The incentives for real progress on climate action are increasingly clear. Clean energy, electrification and building resilience can help countries address major challenges, including economic and energy security, competitiveness and climate impacts. At the same time, the likelihood that global temperatures will exceed 1.5 °C of warming this decade makes it more urgent to act now. Yet in geopolitically fraught times, cooperation is becoming harder to achieve. The challenge for COP31 is to turn shared interests into collective action, supporting delivery of solutions where they are most needed.
To live up to its promise as an implementation COP, COP31 must meet three tests:
- A credible response to the climate science and the growing risk of a significant 1.5 °C overshoot across mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage.
- Progress on climate finance moving from commitments to implementation, particularly for developing and climate-vulnerable countries.
- Evolution of the UN climate process to meet the demands of the implementation era and set up the road to the next Global Stocktake in 2028.
Read the briefing for more detailed analysis of what we need to see at COP31.
Test 1: Does COP31 respond credibly to climate science and the growing risk of a significant overshoot of 1.5 °C of warming
Every fraction of a degree matters, and the most ambitious scenario now has warming peaking at 1.7–1.8 °C. To achieve that, climate mitigation efforts must cut greenhouse gas emissions as fast as possible, through accelerating the just, orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels, electrification, scaling clean power, and reducing methane emissions. Steps must also be taken to protect nature, forests and the ocean’s central role in regulating the planet’s climate.
This must be joined up with adaptation and resilience efforts to protect people and economies from the impacts already locked in. Loss and damage arrangements must support those already facing the cost of climate impacts.
Test 2: Is climate finance reaching the countries and sectors that need it most?
The gap between promised and mobilised finance remains one of the clearest measures of whether the international climate system is delivering. The significant shortfall in adaptation finance in particular is moreover the biggest source of potential division ahead of COP31.
Progress at COP31 to close the gap – across mitigation, adaptation, resilience, and loss and damage – is dependent on improving the quality, accessibility and cost of finance. COP31 must provide greater confidence about future support, increase grant-based and concessional finance, and establish a credible path towards the agreed goal of tripling adaptation finance by 2035. It must also tackle persistent barriers to access, especially for Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries.
Country-led platforms, stronger national institutions and better coordination among multilateral development banks, climate funds and other providers can help turn national plans into investable programmes.
Test 3: Is the UN climate process evolving for an era focused on implementation?
Most of the “Paris rulebook” – the processes of ambition-setting and evaluation of progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement – is now in place. The next task is ensuring the UN climate process drives faster implementation, more transparency and political accountability. COP31 is an important moment to set this in motion as it kicks off the process for the second Global Stocktake, the collective assessment of progress that will conclude at COP33.
The Action Agenda can organise the wider implementation ecosystem around delivery, taking a steer from the negotiated outcomes. The ecosystem should also support the empowerment and strengthening of coalitions of the willing to support this, which can include governments, finance institutions, businesses, cities and civil society. Evidence of what works in practice should feed back into the ambition cycle.
COP31 will not be judged on a single outcome. Its success depends on whether the overall package connects ambition to delivery. Australia and Türkiye, in the co-Presidency structure, have roles in bringing the package together that can – and must – be complementary and mutually reinforcing. Australia as President of Negotiations can bridge political divides on finance, adaptation and implementation. Türkiye’s role is in demonstrating delivery, by using the Action Agenda and other initiatives to mobilised implementation partnerships. Both are essential to COP31’s overall success.
