‘Implementation COP’ must live up to its name |
The organisers of COP31, which opens in Antalya, Türkey, have billed the event as the “Implementation COP”. The last climate COP in Belém, Brazil, carried the same description. COP30 did, to an extent, live up to that billing by securing outcomes on climate finance, adaptation and the transition away from fossil fuels, even though it fell short of the ambition required to keep global warming within the 1.5°C limit set at Paris. In the year since Belem, the challenge has become considerably more daunting. Catastrophic floods, deadly heat waves, and prolonged droughts have become increasingly common, while the near inevitability of the world overshooting the 1.5°C threshold underscores the inadequacy of........