COP31 climate summit opens in Turkey as 1.5 C overshoot confirmed

The United Nations annual climate meeting starting today is the first to take place after confirmation that global warming will overshoot the headline limit of 1.5 °C. The aim of keeping warming within 1.5 °C above pre-industrial temperatures was set out in the 2015 Paris agreement.

COP31 opens in Antalya

Tens of thousands of delegates and observers have arrived in Antalya, Turkey, for the COP31 meeting, a 12-day event. Some scientists and climate advocates say the meeting must discuss how to deal with the overshoot, including practical ways of removing massive volumes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

UN report on overshoot

The UN Environment Programme last month acknowledged that, under all plausible emissions trajectories, the world will surpass the 1.5 °C target agreed at COP21 in Paris. Its Limiting Overshoot report is the first UN report to state explicitly that overshoot is now inevitable. It also laid out how to bring temperatures back below the 1.5 °C target this century.

In addition to slashing emissions to near-zero levels, the report confirmed the need to remove hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere this century, either using CO2 removal technologies or nature-based approaches such as reforestation. “[K]eeping 1.5 °C within reach requires climate policy to evolve to include the removal of already emitted [greenhouse gases],” the report states.

Positions on carbon dioxide removal

Clea Schumer, a research associate at the World Resources Institute, an environmental research and advocacy organization in Washington DC, says the idea to limit the “magnitude and the duration” of overshooting 1.5 °C is expected to shape discussion among parties at the COP meeting. Some language on limiting overshoot was included in the final decision of the COP30 summit last year in Belém, Brazil, but CO2 removal has mostly gone unmentioned.

Oliver Geden, a researcher at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin, says most governments “are happy that they finally don’t have to pretend any more that we will make it” to 1.5 °C. They now want to limit overshoot, “but how we actually do that, nobody is talking about”, he adds.

Steve Smith, a climate researcher at the University of Oxford, UK, says CO2 removal has sparked controversy in the past over concerns that it might distract from the need to cut emissions. He adds that it is possible that CO2 removal could move up the agenda amid discussions about the necessary return from overshoot. So far, no country has included clearly quantified CO2 removal targets in climate commitments submitted to the UN, says Smith. “We really want governments to cut emissions and set out clear plans for scaling up CO2 removal,” says Smith.

Environmental advocacy groups, such as New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), that had been skeptical of CO2 removal, have now changed their position. A report from the organisation in September called on environmentalists to support CO2 removal in the same way they supported renewable energy and electrification. “It is now time to set the stage for another—an industry that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—to contribute to the fight for climate stability,” the report says.

Calls for COP reform

Some scientists say the failure to cut emissions fast enough to avoid overshoot is a sign that there need to be reforms to COP meetings. Johan Rockström, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, says: “We need to first recognize that global policy has failed. This is a moment of self-critique.”

Rockström leads a group of scientists advising a coalition of around 60 countries working in parallel to the COP. The coalition wants the world to move faster to transition away from fossil fuels, and met for the first time in April in Santa Marta, Colombia. Ahead of COP31, he told Nature that a top priority should be to allow for decisions to be made by majority votes among parties. Currently, agreements must involve all countries coming to a consensus. In the past, this has meant that a small number of states can block decisions backed by the majority. “Overshoot gives even more impetus for the need for reform. It shows that we’ve not been able to make the progress that we need,” says Rockström.

Yamide Dagnet, a senior vice-president in Washington DC at the NRDC, says COP gatherings have had a massive impact, but their success has increasingly been measured in degrees averted.

When the Paris agreement was signed in 2015, the world looked likely to reach around 4 °C of warming this century. Under current policies, the UN Emissions Gap report found that has declined to between 2.6 and 2.8 °C of warming this century, with a small chance of reaching significantly hotter temperatures.

Ed Carr, senior scientist at the Boston, Massachusetts, office of the Stockholm Environment Institute, a non-profit research organization, says it is unrealistic to expect the COP meetings to shift the trajectory of the world’s countries on their own. “Action, in the end, has to be national,” says Carr.

Why it matters

The summit is the first UN climate meeting since the UN confirmed that overshooting 1.5 °C is inevitable under all plausible emissions trajectories. Scientists say governments must commit to carbon dioxide removal if the world is to bring temperatures back down to safer limits, yet no country has included clearly quantified CO2 removal targets in its UN climate commitments.

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Sources

• nature.com: COP31 kicks off as planet faces imminent overshoot of 1.5 °C climate target | Nature

This article was drafted with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. Company claims are reported as claims. Cover image is AI-generated.