COP31 organisers plan text for 1.5C climate push

COP31 organisers Australia and Turkey said they will prepare a presidency-led decision for countries to adopt at next month's UN climate summit in Antalya, aiming to push for stronger action to keep the 1.5C warming goal within reach.

The plan was announced as a pre-COP meeting in Fiji and Tuvalu wrapped up on October 8. Organisers said the prepared text would seek to set a firmer agenda before countries vote, rather than leaving all issues to the long negotiations that often dominate COP meetings.

Australian climate minister Chris Bowen said a presidency-led decision gave COP31 the best chance of a strong and ambitious outcome. He said countries needed to follow the science to keep 1.5C within reach, while acknowledging scientific evidence that the threshold will be overshot.

The organisers said the decision would focus on binding agreements, including one on electrification, replacing technologies that burn fossil fuels directly with electric alternatives.

Pacific leaders used the pre-COP meeting to press for oceans, climate finance and the 1.5C goal to be high on the agenda. Tuvalu, a Pacific island nation of 10,600 people, is already planning for possible population relocation if rising seas consume the country.

Greenpeace Australia Pacific's head of Pacific, Shiva Gounden, said the outcomes of the week's talks were far short of the scale of need and called for action on fossil fuel expansion.

An August UN report said sea levels are rising at a record pace, driven by warming oceans and glacier melt, and that up to 1.2 billion people could be displaced by 2050. It said Pacific island countries are experiencing sea level rise at twice the global average.