15 of 195 Parties to Paris Agreement Meet Deadline to Communicate New NDCs

Only 15 of the 195 parties to the Paris Agreement on climate change met the 10 February 2025 deadline to communicate to the UNFCCC Secretariat their 2035 climate plans. As of 19 February, a total of 17 countries have submitted their nationally determined contributions (NDCs).

Under the Paris Agreement, countries committed themselves to submit NDCs every five years. They also agreed to conduct a five-yearly Global Stocktake (GST) to assess their progress towards meeting the Paris Agreement goal of keeping “the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.”

Each successive NDC must represent a progression beyond each party’s current NDC and reflect the highest possible ambition, in line with common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and different national circumstances. The goal is to ratchet up aggregate and individual ambition over time.

Andorra, Botswana, Brazil, Ecuador, Lesotho, the Marshall Islands, New Zealand, Saint Lucia, Singapore, Switzerland, the UK, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Uruguay, the US, and Zimbabwe communicated their new NDCs before 10 February. Canada and Japan submitted theirs days after the deadline.

According to Carbon Brief, countries that missed the deadline account for 83% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and nearly 80% of the world’s economy. This estimate is likely optimistic as since the US communicated its NDC in December 2024, the new administration has indicated it will withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement.

Speaking on 6 February, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiellrevealed that “[t]he vast majority of countries have indicated they will submit new plans this year,” noting that “taking a bit more time to ensure these plans are first-rate makes sense.” He said countries need to submit their NDCs by September at the latest, for them to be included in the NDC Synthesis Report to be released ahead of the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 30).

In an October 2024 statement, Stiell described the combined impact of national climate pledges as reflected in the 2024 NDC synthesis report as “miles short of what’s needed” to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.

According to the decision on the first GST, adopted at the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 28) in Dubai, UAE, the next round of NDCs, with an end date of 2035, is due “at least 9 to 12 months in advance of the seventh session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (November 2025) with a view to facilitating the clarity, transparency and understanding of these contributions.”

UNFCCC COP 30 will take place in Belém, Brazil, from 10-21 November 2025. Ambassador André Corrêa do Lago, Brazil’s Secretary for Climate, Energy, and Environment, has been appointed as President-Designate.