Need for an Ambition Loop to accelerate climate change mitigation

In the Global Risks Report 2023, respondents to the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Perception Survey identify “failure to mitigate climate change” as the foremost long-term threat globally. It is deemed the risk with the potential for the most severe impacts over the next decade.

Parallely – global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, at a time when they need to be rapidly falling. Although COVID-19 lockdowns led to a temporary global decline in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, upward trends quickly resumed. In June 2023, a study in the journal Earth System Science Data warned that the world is swiftly depleting its “carbon budget” — the allowable amount of carbon dioxide emissions to stay within the critical threshold of 1.5°C above pre-industrial temperatures.