Global equity analysis of how climate pledges stack up against the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C
New report released ahead of COP31
Militarism in the time of climate emergency.
A CIVIL SOCIETY EQUITY REVIEW OF THE GLOBAL CLIMATE REGIME, THE POLITICS OF MILITARISM AND THE IMPERATIVE OF AN EQUITABLE GLOBAL TRANSITION
Militarism in the time of climate emergency
The 2026 CSER report warns that a world increasingly organized around military competition and spheres of influence is increasingly incompatible with the level of cooperation needed to avert the worst impacts of the climate crisis.
This year's analysis connects the dots between militarism and climate action highlighting how they have highlighted how deeply the fossil fuel economy is intertwined with systems of military power, geopolitical domination, and resource competition
We also highlight how militarism is undermining climate action. Global military spending reached $2.9 trillion in 2025, diverting resources from climate finance, while military emissions—estimated at 5% of global annual greenhouse gas emissions—remain largely unaccounted for in national inventories. Meanwhile, war destroys ecosystems, weakens institutions and uproots communities, undermining climate resilience and leaving people more vulnerable to climate impacts.
Military spending, fossil fuel expansion, and increasing concentration of wealth and influence are mutually reinforcing obstacles to effective climate action. The report argues that climate stabilisation requires a transformation that extends far beyond energy systems.
It demands a fundamental shift in the distribution of responsibility, resources and political power, alongside a globally coordinated and equitable transition away from fossil fuels consumption and extraction.
Building on previous civil society equity review reports, the 2026 report includes;
An analysis of the connections between militarism and the fossil fuel economy, highlighting how deeply fossil fuel extraction and consumption are intertwined with military power, geopolitical domination and competition over resources. It examines how militarism actively undermines climate action and international cooperation
An updated analysis of the latest NDCs against their fair shares of the global mitigation effort, revealing that they are grossly inadequate to meet the 1.5C challenge and indefensible against any equitable effort sharing framework. Global north countries have failed drastically to meet their fair shares and provide climate finance to support global south countries.
Evidence that responsibility for these shortfalls is deeply unequal within countries. The richest individuals have far higher per-capita emissions and far larger mitigation gaps than national averages reflect.
The report advances a framework for a globally equitable phaseout of fossil fuel extraction and finds that extraction must be phased out by 90% in 2040. wealthy nations that are less dependent on fossil fuel extraction such as “the United States, Norway, Australia, and the UK, must end fossil fuel extraction by the very early 2030s. With those more dependent given more time.
“A framework dominated by militarism, oligarchic power, and extractive international competition cannot solve the climate crisis.”
A Decade of Equity Reviews
In the period leading up to the 2015 Paris climate summit, we came together to conduct a civil society equity review of the emissions reductions pledges that countries were putting on the table there; over 150 organizations endorsed our review. Since then we have released a series of major reports at each of the UN Climate Talks – analysing whether the climate commitments, finance pledges and fossil fuel phase out plans that Parties had promised are ambitious enough and tolerably fair.
Since 2015, over 600 distinct organizations have endorsed our reports.
Click on a report below to download.
Who we are
As social movements, environmental and development NGOs, trade unions, faith and other civil society groups, we have come together to assess the climate commitments that have been put on the table through the UN climate negotiations.
We seek to identify which countries are offering to do their fair share, which need to do more, and present recommendations on how to close the emissions gap.
Are countries Doing their
Fair Share?
This video explains the assessment methodology that is used by the annual Civil Society Equity Reviews in our assessment of whether countries climate action pledges are consistent with their fair share of global climate action.
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