Paris Agreement committee snubbed over missing NDC climate plans

At least fifty countries have yet to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) climate plan to the United Nations, even though the latest set of plans was due in 2025 – and among them, around half have failed to provide information on why they have not met the deadline. More than a year past an initial deadline of February 2025, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) met this March and said 55 countries had yet to communicate an NDC to the UN climate body. According to the UN’s registry, two have since submitted their plans. A key requirement of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement is that governments publish a more ambitious NDC every five years, setting targets to reduce their planet-heating emissions and outlining their policies to adapt to climate change, in order to meet the accord’s goals on limiting global warming and protecting people from its effects. The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in 2025. After India’s recent submission, the countries yet to publish their new NDCs are mostly poorer and smaller nations, with few emissions. The biggest emitters in the group are Egypt, Vietnam, Argentina and the Philippines. The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement, although the US submitted a 2035 NDC under the Biden administration before Donald Trump pulled the US out of the UN climate accords. Some nations have argued that they cannot put together an NDC – which requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy – because of exceptional circumstances. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC committee, seen by Climate Home News, says that the country’s civil war has led to the suspension of its NDC preparation. No information from some nations But others have failed to communicate with the PAICC, which is tasked with encouraging gover