As the world heads towards overshooting 1.5°C, reaching net zero remains essential but will not be enough to bring temperatures back down. Governments must accelerate emissions cuts while investing in adaptation, carbon removal and research into the risks of geoengineering.
The 1.5°C climate threshold is expected to be reached on a sustainable scale over a few years. The United Nations Environment Programme now considers that this exceedance is widely considered inevitable with current policies and trajectories in the near future.