UN climate chief and summit hosts point to energy-cost crisis and super El Niño as backdrop to Antalya talks
By Bunmi Yekini
The president-designate of the COP31 climate summit said the world will clearly overshoot the 1.5-degree warming limit, as he and other organisers called for the talks in Antalya to convert past commitments into concrete results.
“This is the first COP where it is clear beyond reasonable doubt that the world will overshoot the 1.5-degree target,” Murat Kurum said in comments issued ahead of the conference. “We will not look away, and we will not lower our ambition. The 1.5-degree target remains our compass.”
He said delegates “must start to respond to the new realities of overshoot.”
UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said no single COP can stop climate change overnight, but that each recent one had made essential progress. “COP31 in Antalya will, too,” he said.
Stiell said the talks take place against “stiff geopolitical headwinds” and an ongoing fossil-fuel cost crisis that has sent energy and transport costs spiralling. Worsening climate disasters are hurting every nation, pushing up food prices and hunger, he said, and a super El Niño is turbocharging climate impacts.
He said electrification and clean energy can cut household bills and secure energy supplies, and that finance must reach people faster with less red tape. He also pointed to cuts in methane, which he said is driving global heating at up to 80 times the rate of carbon dioxide.
Kurum said finance was central. Countries agreed in Baku to mobilise at least $300 billion a year by 2035 for developing countries, and “we do not need new targets,” he said. “We need to deliver on the ones we have, with developed countries taking the lead.”
He said COP31 was designed to usher in “the age of electricity,” adding that this year’s energy crisis had shown that “energy that you must import is energy that you do not control.” His agenda also includes a zero-waste push to cut methane from waste, and a focus on resilience for cities and coastal communities facing rising heat and seas.
Chris Bowen, president of negotiations for COP31 and Australia’s climate change and energy minister, said the summit would focus on unlocking finance and investment, cheaper household energy, faster electrification and stronger action on the ocean.
“Reaching consensus among nearly 200 countries will not be easy but cooperation remains essential,” Bowen said. “No country can solve climate change alone.”
Stiell said the Paris Agreement’s national plans and progress reports would keep the process on track, and that the conference would bring together businesses, cities, states, communities and civil society to turn “words on paper into projects on the ground.”