World leaders will soon gather in Belem, Brazil, for the UN COP30 climate summit, ready to negotiate everything from the future of tropical forests to the global energy transition.
While Donald Trump’s return to the presidency has seen the United States withdraw from international climate commitments, countries are under pressure to ramp up action as the World Meteorological Organization warns of more record temperatures.
The world is currently falling “woefully short across the board” on efforts to limit global warming, according to a new report by the global research group Systems Change Lab.
The report said countries need to act - be it phasing out coal or reducing deforestation - much more quickly.
But there are also positives, it said, such as an increase in private climate finance to a record $1.3 trillion in 2023.
Here’s what you need to know about efforts underway to tackle climate change:
What are countries doing about climate change?
Adopted in 2015, the Paris Agreement gave countries a goal: to limit global average temperature rises to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times while “pursuing efforts” for a tougher ceiling of 1.5°C (2.7°F).
Instead, the world is set to warm up by as much as 3.1°C (5.6°F), risking devastating fallout on people and nature, according to the UN Emissions Gap report released last year.
Countries are cutting emissions in myriad ways.
For example, renewable energy overtook coal in global energy systems for the first time this year, according to a recent report from the think tank Ember Energy.
But scientists say more must be done and faster, especially the phase-out of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.
Has there been progress?
Yes. Future temperature rises are expected to be less extreme thanks to commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - providing they are implemented - according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In 2010, global temperature rises were forecast to be 3.7°C to 4.8°C in 2100 above pre-industrial times, but that projected range had dipped to 2.4°C to 2.6°C due to new pledges made in 2022, the IPCC found.
This, however, is still well above the 1.5°C target that scientists say is a crucial point when impacts from heatwaves to droughts to floods become ever more frequent and severe.
The IPCC says meeting the 1.5°C goal would require cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent by 2030 from 2019 levels.
To get on track demands dramatic action, from halting deforestation to transforming how humans travel, work and eat - be it reducing plane travel or eating less meat, experts say.
Is extreme weather normal now?
Scientists are becoming increasingly adept at joining the dots between extreme weather events and climate change.
Europe’s 2025 summer heatwave was intensified by climate change, for example, driving an estimated 16,500 additional deaths, according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Imperial College London.
The United Nations Environment Programme estimates the annual global cost for vulnerable nations to adapt to an ever more extreme climate is US$215 billion to US$387 billion a year up to 2030 - several times more than the US$22 billion donated by rich countries in 2021 and the US$28 billion in 2022.
Will we ever solve the climate crisis?
The window of opportunity is narrowing to cut greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to slow the planet’s warming and stay within the 1.5°C limit, scientists and UN officials say.
Breaching it could lead to points of no return - such as the mass death of tropical coral reefs - and these make-or-break moments are coming a lot sooner than expected, according to a report called Global Tipping Points by 160 global researchers.
But there are positives, too.
Given protection, forests, peatlands and other ecosystems can help absorb human-caused carbon dioxide emissions.
Solutions to the crisis exist but require unprecedented changes at a new scale and pace, the IPCC says.
And even if global warming does exceed 1.5°C in coming years, it adds, every fraction of a degree impacts the level of harm and makes it easier to pull temperatures back to safer levels.
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