Only ten countries have submitted their new climate targets on time to the UN's climate framework, UNFCCC, according to the climate monitoring initiative Climate Action Tracker (CAT) on Monday.
The ten countries which met their deadlines are the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Switzerland, the United States, Uruguay, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Andorra, Ecuador and Saint Lucia.
However, according to CAT, the updated plans are far from what is needed to limit global temperature increase to 1.5°C, as outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement.
Major emitters such as China, the European Union (including Belgium), and India have yet to submit more ambitious reduction targets, noted CAT.
Last week, UN climate chief Simon Stiell expressed willingness to give the 195 signatories to the Paris Climate Agreement some extra time to develop their new National Determined Contributions (NDCs). NDCs set out the efforts of individual countries to reduce national emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate change.
He described these as "one of the most important policy documents governments will produce this century." Stiell called for the plans to be made public by September at the latest.
CAT is an independent scientific project that tracks climate actions from governments and measures them against the Paris Agreement.
