While global efforts to avert catastrophic climate change are still far off track a decade after the Paris Agreement was adopted, the landmark pact has spurred big strides on cutting planet-heating emissions and reducing the expected rise in global warming.

Speaking days before the start of COP30, UN Secretary-General António Guterres conceded that the global average temperature will increase by more than the 1.5C limit above pre-industrial levels agreed in the Paris deal, marking a sharp blow.

The legally binding accord set an overarching goal to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels” while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5C.

But even if the most symbolic 1.5C target is missed, the projected global temperature increase by the end of the century has fallen in the decade since the Paris deal was struck – and climate experts say the agreement is still the compass of global climate action.

To mark the agreement’s 10-year anniversary, we take a look at what it has achieved, and what remains to be done:

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What has the Paris Agreement achieved on emissions?

When the Paris deal was adopted, no countries had pledged to cut their emissions to net zero. Now, about 70% of global greenhouse gas emissions are covered by net-zero pledges.

“Countries have moved from a patchwork of targets to economy-wide, absolute emission-reduction goals, and projected 21st-century emissions under both current policies and targets have fallen markedly since 2015,” said an analysis by Climate Analytics, adding that climate policies meant global emissions could peak before 2030.

The world’s projected temperature increase by the end of the century has fallen to 2.3C-2.5C from 3C-3.7C when the deal was struck, according to the UN Environment Programme’s latest Emissions Gap Report, showing the impact of climate action.

Still, short-term action since 2015 has not been sufficient to prevent overshooting of the Paris accord’s 1.5C limit. And even if that happens temporarily and temperatures are brought back down again, it could still have disastrous consequences for ecosystems, economies and vulnerable communities.

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“This is not a failure of the Agreement’s design; it is a failure of collective ambition to match its aims,” the Climate Analytics analysis said.

The State of Climate Action 2025 report from the World Resources Institute (WRI) also found there is still a long way to go.

“Across every single sector, climate action has failed to materialise at the pace and scale required to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal,” the WRI report said.

Campaigners demonstrate at the COP29 climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, calling for public funding for climate action, on November 14, 2024. (Photo: UN Climate Change – Kamran Guliyev)

What are the biggest hurdles for the key Paris goals?

None of the 45 indicators assessed in the WRI report were found to be on track to reach their 1.5C-aligned targets by the end of this decade, with some of the worst-performing metrics including halting permanent forest loss, phasing out coal-generated power and scaling up climate finance.

At the same time, public finance for fossil fuels continues to grow – even two years after the world agreed to transition away from coal, oil and gas, rising by an average of $75 billion per year since 2014, the WRI report said.

Elsewhere, climate experts say progress has started to slow down, warning that this could push the Paris Agreement’s goals on limiting temperature rise further out of reach.

“Progress made in decarbonising steel has largely stagnated; and the share of trips taken by passenger cars – many of which still rely on the internal combustion engine – continues to rise,” the WRI report said.

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The Climate Action Monitor 2025, issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, shows that the number and stringency of policies increased by only 1% in 2024.

Climate Analytics CEO Bill Hare said that while improved national policies meant a global peak in emissions before 2030 was now in sight, a dwindling sense of urgency among decision-makers must be tackled.

“The big problem is that progress has flattened in the last few years, both in terms of targets put forward by countries and policies put in place. Ten years after Paris, COP30 will have to deal with some of this delay with urgency,” Hare said.

Ten years on, what is actually working?

Framework climate laws have more than tripled since 2015 and national climate policy tools are up seven-fold, a recent study by the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) found.

When it comes to the clean energy rollout, “the Paris Agreement has had a transformative global impact”, the ECIU report said.

Back in 2015, the global non-fossil share of power generation was expected to rise modestly from 32% to 38% by 2035, according to BP’s Energy Outlook. But in 2024, that figure had already reached 41%, ECIU said.

Solar and wind have grown more than 1,500% faster than forecast by the International Energy Agency (IEA) in 2015, and renewables have just overtaken coal as the largest source of electricity generation.

“We are already investing twice as much into renewables than fossil fuels. Now renewables meet 80% of global electricity demand growth, solar has been deployed 15 times faster than predicted 10 years ago,” said Christiana Figueres, one of the architects of the Paris Agreement and a founding partner of the Global Optimism civic organisation.

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) is already 40% above the IEA’s 2015 projections and on track to be 66% higher by 2030.

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Despite the faster-than-expected growth in EV adoption, the WRI analysis said the sector was still off track for achieving the Paris Agreement’s 1.5C warming limit.

“The advances we’re seeing in the real economy are telling us we are walking in the right direction, even if too slowly,” said Figueres.

What’s next for the Paris Agreement?

Heightened geopolitical tensions, trade rivalries and aid cuts could spill over into the new cycle of nationally determined contributions (NDCs), or national climate plans, which are a key Paris Agreement mechanism, said Paula Castro from the Center for Energy and the Environment at Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

Under the agreement, the NDCs have to be submitted in a five-year cycle and the latest round, the third, were due by this September but around two-thirds of countries missed the UN deadline, though there has been a flurry in the run-up to COP30. Those that have been submitted are not ambitious enough to deliver global emissions cuts in line with the Paris Agreement temperature goals.

“It remains to be seen whether the system of periodic updates and improvements to NDCs endures today’s tough geopolitical climate. Unless governments urgently raise both ambition and implementation, the NDC process risks sliding into an exercise in paperwork rather than the engine of climate progress it was meant to be,” Castro said in an interview with Nature Climate Change.

In another blow for the Paris Agreement, US President Donald Trump has ordered his country’s withdrawal from the pact for the second time. His decision means the world’s largest economy will join just three countries that are party to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) but not the Paris Agreement – Iran, Libya and Yemen.

The US leader’s step drew international criticism, but climate experts do not expect it to halt progress elsewhere.

“While it’s clear the speed and scale has to increase, the institutional buy-in of the Paris Agreement continues and moves forward despite two pull-outs by the US,” said Jennifer Morgan, former German state secretary and special envoy for international climate action.

She said the rising cost of climate-linked disasters should give fresh impetus to the Paris Agreement goals.

“We know just in Europe extreme weather events cost 43 billion euros per year … Not acting on climate has a huge cost to the economy, and that’s beginning to resonate with leaders,” she said.

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