Last week, around 180 scientists, researchers and legal experts gathered in Laxenburg, Austria to attend the first-ever international conference focused on the controversial topic of climate “overshoot”.
This hypothesised scenario would see global temperatures initially “overshoot” the Paris Agreement’s aspirational limit of 1.5C, before they are brought back down through techniques that would remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
(For more on the key talking points, new research and discussions that emerged from the three-day conference, see Carbon Brief’s full write-up of the event.)
On the sidelines of the conference, Carbon Brief asked a range of delegates what they consider to be the key “unknowns” around overshoot.
Below are their responses, first as sample quotes, then, in full:
- Dr James Fletcher: “Yes, there will be overshoot, but at what point will that overshoot peak? Are we peaking at 1.6C, 1.7C, 2.1C?”
- Prof Shobha Maharaj: “There are lots of places in the world where adaptation plans have been made to a 1.5C ceiling. The fact is that these plans are going to need to be modified or probably redeveloped.”
- Sir Prof Jim Skea: “There are huge knowledge gaps around overshoot and carbon dioxide removal.”
- Prof Kristie Ebi: “If there is going to be a peak – and, of course, we don’t know what that peak is – then how do you start planning?”
- Prof Lavanya Rajamani: “To me, a key governance unknown is the extent to which our current legal and regulatory architecture…will actually be responsive to the needs of an overshoot world.”
- Prof Nebojsa Nakicenovic: “One of my major concerns has been for a long time…is whether, even after reaching net-zero, negative emissions can actually produce a temperature decline.”
- Prof Debra Roberts: “For me, the big unknown is how all of these areas of increased impact and risk actually intersect with one another and what that means in the real world.”
- Prof Oliver Geden: “[A key unknown] is whether countries are really willing to commit to net-negative trajectories.”
- Dr Carl-Friedrich Schleussner: “This is a bigger concern that I have – that we are pushing the habitability in our societies on this planet above that limit and towards maybe existential limits.”
- Dr Anna Pirani: “I think that tracking global mean surface temperature on an overshoot pathway will be an important unknown.”
- Prof Richard Betts: “One of the key unknowns is are we going to continue to get the land carbon sink that the models produce.”
- Prof Hannah Daly: “The biggest unknown is whether countries can translate these global [overshoot] pathways into sustained domestic action…that is politically and socially feasible.”
- Dr Andrew King: “[W]e still have a lot of uncertainty around other elements in the climate system that relate more to what people actually live through.”
Former minister for public service, sustainable development, energy, science and technology for Saint Lucia and negotiator at COP21 in Paris.
The key unknown is where we’re going to land. At what point will we peak [temperatures] before we start going down, and how long will we stay in that overshoot period? That is a scary thing. Yes, there will be overshoot, but at what point will that overshoot peak? Are we peaking at 1.6C, 1.7C, 2.1C? All of these are scary scenarios for small island developing states – anything above 1.5C is scary. Every fraction of a degree matters to us. Where we peak is very important and how long we stay in this overshoot period is equally important. That’s when you start getting into very serious, irreversible impacts and tipping points.
Adjunct professor at the University of Fiji and a coordinating lead author for Working Group II of the IPCC’s seventh assessment
First of all, there is an assumption that we’re going to go back down from overshoot. Back down is not a given. And secondly, we are still in the phase where we are talking about uncertainty. Climate scientists don’t like uncertainty. We are not acknowledging that uncertainty is the new normal… But because we’re so bogged down in terms of uncertainties, we are not moving towards [the issue of] what we do about it. We know it’s coming. We know the temperatures are going to be high. But there is little talk about the action.
The focus seems to be more on how we can understand this or how we can model this, but not what we do on the ground. Especially when it comes to adaptation planning – [and around] how does this modify whatever the plans are? There are lots of places in the world where adaptation plans have been made to a 1.5C ceiling. The fact is that these plans are going to need to be modified or probably redeveloped. And no one is talking about this, especially in the areas that are least resourced in the world – which sets up a big, big problem.
Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and emeritus professor at Imperial College London’s Centre for Environmental Policy
There are huge knowledge gaps around overshoot and carbon dioxide removal. As it’s very clear from the themes of this conference, we don’t altogether understand how the Earth would react in taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. We don’t understand the nature of the irreversibilities and we don’t understand the effectiveness of CDR techniques, which might themselves be influenced by the level of global warming, plus all the equity and sustainability issues surrounding using CDR techniques.
Professor of global health at the University of Washington‘s Center for Health and the Global Environment
There are all kinds of questions about adaptation and how to approach effective adaptation. At the moment, adaptation is primarily assuming a continual increase in global mean surface temperature. If there is going to be a peak – and of course, we don’t know what that peak is – then how do you start planning? Do you change your planning? There are places, for instance when thinking about hard infrastructure, [where overshoot] may result in a change in your plan – because as you come down the backside, maybe the need would be less. For example, when building a bridge taller. And when implementing early warning systems, how do you take into account that there will be a peak and ultimately a decline? There is almost no work in that. I would say that’s one of the critical unknowns.
Professor of international environmental law at the University of Oxford
I think there are several scientific unknowns, but I would like to focus on the governance unknowns with respect to overshoot. To me, a key governance unknown is the extent to which our current legal and regulatory architecture – across levels of governance, so domestic, regional and international – will actually be responsive to the needs of an overshoot world and the consequences of actually not having regulatory and governance architectures in place to address overshoot.
Distinguished emeritus research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis and executive director of The World In 2050.
One of my major concerns has been for a long time – as it was clear that we are heading for an overshoot, as we are not reducing the emissions in time – is whether, even after reaching net-zero, negative emissions can actually produce a temperature decline…In other words, there might be asymmetry on the way down [in the global-temperature response to carbon removal] – it might not be symmetrical to the way up [as temperature rise in response to carbon emissions]. And this is really my major concern, that we are planning measures that are so uncertain that we don’t know whether they will reach the goal.
The last point I want to make is that I think that the scientific community should, under all conditions, make sure that the highest priority is on mitigation.
Honorary professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, coordinating lead author on the IPCC’s forthcoming special report on climate change and cities, board chair of the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre and co-chair of Working Group II for the IPCC’s sixth assessment
Well, I think coming from the policy and practitioner community, what I’m hearing a lot about are the potential impacts that come from the exceedance component of overshoot. What I’m not hearing a lot about is the responses to overshoot and their impacts – and how those impacts might interact with the impacts from temperature exceedance. So there’s quite a complex risk landscape emerging. It’s three dimensional in many ways, but we’re only talking about one dimension and, for policymakers, we need to understand that three dimensional element in order to understand what options remain on the table. For me, the big unknown is how all of these areas of increased impact and risk actually intersect with one another and what that means in the real world.
Senior fellow and head of the climate policy and politics research cluster at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs and vice-chair of IPCC Working Group III
[A key unknown] is whether countries are really willing to commit to net-negative trajectories. We are assuming, in science, global pathways going net negative, with hardly any country saying they want to go there. So maybe it is just an academic thought experiment. So we don’t know yet if [overshoot] is even relevant. It is relevant in the sense that if we do, [the] 1.5C [target] stays on the table. But I think the next phase needs to be that countries – or the UNFCCC as a whole – needs to decide what they want to do.
Research group leader and senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
I’m convinced that there’s an upper limit of overshoot that we can afford – and it might be not far outside the Paris range [1.5C-2C] – before human societies will be overwhelmed with the task of bringing temperatures back down again. This [societal limit] is lower than the geophysical limits or the CDR limit.
The impacts of climate change and the challenges that will come with it will undermine society’s abilities to cooperatively engage in what is required to achieve long-term temperature reversal. This is a bigger concern that I have – that we are pushing the habitability in our societies on this planet above that limit and towards maybe existential limits. We may not be able to walk back from it, even if we wanted to. That is a big unknown to me.
I’m convinced that there is an upper limit to how much overshoot we can afford, and it might be just about 2C or a bit above – it might not be much more than that. But we do not have good evidence for this. But I think these scenarios of going to 3C and then assuming we can go back down – I have doubts that future societies grappling with the impacts of climate change will be in the position to embark on such an endeavour.
Senior research associate at the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) and former head of the Technical Support Unit for Working Group I of the IPCC
I think that tracking global mean surface temperature on an overshoot pathway will be an important unknown – how to take account of natural variability in that context, to inform where we are on an overshoot pathway and how well we’re doing on it. I think, methodologically, that would prove to be a challenge. The fact that it occurs over many, many years – many decades – and, yet, we sort of think about it as a nice curve. We see these graphs that say “by the 2050s, we will be here and we’ll start declining and so on”. I think that what that actually translates to in the evolution of global surface temperatures is going to be very difficult to measure and track. Even how we report on that, internationally, in the UNFCCC [UN Framework Convention on Climate Change] context and what the WMO [World Meteorological Organization] does in terms of reporting an overshoot trajectory, that would be quite a challenge.
Head of climate impacts research in the Met Office Hadley Centre and professor at the University of Exeter
One of the key unknowns is are we going to continue to get the land carbon sink that the models produce. We have got model simulations of returning from an overshoot.
If you are lowering temperatures, you have got to reduce emissions. The amount you reduce emissions depends on how much carbon is taken up naturally by the system – by forests, oceans and so on. The models will do this; they give you an answer. But we don’t know whether they are doing the right thing. They have never been tested in this kind of situation.
In my field of expertise, one of the key [unknowns] is how these carbon sinks are going to behave in the future. That is why we are trying to get real-world data into the models – including through the Amazon FACE project – so we can really try and narrow the uncertainties in future carbon sinks. If the carbon sinks are weaker than the models think, it is going to be even harder to reduce emissions and we will need to remove even more by carbon capture and removal.
Professor of sustainable energy at University College Cork
We know ever more about the profound – and often irreversible – damages that will be felt as we overshoot 1.5C. Yet we seem no closer to understanding what will unlock the urgent decarbonisation that remains our only way to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Global models can show, on paper, what returning temperatures to safer levels after overshoot might look like. The biggest unknown is whether countries can translate these global pathways into sustained domestic action – over decades and without precedent in history – that is politically and socially feasible.
Associate professor in climate science at the University of Melbourne
I think, firstly, can we actually achieve net-negative emissions to bring temperatures down past a peak? It’s a completely different world and, unfortunately, it’s likely to be challenging and we’re setting ourselves up to need to do it more. So I think that’s a huge unknown.
But then, beyond that, I think also, whilst we’ve built some understanding of how global temperature would respond to net-zero or net-negative emissions, we still have a lot of uncertainty around other elements in the climate system that relate more to what people actually live through. In our warming world, we’ve seen that global warming relates to local warming being experienced by everyone at different amounts. But, in an overshoot climate, we would see quite diverse changes for different people, different areas of the world, experiencing very different changes in our local climates. And also definitely worsening of some climate hazards and possibly reversibility in others, so a very different risk landscape as well, emerging post net-zero – and I think we still don’t know very much about that as well.
The post Experts: The key ‘unknowns’ of overshooting the 1.5C global-warming limit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Experts: The key ‘unknowns’ of overshooting the 1.5C global-warming limit
Several major banks that helped set up the UN’s now-defunct Net-Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) in 2021 have since continued to lend money to coal companies, a new report has revealed.
Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Santander were heavily involved in the NZBA and the associated Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) when it was launched by Mark Carney, then a UN climate envoy and now Canada’s leader, in the run-up to the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow.
Despite their involvement, data released this week shows those banks and some others did not reduce the amount of money they lent, nor the value of their underwriting, to coal activities between 2022 and 2025. Around half of the NZBA members who were engaged in coal financing over that time increased it and half cut it, according to the report by German environmental research group Urgewald.
Ana Botín, executive chair of Santander, was a member of the GFANZ CEO principals’ group and said at the time of the NZBA launch that her Spanish bank was “proud to be part of the founding members of this new alliance and to accelerate progress towards net zero”.
Since then, the report’s data documents that Santander has provided loans and underwriting worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year to coal companies, particularly American coal-power plant operators Duke Energy and the Southern Company. Santander did not respond to a request for comment.
Urgewald’s research adjusts the value of loans and underwriting provided to coal companies based on how much of a company’s revenues come from the most polluting fossil fuel. So a hypothetical $100 million loan to German utility RWE is valued at $21 million, as 21% of RWE’s revenue is from coal.
The research does not take account of whether companies are expanding their coal business or phasing it out for greener alternatives. Some banks have said their coal clients need to put in place transition plans by a certain date. Some also say that, by a certain date, they will stop lending money to clients that get more than a set percentage of their revenue from coal.
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What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?
Brazilians are heading to the polls, diplomats are gathering in the Pacific for Pre-COP, and it’s crunch time for the IPCC -
UN chief urges countries to adopt fossil fuel transition plans with timelines
In his last speech to the UN General Assembly, António Guterres for the first time called on every nation to deliver a plan to phase out coal, oil and gas while protecting workers
Most companies expanding coal are in Asian nations like China, India and Indonesia and are largely financed by banks from their own countries. But there are examples of NZBA founding members supporting companies that are actively prolonging the life of their coal businesses.
For example, Glencore, a Switzerland-based multinational that gets 4% of its revenue from coal, has just won preliminary regulatory approval to keep on coal mining in Australia’s Hunter Valley until 2045. Last year, the company was supported by loans and underwriting from Bank of America, Citigroup, Santander, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered.
Good and bad news
Some NZBA founding members like Swiss giant UBS have reduced their loans and underwriting for coal companies, the data suggests. Others – like Triodos and Kenya Commercial Bank – have provided no support for coal companies since at least 2021.
Urgewald researcher Hannah O’Neill told Climate Home News that “the banking sector is not moving in one direction. There is a growing divide between banks that are tightening their coal policies and reducing their exposure, and those where coal policies remain weak or where financing continues.”
Unlike the UN’s Race to Zero campaign, with which it partnered, the NZBA did not require its members to end financing for fossil fuels like coal, leading to accusations by climate campaigners that its rules were too weak.
Despite this, after Donald Trump’s re-election as US president in November 2024, several North American banks quit the alliance and the NZBA’s requirements were diluted in April 2025. After further withdrawals, the group shut itself down in October 2025.
Globally, the Urgewald report found that many banks in the European Union, Thailand, Malaysia, India and Taiwan have reduced their coal finance since governments agreed at COP26 to phase down coal power.
But with Chinese, American, Indonesian and South Korean banks increasing their support, total bank financing for the coal industry has remained broadly the same each year since 2022.
“Coal financing is not disappearing – but it is concentrating in banks and markets where coal policies are either missing or weak,” said Heffa Schücking, director of Urgewald.
Urgewald’s definition of coal companies includes firms and their subsidiaries that explore for, process, trade, transport and mine coal, or burn it in power plants to produce electricity, or manufacture equipment for the coal industry. It does not include companies that use coal to make cement or steel – and an adjustment is made to account for how much of the business model is coal-related.
Banks defend delays
At the time of publication, most of the banks named in the report for increasing their coal finance had not responded to requests for comment. But a spokesperson for Deutsche Bank pointed Climate Home News to its May 2026 announcement that it was delaying its requirement for existing clients to present it with transition plans and cut their coal exposure.
Instead of having to present these plans by the end of 2025, the bank has given them until the end of 2027. They will also have to ensure that their revenue share from thermal coal falls below half by then, the bank added. New clients need energy transition plans to access finance.
Deutsche Bank said at the time it was delaying its requirements because of the “increasingly complex regulatory environment as well as differing speeds of energy transition in various regions beyond what was anticipated by Deutsche Bank in 2023”.
Big banks’ lending to coal backers undermines Indonesia’s green plans
A spokesperson for Barclays told Climate Home News: “Many companies in this report are diversified energy or mining companies. We do not provide financing to companies that generate more than 30% of revenues from thermal coal mining or power generation, and we will phase out all financing by 2035.”
The Barclays spokesperson added: “Barclays is financing an energy sector in transition, providing finance to meet current energy needs and also financing the scaling of clean energy. Over the past three years, we have facilitated more than $300 billion of sustainable and transition finance, including billions to cleaner energy projects, and invested millions into climate tech.”
The post Big banks behind “net zero” alliance continued lending to coal firms appeared first on Climate Home News.
Big banks behind “net zero” alliance continued lending to coal firms
Harjeet Singh is the global convenor of the Fill the Fund campaign and founding director of the Satat Sampada Climate Foundation. Julie-Anne Richards is strategic campaign lead for the Make Big Polluters Pay campaign in Australia.
This year, a glacier collapse in Nepal’s Himalayan valleys swept away the lives of at least 1,500 people, with recovery costs of US$5 billion, or 10% of national GDP. But this was not a tragedy for which no one can be blamed. This was a crime with a balance sheet – one whose costs are paid by people who did nothing to cause it, and whose profits are booked by polluting corporations that did everything.
Across the Pacific, the calculation of injustice is now brutally clear. According to Oxfam Australia, the average yearly GDP loss of Pacific countries from climate disasters has increased four-fold over the last decade, reaching 14.3% of GDP. The number of Pacific people battered by climate disasters has risen by 700% in a decade. Whole villages are being packed up and moved as the sea takes the land beneath them.
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What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026?
Brazilians are heading to the polls, diplomats are gathering in the Pacific for Pre-COP, and it’s crunch time for the IPCC
Let’s look at the other ledger. This year, as climate change and an oil shock drove up the cost of living for ordinary families, Woodside – touted as “one of Australia’s biggest winners” from the war in the Middle East – reported revenues jumping nearly 30% to AUD$6 billion in just three months.
In Australia, Oxfam finds that in 2023-2024, fossil fuel corporations paid only AUD$22.8 billion in corporate income tax – just 5% of their AUD$436 billion in total reported income – while 26 out of 80, or one in every three large fossil fuel corporations, did not pay corporate income tax at all.
The polluters are not struggling to pay for the damage they cause. They are choosing not to.
This is the moral obscenity at the heart of the climate crisis: the money exists. It is simply flowing in the wrong direction. And nowhere is that clearer than in the funds the world built to protect the vulnerable, now left to languish.
Funds struggle to fill their coffers
The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) has received US$2.8 billion in requests from 119 countries. And Nepal has sought an urgent US$20 million for immediate needs. Yet the Fund has only US$342 million in total to give.
The Pacific Resilience Facility – a fund the Pacific designed for itself, to prepare its own communities – sits well short of even its modest US$500 million capitalisation target. And the Adaptation Fund is running on empty. While adaptation needs in developing countries could reach US$387 billion a year by 2030, according to the latest UNEP Adaptation Gap report, the Fund’s resource mobilisation target of a modest US$300 million for 2025 fell far short, with only US$135 million pledged.
This is a matter of priorities, not of resources. For decades, the world has accepted a simple principle – the polluter pays principle – whether through the OECD, of which Australia is a member, or Europe’s carbon pricing. New York and Vermont have already passed laws to make Big Oil pay into climate superfunds, and ten more US states are moving to follow.
The idea is neither radical nor new. It’s time to make big polluters pay.
Comment: After Hormuz, Nepal and wildfires, people want action to make polluters pay
What is urgently needed is the courage to apply it to the fossil fuel corporations that have spent decades avoiding it. In November, Australia takes up the presidency of the COP31 negotiations, committing to stand shoulder to shoulder with its Pacific neighbours.
Australia, together with the Turkish COP31 Presidency, must guide and inspire progress at the upcoming climate conference, including on new climate finance pledges by developed countries (which agreed to mobilise at least $300 billion by 2035) and triple the funds available to the FRLD, the Adaptation Fund and the other UN climate funds.
Rich countries agreed to these goals two years ago at COP29. Yet, the reality is that developing countries’ need for climate finance is in the trillions annually, while developed countries continue to delay providing even what they have already committed. A clear signal recognising the importance of delivering the promised climate finance must come at next week’s Pre-COP in the Pacific, and COP31 in Antalya must go on to deliver against existing promises or risk an irreparable breakdown in trust.
Time for a climate pollution levy
Countries must also ensure funding for loss and damage takes its rightful place as the third pillar of climate finance, alongside mitigation and adaptation, in negotiations regarding the UNFCCC climate finance work programme and Article 9 on shifting finance flows towards a low-carbon, resilient world.
Australia, as President of Negotiations and as a Pacific nation, cannot ask the world to fill these funds while it lets its own coal and gas giants off the hook. Australia should not only stop approving new and expanded coal and gas mines, it should also introduce a Climate Pollution Levy on big coal, oil and gas corporations – a charge on every tonne of carbon pollution they extract and profit from. Independent analysis shows such a levy could raise tens of billions of dollars a year, and can be designed so the cost falls on the corporations, not on households.
This is not charity – it is compensation. It is the beginning of accountability. And the public is far ahead of its leaders: eight in 10 people worldwide, and a clear majority of Australians, want fossil fuel firms taxed to pay for the damage they cause.
Fossil fuel expansion threatens COP31 hosts’ credibility, experts warn
The money must go where the harm lands. A Climate Pollution Levy should feed the funds frontline communities are relying on – fully capitalising the Pacific Resilience Facility this year, replenishing the Adaptation Fund, and delivering the billions the loss and damage fund needs.
It is essential for these funds to be able to provide grant-based finance that reaches communities directly, not more loans that push drowning nations deeper into debt. With Nepal’s recovery costs estimated at around 10% of the country’s GDP, if we leave it to fend for itself without loss and damage funding, Nepal will likely be saddled with debt and could fail to recover adequately, increasing poverty and inequality.
We have heard enough empty pledges. We have watched enough funds announced with fanfare, only then to be starved in silence. The era of asking polluters politely is over. Australia, as COP31 president, has a rare chance to prove that the polluter pays principle means something and apply it to those who have profited the most.
The post As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage appeared first on Climate Home News.
As COP31 co-host, Australia should make its polluters pay for climate damage
This is a republication of October’s edition of The Climate Agenda – a subscriber-only newsletter designed to keep you informed of the key events, negotiations and announcements happening every month. If you want to receive The Climate Agenda straight to your inbox at the start of each month, sign up as a subscriber today.
This month, we’ll be on the ground reporting from the Convention on Biological Diversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia later this month and following all the developments as we build towards COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye next month. Here’s what you need to know for October, why it matters and what to expect.
Brazilian Election
First round: Sunday 4 October – Second round: Sunday 25 October
This poll is being closely watched by Brazilian environmentalists as it’s likely to make a big difference to Brazil’s international climate politics and the health of the Amazon rainforest.
The two clear front-runners are current left-wing President Lula and right-wing Flávio Bolsonaro. Flávio is the son of Jair Bolsonaro, who ruled from 2019 to 2023 but was declared ineligible to hold public office because of his attacks on the electoral system and is now under house arrest.
In the unlikely event that either candidate wins more than half the votes in the first round, they will be elected as the country’s leader. Latest polls have Lula on 39% and Bolsonaro on 35% (though the numbers are shifting) with several minor candidates in the single-digits. If none of them get a majority, there will be a one-on-one run-off on October 25.
The Latin American nation is set to record its lowest-ever level of deforestation, as efforts to rein in illegal clearing and restore Indigenous rights progressed under Lula. But Brazilian experts are warning that the huge agribusiness lobby in Congress, whose interests shape what happens in the Amazon, will be emboldened if Bolsonaro takes power, with the Supreme Court also risking a turn to the right.
As for climate politics, some seasoned watchers fear that Flávio – a climate change denier like his dad – could even try to pull Brazil out of the Paris Agreement. That would leave other countries to take forward Brazil’s COP30 global roadmaps on transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) and ending deforestation – both of which are due to be delivered by COP31.
For Brazil’s own TAFF roadmap – commissioned earlier this year but so far nowhere to be seen – the election may have less of an impact, given Lula is as keen as any other politician to extract oil and gas from the Amazon, amid cross-party support for fossil fuel production.
Read more: Brazil leads “encouraging” decline in global rainforest destruction in 2025
Pre-COP
Monday 5 October – Thursday 8 October – Fiji and Tuvalu
The annual Pre-COP meeting is usually a business-like gathering of government negotiators, sounding out each other’s positions and laying the groundwork for deals at the main COP summit. But this year’s “pre” has been jazzed up by Australia’s partnership with Pacific governments keen to elevate their climate issues on the international stage.
“We will bring the eyes of the world to our region, highlight the threat that climate change poses to it, and show how Pacific voices are shaping global action to counter it,” Australian PM Anthony Albanese said of the event.
On Monday, before the Pre-COP officially starts, a group of senior government figures – including a handful of leaders – will visit the world’s second lowest-lying nation Tuvalu, as UN boss Antonio Guterres did in 2019.
They will visit areas affected by sea level rise, see climate resilience projects and meet local communities before flying 2.5 hours south to Fiji to join up with the Pre-COP – which starts on Tuesday – and speak at a “Leaders’ plenary session” that evening.
The Pre-COP runs until Thursday. Governments are expected to try to advance on some kind of a roadmap for protecting oceans from climate change, while Fiji says Pacific nations will emphasise the need to follow science and step up efforts to limit warming to 1.5C.
Australia is also due to present an action plan to improve access to climate finance for small island nations and least-developed countries, so that governments, development banks and climate funds can endorse it ahead of the Antalya summit.
Alongside the official Pre-COP discussions, a “green zone” will host talks organised by civil society on topics like public transport, carbon markets and the International Court of Justice advisory opinion. Unfortunately, these events won’t be available to follow online.
Read more: Threatened by rising seas, small islands secure right to keep their statehood
Read more: At regional summit, Pacific islands ask for COP31 support for clean energy and finance
Article 6.4 Supervisory Body
Monday 5 October – Friday 9 October – Bonn, Germany
The UN carbon market’s rule-making body meets for one last jam-packed session ahead of COP31, with decisions pending on several high-stakes issues that could shape the future of the new crediting mechanism.
Top of the agenda is a rulebook for clean cooking projects, which aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions by distributing more efficient cookstoves. These projects generate some of the most popular carbon credits but have also drawn some of the heaviest criticism for overstating their climate benefits through lax accounting.
Technical experts have recommended the Supervisory Body tighten the rules compared to existing crediting programmes, including by forcing cookstove project developers for the first time to guard against the risk of the climate benefits of their credits – the trees saved from becoming cooking fuel – being wiped out by fire, drought or logging.
The proposal on the so-called reversal risk assessment has sparked a “coordinated” lobbying campaign from the industry, some conservation NGOs and UNEP, arguing that stronger protections could hike project costs and restrict the supply of credits.
Read more: Industry and NGOs lobby to weaken UN carbon credit rules in “coordinated” push
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) plenary
Monday 12 October – Friday 16 October – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Scientists and government officials will try, once again, to agree on a timeline to produce the highly influential AR7 assessment report from the UN’s climate science body.
The faultlines that have blocked a deal at several previous sessions are well established: a large group of predominantly developed countries, small island and progressive Latin American states and the poorest nations want the reports to be ready in time to inform the UN’s next global assessment of climate action, due to be completed in November 2028.
A small group of primarily big emerging economies disagree, claiming this timeline would put a burden on developing countries with limited resources and restrict their ability to provide scientific input into the process.
Three options will be on the table in Addis Ababa. Two of them would see all three flagship assessment reports approved by July 2028 and September 2028 respectively, just in time to feed into the second Global Stocktake.
The third, based on proposals from Saudi Arabia and India, would deliver only the Working Group 1 report, on the physical science of climate change, by May 2028. The reports from Working Groups 2 and 3, covering climate impacts and ways to cut emissions, would not be approved until mid-2029, well after the stocktake concludes at COP33.
Delegates are also expected to discuss the IPCC’s increasingly strained budget, made worse by a funding gap left by the withdrawal of the United States. The panel has warned that, without a sustained increase in contributions, its trust fund’s cash balance would run out by the end of 2028, putting the delivery of the AR7 set of reports at risk and forcing cuts to in-person meetings, translation and outreach.
Read more: Science ‘under attack’ from fossil fuel interests at UN climate talks
Read more: As science comes under attack at UN talks, climate movement splits over how to respond
World Bank & IMF Annual Meetings
Tuesday 12 October – Sunday 18 October – Bangkok, Thailand
With their biggest shareholder – the US – resolutely opposed to climate action, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) are likely to try to avoid mentioning climate change at their annual meetings in Bangkok – and there are no headline events on the subject.
But they aren’t in complete control of the agenda. Thailand will host a discussion on financing a green resilient economy and World Bank President Ajay Banga is likely to be challenged on climate at a live-streamed civil society townhall on October 12.
With tricky negotiations on the World Bank’s climate finance target concluded earlier this year (it was dropped), talks are moving on to the sustainability framework of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, which invests in the private sector. Civil society is calling for its rules on protecting people and the planet to be maintained and strengthened.
The IMF’s guidance note to staff – which shapes the circumstances under which climate can be included in IMF programmes – will also be negotiated. Longer term, the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, which channels funding to green projects, will be reviewed but not before 2028 at the earliest.
Read more: World Bank’s climate work can endure without finance target, experts say
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) COP17
Monday 19 October – Friday 30 October – Yerevan, Armenia
The biodiversity COP – a sister convention to the UN climate process – will for the first time take stock of progress towards key goals in its 2022 landmark agreement, the Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). These include a headline target to protect and conserve at least 30% of the planet’s land and marine ecosystems by 2030.
A draft report prepared by a scientific panel warns that “unless collective implementation accelerates rapidly, the 2030 targets and mission will not be achieved”. In fact, governments are failing on 22 out of 23 targets. The final report is expected to be published ahead of COP17, where governments are expected to react strongly.
UN biodiversity chief Astrid Schomaker told journalists earlier this month that the most significant progress is expected to occur towards the end of the decade, as 174 countries took the first four years to develop national targets.
Finance, meanwhile, is set to become a contentious issue, as the draft report says developed countries fell short on a target to provide $20bn per year in international public finance for nature protection, reaching only about $17bn per year from 2020 to 2023. They have also yet to meet a wider goal to mobilise $200bn per year counting all kinds of finance.
Much like in climate talks, the EU has proposed to broaden the base of donors to include emerging economies who want to “voluntarily assume the obligations” of developed countries. Saudi Arabia and Qatar want nothing to do with this proposal. China has said bringing in new contributors should not weaken the obligations of developed countries. Expect a fight in Yerevan.
A preliminary meeting in Nairobi in August resulted in a heavily bracketed text that delegates will have to unravel in Armenia. One observer said countries had “overall missed the level of urgency” needed.
Keep an eye out for our webinar live from Yerevan later this month, where we’ll provide an update on the talks and how governments are responding to science’s demands for quicker action.
Read more: Mombasa ocean summit drives progress on marine protection, but threats persist
Read more: UN biodiversity talks agree finance roadmap, postponing decision on a new fund
European Climate Resilience & Risk Management Framework
Wednesday 28 October – Brussels, Belgium
Following a torrid summer beset by recurring heatwaves, drought and outbreaks of forest fires across the continent, the European Commission will present its keenly awaited climate resilience and risk management framework to help member states protect their populations from worsening climate change impacts.
As part of the policy package, the Commission will identify 100 of Europe’s most climate-vulnerable territories. And alongside an assessment of the risks, there will be guidance at which level they should be managed – regional, national or by the EU. Currently, confusion often arises over who is responsible for preventing, preparing for and managing disasters across the bloc.
The framework will also aim to make Europe a “champion in adaptation technologies” – such as drought-resistant crops, flood prevention or energy-efficient cooling – which have been described by EU President Ursula von der Leyen as “a huge emerging market”.
With only around a quarter of catastrophe losses in Europe covered by private insurance, the Commission also plans to set up a Climate Insurance Alliance to boost that figure.
READ MORE: WHO issues new guidance on heat-health action plans, as El Niño sets in
The post What’s on the climate calendar for October 2026? appeared first on Climate Home News.
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