2025: Efforts to tackle the climate crisis, these 5 issues will be kept in mind

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2025: Efforts to tackle the climate crisis, these 5 issues will be kept in mind

1. Can we survive the 1.5 degree target?

For the past few years, the UN has been insisting on keeping the 2.5 target alive. This means limiting global average temperature rise to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

Scientists agree that the lack of strong action will have devastating consequences for climate change, especially for countries on the front lines of the crisis, such as developing island nations, which are at risk of sinking under the sea due to rising sea levels. .

© UNICEF/Lasse Bak Mezhlvang

The UN climate conference, COP30, to be held from 10 to 21 November 2025, will focus on actions and policies that can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and prevent rising temperatures.

Countries around the world will join the conference with advanced and ambitious commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. It is clear that current commitments are completely inadequate to reduce temperatures.

Under the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, member countries strengthen their climate action plans and commitments once every five years. The last time this process took place was in 2021 at the COP conference in Glasgow, Britain, which was postponed for a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

2. Protection of nature

Holding COP30 in the Amazon rainforest region of Brazil is symbolically important. It is reminiscent of the early days of international efforts to protect the environment.

The historic “Earth Summit”, which produced three environmental agreements on climate change, biodiversity and desertification. This conference was organized in the city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992.

A parrot sitting on a tree branch in Maharashtra, India.

This choice of location also points to the climate crisis and the role nature can play in solving it. Rainforests are huge “carbon sinks” that absorb and store greenhouse gases such as CO2 and prevent them from entering the atmosphere, where they can cause global warming.

Unfortunately, rainforests and other “nature-based solutions” are under threat from human activities, such as illegal logging, which have destroyed large swaths of these forests.

In this context, the United Nations will continue its efforts, starting in 2024, to better protect rainforests and other ecosystems. In this direction, discussions will start again in the talks on biodiversity to be held in Rome next February.

3. Who will pay for it?

The issue of financing has long been a contentious issue in international climate negotiations. Developing countries argue that rich countries should contribute more to projects and initiatives that will enable them to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels and promote clean energy sources.

At the same time, rich nations say China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and other fast-growing economies must also play their part in tackling the crisis.

Protesters against fossil fuels in Baru, Azerbaijan.

COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan marked a major breakthrough in climate finance, with an agreement aimed at increasing climate support funding to $300 billion per year by 2035.

This agreement is certainly a positive step, but this amount falls far short of the estimated $1,300 billion needed to address the climate crisis.

In 2025, further progress in financing is expected A summit will be held in Spain at the end of June. The Financing for Development Conference takes place once every 10 years and the event is seen as an opportunity to bring about fundamental changes in the international financial framework.

It will raise environmental and climate related issues and discuss possible solutions such as green taxes, carbon pricing and subsidies.

4. Determination of Legal Remedies

In December, when the International Court of Justice turned its attention to climate change, it was described as a watershed moment in the legal responsibilities of states under international law.

Vanuatu, a Pacific island nation particularly vulnerable to the climate crisis, sought an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to clarify states’ responsibilities regarding climate change and to guide any future judicial action.

Vulnerable island nations like Vanuatu often experience devastating extreme weather such as typhoons.

© UNDP/Silke von Brockhausen

Over the course of two weeks, 96 countries and 11 regional bodies participated in public hearings before the court, including Vanuatu and other Pacific island nations, as well as major economies such as China and the United States.

The International Court of Justice will deliberate for months before giving its advisory opinion on the matter. This opinion will not be binding, but it will guide future international climate law.

5. Plastic pollution

An agreement was reached during talks in Busan, South Korea, with the help of the United Nations to tackle the global problem of plastic pollution.

Some important progress was made during the November 2024 talks. It was the fifth meeting following a resolution adopted by the UN Environment General Assembly in 2022 that called for an international legally binding agreement on plastic pollution, including in the marine environment.

The agreement will require agreement on three main issues: plastic products, chemical issues, sustainable production and use, and financing.

Collection of plastic bottles for recycling in India.

Member countries are now tasked with putting aside their political differences to craft a final agreement that addresses the entire life cycle of plastics to end plastic pollution.

“It is clear that the world is still ready and demanding to stop plastic pollution,” said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).

“We need to ensure that we create an instrument that will effectively address the problem, rather than collapsing under its potential pressure. I appeal to all member states to give their full support.”