As delegates meet in Belem, Brazil, for the COP30 climate summit, the world stands at a perilous moment in its fight against global warming.
About a decade after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement, the global community’s commitment to keeping temperature rise below 1.5 C above the pre-industrial levels, which is described as the line between disruption and devastation, is waning.
For countries like Pakistan, already bearing the brunt of a warming planet, the erosion of that goal could only mean the difference between survival and collapse.
The UN’s latest Emission Gap Report 2025 launched on November 4 paints a sobering picture: even if every existing climate pledge is fully carried out, the world is still heading towards a 2.3 C to 2.5 C rise by the century’s end. That would push millions in vulnerable regions of Asia, Africa and the Pacific beyond the limits of adaptation.
Yet, ambition remains uneven. Only 64 nations, which represent just 30 per cent of global emissions, have submitted new or updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) ahead of COP30. The gap between commitments and actual emissions cuts continues to widen. For Pakistan, which produces less than one percent of global greenhouse gases but ranks among the ten most climate-affected countries, this indifference by the world’s biggest polluters is an existential threat.
Pakistan’s updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC 3.0), unveiled in 2024, stands out for its scope and seriousness. It pledges a 50 per cent reduction in projected emissions by 2035 – 17 per cent through domestic efforts and another 33 per cent conditional on international support in finance and technology. Achieving this target will require an estimated $565 billion in investment.
The plan reflects a clear roadmap aligned with the Paris vision: scaling up renewable energy, restoring degraded ecosystems, promoting electric mobility and transforming agriculture through climate-smart practices. Pakistan aims to generate 62–69 per cent of its power from renewables, convert 30 per cent of transport to electric vehicles and expand reforestation under the Upscale Green Pakistan Programme – all crucial for cutting emissions and building resilience.
But ambition alone is not enough. The country’s recent experience of devastating floods in 2022 and more recently in 2025 as well as recurring and growing incidents of glacial lake outburst floods in Gilgit-Baltistan and Chitral shows how climate change is already redrawing Pakistan’s geography. Without sustained international finance and technology transfer, the country’s climate vision risks being outpaced by intensifying disasters.
The stakes at COP30 could not be higher. This year’s conference marks the first comprehensive stocktake of global progress since Paris, and the findings are grim. Global greenhouse gas emissions reached record highs in 2024, climbing 2.3 per cent in just one year. Scientists now warn that even a brief overshoot beyond 1.5 C could trigger irreversible climate tipping points from melting polar ice to collapsing rainforest ecosystems.
The responsibility for reversing course lies largely with the G20 nations, which emit 77 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gases. Yet most have failed to deliver on their pledges. As the UNEP notes, the latest round of promises has “barely moved the needle”. Even the most optimistic outlook still leaves a 40 per cent shortfall in the emission cuts needed to keep 1.5 C alive.
Pakistan’s stance at COP30 carries both urgency and moral authority. Having previously chaired the G77 plus China group and played a key role in advancing the global Loss and Damage Fund, Islamabad remains a strong voice for climate justice. The memory of 2022’s catastrophic floods still fuels its moral argument: those least responsible for warming should not bear its heaviest burdens.
Pakistan’s approach blends domestic policy with international diplomacy. It has integrated climate adaptation into national development plans, advanced carbon market mechanisms under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, and is using its platform to demand fairer access to global green finance.
At COP30, Pakistan is expected to champion three central priorities: establishing a new global climate finance framework beyond 2025 that ensures predictable and easily accessible funding for developing nations; building strong technology partnerships to advance renewable energy, improve water management, and promote climate-resilient agriculture; and promoting innovative financial mechanisms such as debt-for-climate swaps and concessional green lending to ease fiscal pressures while accelerating the transition toward a low-carbon and sustainable growth path.
Some experts now warn that surpassing 1.5 C may be inevitable. But accepting that outcome would be a moral failure. Every fraction of a degree avoided means fewer deaths, fewer destroyed homes, fewer families uprooted. For Pakistan, the difference between 1.5 C and 2 C could decide the future of its glaciers, coastlines and food security.
Keeping the Paris goal alive is now an ethical obligation and a global survival strategy. COP30 must move beyond rhetoric to real results, restoring trust in multilateral climate cooperation and reaffirming that equity and urgency must go hand in hand.
The last decade was marked by hesitation. The next must be defined by transformation. Pakistan’s NDC 3.0 shows what determined climate leadership can look like, but it cannot succeed in isolation. Without solidarity, climate justice will remain an empty slogan.
As the world gathers in Belem, the choice is stark and simple: act decisively now to preserve a livable planet, or explain to future generations why we failed to defend it.
The writer is a climate public policy analyst, research scholar and former UNFCCC fellow. He can be reached at: saleemzealgmail.com