Below is a statement from UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell on the launch of the Nationally Determined Contributions Synthesis Report, released on 28 October 2025. An audio recording of the Executive Summary reading the statement is available below.
We are in a new era of climate action and ambition. Countries are setting national climate targets - and plans to achieve them - that differ in pace and scale to any that have come before.
Ten years after we adopted the Paris Agreement, we can say simply - it is delivering real progress. But it must work much faster and fairer, and that acceleration must start now.
The scale and severity of the climate crisis has never been clearer. Brutal climate-driven droughts, floods, storms and wildfires are hitting every nation harder each year, wrecking millions of lives and vital infrastructure, taking shreds off GDP and pushing up prices.
At the same time, the opportunities in climate action are monumental.
The rewards for those taking strong climate actions are measured in millions of new jobs and trillions in new investment. As the global shift to clean energy continues to scale, the dividends to follow will be far greater still, as climate action emerges as the economic growth and jobs engine of the 21st century.
Market logic dictates that this clean energy transition will continue at great scale and pace. But an equitable global transition - where every country benefits from clean energy and climate resilience - requires clear policies and plans, across every country and every sector, and more support for many nations, especially those that did least to cause this global crisis.
Today's NDC Synthesis Report provides valuable new data, both about progress being made and the major challenges still remaining, although this data is limited to those national climate plans formally submitted by September 30.
Starting with the former:
This new generation of NDCs show a step-change in terms of quality, credibility and economic breadth.
NDCs are increasingly responding to the Global Stocktake, with 88% of countries saying their NDC was informed by the outcomes of the GST, and 81% indicating specifically how this was the case.
Countries are increasingly taking a whole-of-economy, whole-of-society approach, with 89% containing economy-wide targets.
Adaptation and resilience are becoming increasingly important. Almost three-quarters (73%) of new NDCs include adaptation components.
Parties - especially from Small Island Developing States - are also increasingly integrating Loss and Damage as a core component of their NDCs.
Significant progress has also been made on integrating into NDCs elements on gender, stakeholder and youth engagement, just-transitions, the roles of forests and oceans, and on Article 6, carbon markets.
NDCs submitted are broadly consistent with a linear trajectory from 2030 targets to long-term net zero targets.
While we caution against drawing global conclusions from this report, it still contains some green shoots of good news: countries are making progress, and laying out clear stepping stones towards net-zero emissions.
We also know that change is not linear and that some countries have a history of overdelivering.
We are equally mindful that the data set in today's report provides quite a limited picture, as the NDCs it synthesizes represent around one-third of global emissions.
In order to provide a wider picture of global progress ahead of COP30, we have done some additional calculations which also capture new NDCs or targets submitted or announced up to publication of this report, and including at the Secretary-General's Climate Summit in New York.
This wider picture, though still incomplete, shows global emissions falling by around 10% by 2035.
Through UN-convened climate cooperation and national efforts, humanity is now clearly bending the emissions curve downwards for the first time, although still not nearly fast enough.
So while the direction of travel is improving every year, we have a serious need for more speed, and for helping more countries take stronger climate actions.
But this is why the Paris Agreement has a ratchet mechanism, to keep raising climate ambition, until collectively we are on track to avoid the worst climate impacts by limiting warming to 1.5°C this century, as science demands.
The science is equally clear that temperatures absolutely can and must be brought back down to 1.5°C as quickly as possible after any temporary overshoot, by substantially stepping up the pace on all fronts.
That acceleration must start now. Much more support will be needed for many, especially those who did least to cause this global crisis.
But we are not starting from nothing. Indeed we should draw encouragement and impetus from vast movement in the real economy, particularly the huge investment flows into clean energy in nearly all major economies.
From recent data, for example, showing renewables surpassed coal as the world's largest energy source this year.
From recent history, showing how quickly things can change, and change faster.
The boom in clean energy, infrastructure, and the efficient, data-driven, innovative technologies needed to connect them to our daily lives, stands to surpass anything we've seen before.
So the broader picture is of a world which is already paying a huge price from global heating, but which is also nearing positive economic tipping points - towards a safer, healthier, wealthier world, powered by clean energy and climate resilience.
So it's now for COP30 and for the world to respond and show how we are going to speed up. It must do three things:
It must send a clear signal: nations are still fully on board for climate cooperation, because it works but must work faster, and that means achieving concrete and strong outcomes on all key issues.
It must accelerate implementation across all sectors of all economies, and all parts of the Paris Agreement.
And it must connect climate action to people's lives, with the goal of ensuring everyone shares in its vast benefits.
We are still in the race, but to ensure a livable planet for all eight billion people today, we must urgently pick up the pace, at COP30 and every year thereafter.
