OECD Climate Action Monitor 2025: India's 7.5% Surge in Emissions Amid Climate Risks; Urgent Need for Ambitious 2035 Climate Targets
SDG 13: Climate Action | SDG 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure | SDG 17: Partnerships for the Goals
Institutions: Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change | NITI Aayog | Ministry of Commerce and Industry
The OECD’s Climate Action Monitor 2025 — prepared under the International Programme for Action on Climate (IPAC) — delivers a stark warning that global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached a record high of 55 Gt CO2e in 2023, marking a 1.7% increase from 2022 and leaving the world off-track for both the 1.5 degrees Celsius and 2 degrees Celsius temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. Critically, the report highlights a profound implementation gap: global climate action expanded by only 1% in 2024, continuing a significant slowdown observed since 2021. This reflects a loss of momentum in implementing effective policy responses, which can no longer be explained solely by the COVID-19 pandemic or economic crisis.
India Specific Findings
India’s emissions and climate challenges are noted within the context of OECD Partner countries:
Emissions Growth: India saw a significant estimated increase in GHG emissions of +7.5% between 2022 and 2023. This continued growth is viewed in the context of ongoing economic and demographic growth, reinforcing the need to align decarbonisation efforts with broader development priorities.
Net-Zero Target: India’s net-zero target is set for 2070. This target date (beyond 2050) contributes to the “2050 Targets Consistency Gap” when adjusted to the mid-century goal, reflecting a steeper long-term effort required.
Adaptation Challenge (Heat Stress): India faces one of the most severe climate risks due to its high population exposure combined with low adaptive capacity.
India has the highest mean population exposure to strong heat stress days among OECD and OECD partner countries, averaging over 267 days annually (2020-2024 average).
This is combined with one of the lowest GDPs per capita among the measured group, underscoring the high vulnerability and critical need for adaptation support.
Sub-National Heat: Subnational variation is significant, with changes in hot days and tropical nights ranging from a decrease of 14 days in Puducherry to an increase of 26 days in Tripura between 1981-2010 and 2020-2024, despite a national average increase of 2.5 days.
Emissions Intensity: Despite some progress, India’s GHG emissions per unit of GDP (emissions intensity) remains relatively high compared to OECD countries.
Per Capita Emissions: While rising, India’s per capita emissions remain below the global average
Global Findings:
A major concern is the lack of binding commitment behind net-zero pledges: only 17.7% of global emissions covered by national net-zero pledges are enshrined in legally binding legislation, highlighting a significant credibility challenge. Furthermore, the analysis of NDCs (2030) shows that most countries are not on track to meet them, with a combined Delivery Gap of approximately 2.5 Gt CO2e for OECD and OECD partner countries in 2023. This near-term gap is compounded by a long-term Consistency Gap, where current 2030 NDCs are misaligned with countries’ own 2050 targets, indicating even full delivery would leave them off-track.
The report also warns that climate risks are intensifying, with record heatwaves, floods, and droughts causing escalating social and economic costs, totaling over USD 328 billion and 16,000 recorded deaths in 2024 globally. Projections show global average temperatures will rise substantially across all climate scenarios, underscoring the enormous risks of delayed action.
Policy Priorities
The core policy priorities from the OECD Climate Action Monitor 2025 report:
Increasing ambition, especially through the critical 2035 NDC submission round to better align with long-term net-zero targets and legally binding commitments.
Accelerating policy implementation by closing the delivery gap with faster and stronger actions, coherent cross-sectoral policies, tailored national approaches, and effective policy mixes.
Addressing sectoral drivers and market distortions focusing on fossil fuel reliance in key sectors (electricity, heat, transport), supporting decarbonization in partner developing countries, and tackling hard-to-abate sectors like Agriculture, Forestry, and Other Land Use (AFOLU) and Waste.
Strengthening international cooperation on finance, technology transfer, and capacity-building alongside scaled-up proactive adaptation efforts and monitoring of embedded emissions in global supply chains.
The OECD report exhorts policymakers in India and other developing nations to not only meet their ambitious climate goals but also to establish concrete, legally-binding policy frameworks and sufficient investment to close the alarming implementation gap. For India, the data reinforces that policies must simultaneously manage rapid emissions growth tied to economic development (mitigation) while aggressively scaling up resilience to heat and drought, especially for vulnerable populations
Note: The Climate Action Monitor 2025 is the flagship annual publication of OECD’s International Programme for Action on Climate (IPAC), which focuses on developing country-level indicators for 52 countries and the EU-27. It provides a comprehensive, policy-focused assessment of countries’ progress towards their net-zero targets and Paris Agreement climate commitments. It emphasizes climate policy implementation gaps, emission trends, climate risks, and the need for accelerated actions.
Environment at a Glance Indicators 2025 is a broader environmental performance measurement tool that tracks key environmental trends across OECD countries. It covers multiple thematic areas including climate change, biodiversity, water resources, air quality, circular economy, and ocean resources. It aims to provide comparable data and insights to evaluate environmental performance and sustainable development progress.
Follow the full update here: OECD’s Climate Action Monitor 2025