State of Climate Action 2025

On 18 February, the Systems Change Lab and the World Resources Institute presented their new report on the State of Climate Action 2025, using 45 indicators to measure if and how well we are progressing towards the goals set out by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Paris Agreement 1.5°C goal.

The report provides the most comprehensive roadmap yet for closing the global gap in climate action to help keep the Paris Agreement goal within reach. It grades collective efforts to combat the climate crisis across key sectors. It finds that recent progress toward 1.5°C-aligned targets has largely failed to materialize at the required pace and scale and highlights where action must accelerate this decade to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, scale up carbon removal and increase climate finance.

Yet halfway through the middle of what the climate community has dubbed the “decisive decade,” urgency is fading, vested interests in maintaining the status quo are playing defense as strongly as ever, and complacency is on the rise. Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to climb, intensifying climatic changes and impacts that are already more severe and widespread than anticipated.

Some highlights from the report:

• Ten years since the Paris Agreement was signed, this report card on climate action shows that global efforts across the highest-emitting sectors fall far short of what’s needed to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C).

• While progress is heading in the right direction for most of the 45 indicators assessed, none are on track to achieve 2030 targets compatible with this temperature goal. The pace of change is promising, albeit still too slow, for 6 indicators and at well below the required speed for another 29. For 5, trends are heading in the wrong direction entirely. Data are insufficient to evaluate the remaining 5.

• Several bright spots underscore that rapid change is possible. Private climate finance has increased sharply, shifting from well off track to off track; solar is the fastest-growing power source ever; and nascent innovations like green hydrogen saw meaningful one-year gains.

• Yet such positive changes have occurred alongside far more troubling trends. For electric vehicle sales— the only indicator previously on track—growth slowed, such that progress is now off track for 2030. Efforts to reduce coal-fired power and deforestation remain well off track for multiple installments in a row. And even consistent year-on-year growth in renewables is not enough, as, with each passing year, the pace of change needed to get on track for 2030 increases.

• An enormous acceleration in effort is needed across every sector. By 2030, for example, electricity generated from unabated gas needs to be phased out seven times faster, declines in deforestation need to accelerate ninefold, and growth in total climate finance needs to increase four times faster.

SOURCE: https://systemschangelab.org/state-climate-action-2025
DOWNLOAD THE REPORT: https://systemschangelab.org/sites/default/files/2025-10/SoCA%20Report_…