The three countries hosting the annual COP climate summits from 2023-2025 – known as “the Troika” – have again called on governments to submit stronger climate action plans that can keep the warming goals of the Paris Agreement “within reach”.
The United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan and Brazil this week in New York reiterated their promise to lead by example and produce by the end of this year nationally determined contributions (NDCs) aligned with the Paris pact’s objective of limiting global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.
But they failed to announce any numbers or flesh out what a 1.5C-compatible NDC means for them. Observers keen to understand how the three nations will reconcile a science-based climate plan with their expanding fossil fuel ambitions were left disappointed.
“We witnessed a worrying case of cognitive dissonance,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy manager with Oil Change International, which campaigns against fossil fuels. “At a time of grave climate urgency, the COP Troika is failing to deliver the leadership and clarity needed to raise climate ambition.”
The Troika has previously indicated that there is no universally accepted definition of what a 1.5°C-aligned climate plan should or should not include. “It’s up to each one to decide,” Brazil’s head of delegation, Liliam Chagas, said at the Bonn climate talks in June, raising fears of “1.5-washing”.
‘Ten tests’ for a 1.5C climate plan
That view is not shared by many climate experts and campaigners who are issuing suggestions for what such an NDC should look like.
A group of leading civil society organisations this week published an open letter that outlines “ten essential tests” to determine whether countries’ plans meet the 1.5C goal – seen as safer than the other, higher ceiling of “well below 2 degrees” set in the Paris Agreement.
The tests outlined in the letter include a commitment to end fossil fuel expansion, detailed and measurable targets both for the whole economy and for specific sectors such as transport, building and agriculture, provisions for wealthier countries to scale up climate finance, and measures to protect natural ecosystems and make food systems greener.
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“A lot of the failure or success of [the] Paris [Agreement] is going to be determined in the next eight or nine months as countries put forward their next round of NDCs,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at E3G and veteran watcher of the UN climate process. “If these don’t step up and meet the mark, it’s really our last chance… this is a critical moment.”
To limit average temperature rise below 1.5C, scientists with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say global emissions need to peak before 2025, shrink 60% by 2035 from their 2019 level, and continue on a steep downward trajectory, reaching net-zero emissions of carbon dioxide by around mid-century.
Fossil fuels in the spotlight
The next round of updated NDCs, due by next February, should turn the goals agreed at COP28 last year into practice, advocates say. In the energy sector, that means laying out plans to triple renewable energy capacity and double the rate of improvement in energy efficiency by 2030 – and, crucially, transition away from fossil fuels.
Climate experts and campaigners have stressed that a 1.5C-aligned NDC needs to include an explicit commitment to no new coal, oil and gas exploration, as well as credible targets for slashing existing production and eliminating fossil fuel subsidies.
“Claiming to lead on climate while continuing the expansion of oil, gas and coal production is indefensible at this point,” said Natalie Jones, policy advisor at the International Institute for Sustainable Development. “Governments need a plan for reducing reliance on fossil fuel production,” she added.
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Fossil-fuel reduction targets will be closely watched as a litmus test for the ambition of major hydrocarbon producers, including the Troika of COP presidencies. The UAE, Azerbaijan and Brazil are set to increase their combined oil and gas production by 33% by 2035, according to a new analysis by Oil Change International.
Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva aims to turn his country into the world’s fourth largest petrostate (it now ranks ninth), opening new extraction frontiers both on land and offshore, including in the Amazon. This plan contrasts with Brazil’s promise to present a new NDC aligned with the 1.5C temperature goal this year – reaffirmed by Lula himself in his speech at the UN General Assembly this week.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva addresses the 79th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2024. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton
“As long as the Brazilian government insists on extracting oil and gas, especially in the Amazon, talking about decarbonising the economy and a fair energy transition is a pure exercise in rhetoric,” said Ilan Zugman, Latin America managing director for campaign group 350.org.
Azerbaijan has similarly come under renewed criticism this week with researchers at Climate Action Tracker (CAT) slamming its existing climate goals as “critically insufficient”.
The scientific watchdog said Azerbaijan was among “a tiny group” of countries that had weakened the targets in its latest NDC, published in late 2023, contradicting the Paris Agreement’s requirement that each climate action blueprint should be more ambitious than its predecessor. CAT singled out the Caspian country’s plans to expand fossil fuel production by 30% over the coming decade and its rising methane emissions.
Azerbaijan is now working on a new NDC that should be in line with the 1.5C temperature goal of the Paris Agreement, the government said.
Looking beyond energy
But, while energy is a crucial piece of the puzzle, it is not the only economic sector that needs a dramatic transformation in order to limit global warming to 1.5C. Agriculture, food production, industry and transport all contribute a large share of greenhouse gas emissions.
Experts say that spelling out specific emissions reduction targets for each sector can help guide policy-making across different government departments and attract larger investments.
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E3G’s Meyer told journalists that “a robust consultation and transparent engagement process” are also key to building a 1.5C-aligned NDC. “If you’re going to get buy-in to implementation of the NDCs on the ground – which is the real key to reducing emissions – you need all those sectors engaged and backing the plan,” he added.
Mike Hemsley, deputy director at the Energy Transitions Commission think-tank, told Climate Home that sectoral targets will also play a pivotal role in engaging the private sector, alongside roadmaps and policy packages to implement them. “There’s increasing recognition that if you don’t have that in there, you’re not going to actually realise the ambition you set out in the NDCs,” he said.
‘Creative accounting’ trap
With goals only as good as the measures taken to meet them, a significant gap remains between the already-deficient set of national climate targets on paper and action in the real world.
Civil society groups say that governments need to outline how they are planning to hit their NDC targets in a clear and transparent way without resorting to “creative accounting”, as CAT warns.
A major sticking point is the reliance on forests and other carbon sinks to bring down emissions, because of the complex calculations involved and the unpredictable risk of carbon being released back into the atmosphere if, for instance, trees are decimated by a forest fire.
Australia, for example, has been accused by CAT of creating an “illusion of progress” towards its NDC targets by constantly revising its carbon sink assessment upwards and allowing more room for increased fossil fuel emissions.
E3G’s Meyer is sceptical that, despite the promises of 1.5C -aligned NDCs, countries will step up with the level of ambition needed – and said the task for COP30 host Brazil next year should be to encourage countries to work out how to fill the gaps.
“We need to see [the next NDCs] as a floor not a ceiling, and say what more can we do to supercharge ambition,” he said.
(Reporting by Matteo Civillini and Megan Rowling; editing by Megan Rowling)
The post As COP Troika dithers on 1.5C-aligned climate plans, experts set the bar high appeared first on Climate Home News.
As COP Troika dithers on 1.5C-aligned climate plans, experts set the bar high
SYDNEY, Thursday 30 October 2026 — In response to reports that the Albanese government is set to introduce draft legislation this year that would seek to ban data centres in Australia’s suburbs, Joe Rafalowicz, Head of Climate and Energy at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said:
“These reports are a testament to the growing community opposition to these completely inappropriate AI factories that have sprung up across our suburbs, and Big Tech corporations should take heed — the data centre build-out must not happen without the endorsement of the Australian people.
“But the government can’t simply ship this problem out to regional Australia without addressing the fundamental issues with this extractive new industry.
“We’re already seeing a trend of AI data centre proposals moving to the regions, in areas that are more water-scarce, more environmentally sensitive, and next to sources of fracked and coal seam gas to support their massive BYO gas-fired power plans — a pattern we’ve seen play out in the United States.
“From the Beetaloo Basin in the NT to the Western Downs in Qld, we’re seeing a wave of AI data centre proposals that would see new gas fast-tracked to support their massive energy demand, and threaten to completely derail Australia’s energy transition.
“Just as suburban Australians are asking, “what for?”, regional communities like Berry Springs and Dalby do not want dirty data centres setting up shop with absolutely no benefit to their communities. Greenpeace is calling for a moratorium on AI data centre developments until strict and enforceable safeguards are in place to protect our climate and our communities.”
-ENDS-
Media contact
Kate O’Callaghan on +61 406 231 892 or kate.ocallaghan@greenpeace.org
AI data centre ban in suburbs would not address fundamental issues: Greenpeace
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
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None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
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The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.