‘Overshoot is not a reason to surrender’: UN calls for accelerated climate action ahead of COP31 summit

As world leaders prepare for November’s major COP31 climate summit in Türkiye, record-breaking heat, devastating floods and an unprecedented El Niño climate pattern are making global climate action ever more urgent.Ahead of the summit, leaders gathered for a pre-conference in the South Pacific this week to prepare for the intense negotiations to come and set the agenda. UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed joined senior government figures and top policy makers in Tuvalu and Fiji – two Pacific island nations facing the brunt of rising seas and intensifying floods – to lay out the UN’s climate priorities. “We must take urgent action to ensure every child born today across the Pacific Islands can grow up, prosper and live on the islands they call home,” she told the pre-COP in Fiji.‘Keeping 1.5 alive’ A key priority raised by the UN Deputy Secretary-General was “keeping 1.5 alive” – referencing the 2015 Paris Agreement target to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. As the world is heading to exceed the 1.5°C target, Ms Mohammed urged states not to give up. “Overshoot is not a reason to surrender,” she said in Tuvalu. “It is a call to accelerat...