choices.
The report’s lowest-overshoot pathway would see warming peak at about 1.7–1.8°C around mid-century, with roughly a 50% chance of returning to 1.5°C or below by 2100. It would require global greenhouse-gas emissions to fall by 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035 and 69% by 2040, compared with 2025. It would also require the permanent removal of about 320 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide over the century. UNEP is explicit that the scale, cost and social acceptability of that removal are uncertain.
Northern Ireland cannot outsource delivery
Northern Ireland cannot determine the global temperature. It can determine whether its own legal commitments amount to a programme of delivery or a collection of distant promises.
The Climate Change Act (Northern Ireland) 2022 requires emissions to be at least 48% below the baseline by 2030, 77% below by 2040 and net zero by 2050. The first carbon budget, covering 2023–2027, permits average annual emissions 33% below the baseline. Those targets have not been weakened by the UN report. If anything, the cost of missing them has become clearer.
The latest official inventory estimates net emissions of 18.4 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent in 2024. That was 29.4% below the base year but almost unchanged from 2023. Agriculture produced 31.4% of emissions and domestic transport 21.3%. The Climate Change Committee also records increases during 2024 in agriculture, surface transport and residential buildings, while most of the year’s reduction came from electricity supply.
This matters because electricity has carried much of Northern Ireland’s progress so far. Further reductions must now reach farms, vehicles and buildings—the sectors in which policy is politically more difficult and directly affects household and business costs.
A plan must show who does what
DAERA consulted on a draft Climate Action Plan for 2023–2027 in 2025. Yet the Department’s current climate pages still describe it as a draft, even though the first budget period is nearing its final year. A retrospective plan cannot direct investment, give farmers or businesses confidence, or allow the Assembly to judge whether departments are doing enough.
The Executive should publish the final plan with five things attached to every major measure: the department responsible, the annual emissions saving, the implementation date, the funding source and a measurable progress indicator. It should publish a single delivery table every year showing what is complete, late, unfunded or no longer credible. Where a measure slips, the replacement should be identified rather than the shortfall hidden inside a future target.
That programme should prioritise measures which cut emissions now and reduce other costs: energy efficiency that lowers bills, public transport and charging infrastructure that give people an alternative to petrol and diesel, methane and manure-management measures which protect farm viability, peatland and woodland restoration, and planning decisions that avoid locking in higher emissions or greater flood risk.
Removal is not permission to keep emitting
The UNEP pathway depends upon future carbon removal, but Northern Ireland should be cautious about balancing present emissions against technologies that may not arrive at the required scale or price. Trees, peatlands and healthy soils provide real carbon storage alongside benefits for water, biodiversity and resilience. Engineered removal may also play a role. Neither should become an accounting device used to postpone avoidable reductions.
Overshoot also strengthens the case for adaptation. More warming means greater risks from intense rainfall, flooding, heat, coastal change and disruption to food production. Emissions reduction and adaptation are not competing budgets: failure on the first increases the bill for the second.
Delay is a policy choice
The loss of a no-overshoot route to 1.5°C should end the comforting fiction that another consultation, review or missed deadline carries no immediate cost. Delay commits communities to more damage, stores up larger capital requirements and makes the eventual transition more abrupt.
Northern Ireland did not create the global emissions gap and cannot close it alone. It can, however, decide whether targets passed by the Assembly are followed by timely choices. Missing 1.5°C does not make action pointless. It makes every avoided tenth of a degree, every tonne of emissions and every year saved more valuable.
