Nations at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, are split over the future of the 1.5C goal, the limit on global warming that has guided climate action for a decade. The talks have reached their midway point, and negotiators still cannot agree on whether the goal should stay, even after the United Nations said in September that crossing it is now imminent and unavoidable.
For ten years, 1.5C has been the north star of climate action. It is the line nations promised to hold to avoid the worst effects of a warming planet. Now, with the world already about 1.4C warmer than in pre-industrial times, that line is under threat — and so is the shared promise behind it.
What 1.5C means — and why it matters
Under the Paris Agreement, nearly 200 nations agreed to keep warming “well below” 2C while trying to limit it to 1.5C. As the science became clearer, the lower limit took on more urgency. Beyond 1.5C, scientists say the risks rise sharply: more severe floods and heatwaves, and changes that cannot be undone, such as the permanent loss of coral reefs.
For small island nations, the number is not abstract. Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr, whose Pacific island nation is threatened by rising seas, told world leaders in Antalya that 1.5C was not “an abstract target”. “It is an existential threat to our food, our economies and sovereignty,” he said.
Climate activists made the same point outside the summit. On 14 November, protesters gathered near the National Ascension Monument in Antalya to demand that leaders keep the goal alive.
Who wants to keep the goal — and who wants to drop it
Some countries want the final COP31 deal to state clearly that 1.5C remains the “right goal”, according to a summary of negotiating positions released by Australia, which is chairing the talks. There is also a push for language about returning to 1.5C “as soon as possible”, and a statement that global temperatures are “still able” to be brought back down once the threshold is crossed.
But others see a chance to drop the goal altogether. Several observers of the closed-door talks told AFP that this includes the Arab Group and the Like-Minded Developing Countries, two negotiating blocs of emerging economies that include Saudi Arabia and India. One senior delegate from a western nation warned of a “potential backsliding” in climate action if those efforts succeed at COP31.
Jasper Inventor, head of Greenpeace’s delegation in Antalya, said some developing nations worried that “a stronger reference” to 1.5C could mean greater pressure to cut emissions without extra financial help. The fight over money has run through the whole summit: our earlier report, COP31: Guterres Warns ‘Make or Bake’ as Finance Falls 70%, covered the UN chief’s warning that climate finance is falling far short of what is needed.
Can warming be brought back down?
In September, the UN Environment Programme published a first-of-its-kind study into “overshoot” scenarios, looking at how the world might bring global temperatures back down to 1.5C by 2100 once the threshold is breached. At COP31, outgoing UN chief Antonio Guterres, who spent his decade in office rallying nations behind 1.5C, said any overshoot must be “as small as possible for as short a time as possible”.
But scientists warn that reversing warming is far from certain. Pierre Friedlingstein, a climate scientist from the University of Exeter and lead author of the benchmark Global Carbon Budget study, said getting back to 1.5C would need emissions to fall fast while carbon is removed from the air through natural means, such as planting trees and restoring wetlands, or through new technologies.
“A massive roll-out of these new technologies” would be needed at enormous scale over decades, Friedlingstein told AFP. “It is not something I would call utopian but it is certainly extremely ambitious,” he said.
What happens next
Negotiators in Antalya now have the second half of the summit to find wording that all sides can accept. The choice is stark: keep 1.5C as a live goal and face the hard work of cutting emissions and paying for it, or quietly let it go and accept a hotter world.
For the countries on the frontline of the climate crisis, that is not a choice at all. As President Whipps told the summit, for them the 1.5C limit is about survival — of their food, their economies and their sovereignty.
Sources: Agence France-Presse via Philstar; The Hindu.
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