Fiona Harvey
World leaders will hold sway over Cop again today, as they swing through a series of bilateral meetings and roundtables on subjects from methane to forest finance. Prime minister Andy Burnham of the UK has arrived, and is set to follow up Ed Miliband’s warnings on the climate threat to national security with the appointment of a first climate security adviser. He will grab a bilateral with President Lula of Brazil while in town, before departing – with most other European leaders – to the Dublin conference on AI.
But while the leaders carry on their photo opportunities, and their entourages clog up the central halls with thickets of security guards, in the background negotiators are quietly working their way through the reams of text that are the main output of the annual “conference of the parties”.
The agenda for Cop31 was agreed without much delay on Monday, but one item on which there was no agreement was the status of any “cover decision” from this year’s meeting.
Most Cops produce a cover decision, which is a handy way of gathering together some of the disparate threads of discussion that take place across these halls. Few Cop presidents try to get by without one – at Cop29, in Azerbaijan in 2024, the presidential decision to do without angered many parties.
The cover decision has formal status within Cops – it is negotiated, and gavelled through at the end, so the resolutions it contains are binding and countries can be held to them later. But unlike the other formal negotiating streams, which focus clearly on a single topic, the cover decision is a mixed bag, containing a variety of elements that can range from the decorative, such as thanks to parties and organisations the negotiators wish to acknowledge, or nods to issues such as gender equality and inclusion, and recognition of important issues that do not have a home elsewhere in the negotiations, such as the health impacts of the climate crisis, or concerns about the state of the oceans.
But the cover decision can also be where key elements of progress are made. It was a cover decision at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 that yielded the resolution to “phase down” coal; and one at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023 where the key pledge to “transition away from fossil fuels” was nestled among reams of other text.
This year, Australia has left open the option of having a cover decision, but some key groups appear opposed, including the Arab Group, Russia and the Like-Minded Developing Countries, a grouping usually heavily influenced by Saudi Arabia, with India and sometimes China as members.
The items that could be in a cover decision this year include the pledge to derive 35% of final energy from electricity by 2035; recognition of the Brazilian roadmap to “transition away from fossil fuels”; the overshoot of the 1.5C temperature rise limit; the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and adaptation finance for poor countries.
Key events
Greta Thunberg tells the press conference: “We are heading towards the future of more genocides and more ecocides. The situation could not be less under control – the planet is not dying, it is being killed and we know by who.”
“No one is coming to our rescue.”
Dalton Emani Makamau Tagelagi, prime minister of Niue, has said conflicts and wars far from their shores have become a fuel crisis at home, and called to “end that dependence as fast as we can”. He repeated calls to keep overshoot of the 1.5C target as “low, small and short”, and then bring temperatures back down.
Mohammad Usrof, Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy (PICS), is describing the mobilisations across docks around the world to stop oil shipments: “Not only mobilisations against the genocide, but also mobilisations against climate change.”
Celine Isimbi, Rwanda-DRC environmental storyteller and climate justice advocate – she calls out Canada, UK, the US for the environmental devastation they wreak on developing countries.
“The very states responsible for these crimes can come into these meetings and claim climate progress… the fire is catching, in fact the fire has already caught, and if we are burning, you will burn with us.”
In another room, Greta Thunberg is now speaking along with Sagar Dakar, Nepalese MP, Mohammad Usrof, Palestinian Institute for Climate Strategy (PICS), Rikki Dank, Gudanji and Wakaya Traditional Owner taking the Australian Government to the UN Human Rights Committee on fossil fuel exports, and Celine Isimbi, Rwanda-DRC environmental storyteller and climate justice advocate.
We’ve just heard from Mian Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan, who described the devastating floods four years ago that killed more than 1,700 people and resulted in economic losses of tens of billions of dollars. He’s added to calls for better climate finance and asked success to be measured by the families we protect.
“Climate change knows no borders. No nation can face it alone. Solidarity must mean reaction.”
The first reactions to Andy Burnham’s speech from green groups are coming in.
Ami McCarthy, Greenpeace UK head of politics, said “there are so many elephants in the room you’d think it’s a zoo.”
“Andy Burnham’s COP speech hit the right notes, but the noises off stage about a massive new oilfield and laxer rules on electric cars almost drowned him out,” they said. “Appointing the world’s first climate security envoy is a welcome move, but approving Rosebank would only increase the climate threat level to communities in Britain and around the world. Supporting an ambitious global electrification goal is the right thing to do, but the gesture feels hollow without signing up to the pledge and with the cabinet discussing watering down our own EV targets back home.”
Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, said the announcements “give a veneer of climate action but distract from what the UK really needs to bring to the table”.
“The prime minister’s first climate talks should be an opportunity to demonstrate he means business,” he said. “But if this is all the UK has to offer, then the questions piling in about his climate credibility are more than justified. Committing to real, grant-based climate finance, rejecting the Rosebank oilfield and saying no to a third runway at Heathrow are just some of the ways he can put the UK on track.”
Bharrat Jagdeo, vice-president of Guyana, has also called for much faster action, from cutting fossil fuels to electrifying the economy. “After 31 Cops we must judge success not by the agreements we reach but by whether countries can deliver on them.”
Zack Polanski, leader of the Green party in the UK, criticised Andy Burnham’s Cop31 speech on Radio 4’s Today programme. Saying he was “not at all reassured” by the prime minister’s words, he described it as a “bizarre” speech.
Polanski said climate action is about what you do, not what you say, referring to the recent decision by the energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, to allow drilling in the Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea. It’s “one step forwards, two steps back”, Polanski said.
Meanwhile, in a different area of the building, the press is gathering in anticipation of a press conference from Greta Thunberg – probably the best known climate activist in the world, although her focus has shifted in recent years to include Gaza and other places facing war and human rights abuses.
The press conference with Frontline Communities will focus on demanding climate justice and accountability. It is in quite a small room, my colleagues say.
Alix Sebastien Pillay, vice-president of Seychelles, has echoed other leaders in describing climate breakdown as a national security threat – and gone a step further, adding that “our very survival” is at stake. He’s joined the chorus of voices calling for better climate finance – more accessible, more predictable and more equitable. “Climate recovery must not come at the expense of our development, our push vulnerable nations further into unsustainable debt.”
We’ve just heard from Delcy Rodríguez Gómez, Acting President of Venezuela. She has defended her country’s right to expand fossil fuel infrastructure and said there is not an inevitable contradiction between energy development and environmental protection. “We will defend our sovereign right to responsibly empower our oil industry.”
She called on developed countries to uphold their financial commitments, describing the gap between promises and action as “an urgency that needs to be addressed.”
First up is Taneti Maamau, President of Kiribati, who was scheduled to speak yesterday. He’s calling to phase out fossil fuels and speed up global electrification, underscoring what failure means for our shared humanity. “Every delay puts lives at risk. I urge this summit to act boldly so Cop31 is remembered for moral clarity, unity and decisive action.”
Earth on track for ‘irrecoverable overshoot’ of 1.5C target, scientists find
Oliver Milman
The world is heading for an “irrecoverable overshoot” of global temperature thresholds that will plunge billions of people into disastrous climate impacts because governments have stalled for so long to cut planet-heating emissions, analysis has found.
Under current policies, the planet will heat up by 2.7C on average by the end of the century compared with preindustrial times, the report by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) found. This is up slightly from a prediction of 2.6C in the group’s analysis conducted last year.
This level of warming smashes the 1.5C threshold that was agreed by countries a decade ago but is set to be breached in just a few years. Scientists have warned that beyond this point already harmful storms, droughts, heatwaves, flooding and other impacts will become intolerable for parts of the world and potentially trigger runaway climate change that won’t be contained.
Countries, minus the US, are gathered in the Turkish city of Antalya for UN climate talks that have centred on the looming “overshoot” of the temperature target. This reality should compel governments to act quickly to phase out use of the fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, said on Tuesday.
If countries did act decisively to slash emissions then the future temperature projections would become less daunting, the CAT report states. However, in even the most optimistic scenario – where all pledges, targets and other long-term promises made by countries were fulfilled – the world would still heat up by 1.9C by the end of the century.
Such targets have been routinely flouted by the countries that have made them, however. This means leaders face a crunch moment, experts say.
“The stark choice for governments is to either continue to support the fossil fuel industry, which would consign humanity to insurmountable economic damages, rising mortality from heat and climate-driven diseases and disasters that they are unable to adapt to – or pivot to the solutions which are available and cheaper than ever,” says Bill Hare, chief executive of CAT partner organisation Climate Analytics.
“We have the right to have our heads above water.” That is one of the many powerful lines in a video presentation we’ve just seen from Pacific Islands, laying out the stakes of climate breakdown and the need for action. Two of the small island nations, Fiji and Tuvalu, hosted the pre-Cop summit in October.
We’re now about to return to the statements from national leaders, and the chair is reminding leaders (again) to stick to time.
“The world will breach the 1.5c target” UK prime minister tells summit
“Britain is back and ready to play its full part,” Andy Burnham has said at the opening of today’s summit.
The UK prime minister celebrated domestic clean energy projects including windfarms and electrified steel factories, stressed the need to make the transition affordable, and announced the UK’s first special representative for climate security, Madeleine Alessandri.
“The climate crisis is not a distant threat, it is upon us now, devastating lives and livelihoods everywhere,” he said. Pointing to the effects of two global wars on energy prices, he added that the “common thread running through all of this is fossil fuels.”
Burnham repeated the UK’s commitment to meeting its 2050 net zero emissions target and said he would work with all of partners to reach theirs.
“In that spirit, I am proud to support this Cop’s focus on electrification,” he said. “If we depend on energy we do not control, we depend on prices we cannot control. The shift to clean energy is the only route to energy security.
He called on industry to “play their part” in helping people on all incomes make the green transition. He highlighted progress in bringing the price of clean technologies down for consumers.
“If you drive a new electric car today in the UK, it costs less than a petrol equivalent. Get on the right tariff and a heat pump can be cheaper to run than a gas boiler.”
But he also warned that some of the fundamentals had worsened.
“The consensus we once enjoyed on science is gone,” said Burnham. “And the reality is the world will breach the 1.5C target.”
British PM due to address the climate summit
Welcome back to the Cop31 liveblog, I’m Ajit Niranjan and I’ll be taking you through our fourth day of the climate change summit in Turkey.
British prime minister Andy Burnham is due to address the summit this morning. Overnight the UK government announced that it would be appointing the world’s first special representative for climate security, a new role designed to advise the government on national security risks from the climate crisis.
Burnham will tell the key climate talks: “We should all recognise the summer was not normal. The climate crisis is upon all of us now. We saw that with the wildfires that devastated lives and livelihoods everywhere.”
“The message I carry here, in my first Cop as prime minister, is that the UK remains determined to reach net zero by 2050 and to work with our partners to build a clean energy future. The world has changed. The consensus we once enjoyed on science and climate action has broken down.
“We will not stand by, and that’s why I’ve pledged a new era of British leadership over the next decade.”
We’ll be following his speech, those of the other leaders (the ones that have showed up, at least, Germany and France are among the many no-shows this year), and everything else happening at the talks today.
Fiona Harvey
World leaders will hold sway over Cop again today, as they swing through a series of bilateral meetings and roundtables on subjects from methane to forest finance. Prime minister Andy Burnham of the UK has arrived, and is set to follow up Ed Miliband’s warnings on the climate threat to national security with the appointment of a first climate security adviser. He will grab a bilateral with President Lula of Brazil while in town, before departing – with most other European leaders – to the Dublin conference on AI.
But while the leaders carry on their photo opportunities, and their entourages clog up the central halls with thickets of security guards, in the background negotiators are quietly working their way through the reams of text that are the main output of the annual “conference of the parties”.
The agenda for Cop31 was agreed without much delay on Monday, but one item on which there was no agreement was the status of any “cover decision” from this year’s meeting.
Most Cops produce a cover decision, which is a handy way of gathering together some of the disparate threads of discussion that take place across these halls. Few Cop presidents try to get by without one – at Cop29, in Azerbaijan in 2024, the presidential decision to do without angered many parties.
The cover decision has formal status within Cops – it is negotiated, and gavelled through at the end, so the resolutions it contains are binding and countries can be held to them later. But unlike the other formal negotiating streams, which focus clearly on a single topic, the cover decision is a mixed bag, containing a variety of elements that can range from the decorative, such as thanks to parties and organisations the negotiators wish to acknowledge, or nods to issues such as gender equality and inclusion, and recognition of important issues that do not have a home elsewhere in the negotiations, such as the health impacts of the climate crisis, or concerns about the state of the oceans.
But the cover decision can also be where key elements of progress are made. It was a cover decision at Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 that yielded the resolution to “phase down” coal; and one at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023 where the key pledge to “transition away from fossil fuels” was nestled among reams of other text.
This year, Australia has left open the option of having a cover decision, but some key groups appear opposed, including the Arab Group, Russia and the Like-Minded Developing Countries, a grouping usually heavily influenced by Saudi Arabia, with India and sometimes China as members.
The items that could be in a cover decision this year include the pledge to derive 35% of final energy from electricity by 2035; recognition of the Brazilian roadmap to “transition away from fossil fuels”; the overshoot of the 1.5C temperature rise limit; the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and adaptation finance for poor countries.
