Goal 13 of 17 Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
There is no country that is not experiencing the effects of climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions are more than 50 per cent higher than in 1990, and 2024 was the hottest year on record, at roughly 1.55 °C above pre-industrial levels. Long-lasting changes to the climate system threaten consequences that cannot be reversed on human timescales.
The costs are mounting. Average annual economic losses from climate-related disasters run into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and climate-related disasters accounted for 91 per cent of major disasters between 1998 and 2017, killing 1.3 million people and affecting more than four billion. The people least responsible for emissions are usually the most exposed.
International commitments have moved, unevenly: the long-standing promise of $100 billion a year in climate finance was finally met in the early 2020s, and at COP29 in 2024 countries agreed a new collective goal of at least $300 billion a year by 2035. Even so, finance is far short of what adaptation and mitigation require.
Holding warming close to 1.5 °C is still possible, but only with deep, rapid emission cuts, a fast energy transition, protection for forests and oceans, and finance that reaches the communities on the front line of the crisis.