Nations grapple with the loss of the 1.5°C target at the COP31 climate summit
Halfway through COP31 in Antalya, the world has stopped pretending the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious limit can still be held; and cannot agree on what replaces it.
Key points
- COP31, the 31st UN climate conference, runs from 9 to 20 November 2026 in Antalya, Türkiye, co-chaired by Türkiye and Australia, with 102 heads of state and government expected. Times Kuwait / ANKA, 10–11 Nov 2026
- The world has already warmed about 1.4°C above pre-industrial times, and the UN declared in September that crossing 1.5°C, the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious threshold, was imminent and unavoidable. The Hindu (AFP), 15 Nov 2026
- UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2026, published in October, concluded that limiting warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot is no longer possible; its lowest-overshoot pathway still peaks at 1.7–1.8°C. UNEP, Oct 2026
- The Climate Action Tracker, reporting at COP31, puts current policies on course for 2.7°C of warming by 2100; even full delivery of every national pledge would still leave the world 1.9°C warmer. CNA / AP, 13 Nov 2026
- UN Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters at COP31 on 13 November that an overshoot of 1.5°C is now inevitable, and that it must be kept ‘as small as possible for as short a time as possible’. The Hindu (AFP) / QNC News, 13–15 Nov 2026
Three readings of the same result
Same facts, different frames. Each reading names its outlets and what it emphasizes.
The story tests whether the Paris framework can survive its first admitted failure.
Politico led with leaders defending the goal despite the UN forecast: Ursula von der Leyen told the summit that countries were on course to overshoot and should intensify their efforts.
Key detail AP framed the same facts around the stall: collective action has effectively stood still for five years.
The emphasis falls on the record and the arithmetic.
Singapore’s CNA carried the Tracker’s warning that current policies point to 2.7°C by 2100, while the Economic Times reported that limiting the overshoot and speeding up electrification had emerged as the summit’s top priorities.
Key detail Nepal and Bhutan jointly proposed an agenda item on “1.5°C Warming in Mountains”.
The story is told from the countries that will pay first.
Times Kuwait, reporting the opening, stressed the financing fight, with developing nations seeking the money to adapt and to move away from fossil fuels.
Key detail Al Jazeera’s coverage led with Türkiye’s electrification drive; the 35-by-35 pledge.
Sources by lens: 1 West, 3 East, 2 Global South. See every source
The story
What changed in Antalya; and why the 1.5°C question now dominates the talks
Midway through COP31 in Antalya, the question is no longer how to hold the 1.5°C limit; it is whether to keep pretending it can be held at all. The UN climate summit, which runs from 9 to 20 November, is the first since the United Nations said the world’s most ambitious temperature goal would be missed. The planet has already warmed about 1.4°C above pre-industrial times; in September the UN declared crossing 1.5°C imminent and unavoidable.
The split is now visible in the negotiating rooms. On one side, the frontline countries are clinging to the goal. Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr told leaders in Antalya that 1.5°C was not “an abstract target”. “It is an existential threat to our food, our economies and sovereignty,” he said. On the other, observers of the closed-door talks told AFP the Arab Group and the Like-Minded Developing Countries, blocs including Saudi Arabia and India, see an opening to jettison the target. A senior Western delegate warned of a “potential backsliding” if they succeed. Between them sits the presidency: Australia, chairing the talks, circulated a summary in which some countries want the final deal to affirm that 1.5°C remains the “right goal”. Guterres said at his final COP press conference on 13 November that any overshoot must be “as small as possible for as short a time as possible”.
What the numbers actually say about 1.5°C
The science is no longer contested in Antalya, only what to do with it. UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2026 concluded that limiting warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot is no longer possible. The UN secretariat’s synthesis puts full delivery of current pledges at about 2.6°C this century; the Climate Action Tracker puts current policies at 2.7°C by 2100, up from 2.6°C a year ago. Even if every pledge were fully implemented, the world would still warm by 1.9°C.
The timetable has compressed: Copernicus now expects the long-term average to cross 1.5°C as early as 2029, more than fifteen years sooner than projected in 2015. Fossil CO2 emissions hit a record 38.1 gigatonnes in 2025. The 154 countries with updated plans cover 70% of global emissions, yet fully implemented, those plans would leave 2035 emissions just 6% to 9% below 2019 levels; where 1.5°C pathways required a cut of around 60%. The money is as far off as the temperature: the COP29 deal promises finance rising to $300 billion a year by 2035, but UNEP estimates developing countries will need about $305 billion a year for adaptation alone by 2035, against $28.2–31.7 billion in 2024.
Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr told leaders in Antalya that 1.5°C was not “an abstract target”.
Which sentences will survive the second week?
Nobody in Antalya can yet say what the final text will say about 1.5°C. The cover decision, the presidency-led text that can carry issues beyond the formal agenda, is still being assembled, with a draft expected early next week. Whether it affirms 1.5°C as the “right goal”, promises a return, or drops the reference is the central unknown.
The feasibility question is equally open. In September, UNEP published a first-of-its-kind study of “overshoot” scenarios, exploring how temperatures might return to 1.5°C by 2100. But the route back depends on removing carbon at a scale that does not yet exist. Pierre Friedlingstein, who leads the Global Carbon Budget study, told AFP that “a massive roll-out of these new technologies” would be needed over decades: “It is not something I would call utopian but it is certainly extremely ambitious.” Also unclear is what the summit will deliver on the issues orbiting the target: the Mitigation Work Programme’s mandate expires at the end of 2026, and some nations have urged a rejection of “grey literature”.
Why a number that is already lost still matters
For a decade, 1.5°C has been the north star of climate action. Under the Paris Agreement, nearly 200 nations agreed to keep warming “well below” 2°C while pursuing 1.5°C. As evidence mounted, the lower threshold took on ever greater urgency: beyond it, risks rise sharply; floods, heatwaves, and irreversible changes such as the permanent loss of coral reefs.
That is why the argument in Antalya is not really about a number. It is about whether the framework that organised a decade of climate politics survives contact with its own failure. Keeping the target while missing it risks turning the Paris Agreement’s central promise into a fiction. Dropping it risks something else: one European negotiator warned that moving to another figure, such as 1.8°C, would be a “slippery slope”, and many scientists fear it would weaken ambition further. For the countries that did least to cause the warming, the stakes are not abstract: island nations are already losing land to rising seas, and the Marshall Islands’ President Hilda Heine urged leaders to keep fighting for the goal. The year’s disasters, deadly floods in Nepal, heatwaves across Europe, were cited by the UN climate chief, Simon Stiell, at the opening.
The target has two lives; and only one of them is scientific
The 1.5°C goal has always lived two lives. As science, it is a threshold; a long-term average above pre-industrial temperatures, beyond which risks steepen. As politics, it is a promise: the sentence that made Paris feel like a moral commitment. The trouble in Antalya is that the two lives have come apart. The science says the threshold will be crossed; the only argument left is how far, and for how long.
That is why the fight over a sentence matters more than it looks. A final text that affirms 1.5°C as the “right goal” and speaks of returning to it “as soon as possible” keeps the promise alive as a direction of travel, even if the date slips to the end of the century. A text that drops it concedes the promise was conditional on a decade of action that never arrived. The International Court of Justice advised in 2025 that 1.5°C is the Paris Agreement’s primary temperature goal. The summit’s own politics reflect the split: Morocco pressed its climate case at COP31 in Antalya, where its foreign minister represented King Mohammed VI, and President Erdoğan used the same stage to call Gaza’s destruction an “ecocide”. The Turkish presidency has tried to shift the centre of gravity from targets to delivery. Whether delivery without a target is a strategy or a surrender is the question the second week must answer.
What happens if the target falls; and what if it survives?
If the 1.5°C reference falls, the first consequences will be felt in the rooms that orbit the temperature goal. Adaptation finance, already hundreds of billions short, becomes harder to argue for without the threshold that justified it. The loss and damage fund, which has only just made its first allocation, would face the same question. And the courts would inherit the argument: the ICJ’s 2025 advisory opinion gives litigants a hook.
If the reference survives, the pressure moves the other way: a text that keeps 1.5°C hands every vulnerable country a standing claim on the biggest emitters, and the emitters a reason to fight the finance it implies. Either way, the overshoot era has its own logic: once the threshold is crossed, the politics becomes about the peak, and about who pays for the difference between the promise and the peak.
When the next signals arrive; and what to watch for
The negotiations now move into their second week. The presidency’s consultations on the cover decision began on Tuesday evening; a draft text is likely early next week. The leaders have already made their case; COP31’s opening days carried appeals from Guterres, von der Leyen and the island states; and the talks must now convert them into a text all parties can adopt by 20 November.
Three things to watch: the 1.5°C sentence itself; the overshoot response, and whether the cover decision carries dates for coal and methane; and the money, whether the finance fight moves at all. The summit’s president, Murat Kurum, has said this is the first COP where it is clear beyond doubt that the world will overshoot 1.5°C. By 20 November, Antalya will have shown whether that clarity produces a plan, or only a new way of describing failure.
What we agree on, and what remains open
Established
- COP31 is under way in Antalya from 9 to 20 November 2026.
- The world has warmed about 1.4°C above pre-industrial times.
- The United Nations says crossing 1.5°C is now imminent and unavoidable.
- The negotiators in Antalya are split over whether the summit’s final text should keep the 1.5°C goal or let it go.
Contested
- On whether the 1.5°C target should be kept or dropped; the island states and other frontline countries insist it is existential, while the Arab Group and the Like-Minded Developing Countries are seen as seeking to jettison it.
- On whether keeping a target the world will miss is honest ambition or a fiction that corrodes the Paris framework.
Still open
- What the final COP31 text will say about 1.5°C.
- Whether a return to 1.5°C by 2100 is technically feasible at the scale required.
- Whether the finance gap, $300 billion a year promised by 2035 against hundreds of billions needed, will narrow.
- Or whether the cover decision will carry dates for coal and methane.
What to watch
Questions, answered
It is the most ambitious limit in the 2015 Paris Agreement, under which nearly 200 nations agreed to keep warming “well below” 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial times. For a decade it served as the north star of climate action, the line to hold to avoid the worst effects of warming.
Not as a long-term average: the world has warmed about 1.4°C above pre-industrial times, though individual months and years have already crossed 1.5°C. The EU’s Copernicus service now expects the long-term average to follow as early as 2029, and the UN says an overshoot is now inevitable.
Emissions must fall rapidly while carbon is removed from the atmosphere; through forests and wetlands, and through emerging technologies. Guterres says emissions must fall about 6% a year. The Exeter scientist Pierre Friedlingstein calls the scale required “extremely ambitious”, needing a massive roll-out over decades.
COP31 runs from 9 to 20 November 2026 in Antalya, Türkiye. The key text is the presidency’s cover decision, with a draft expected early in the second week. Watch the 1.5°C wording, any overshoot response with dates, and the finance package; the United States is absent for a second year.