World
in Antalya •
From 31 years of negotiations to the now inevitable 1.5 degrees: COP31 in seven figures
The 31st Conference of the Parties on climate change opens today in Antalya, Turkey. This year’s event has been described by the organisers as the ‘COP of implementation’ – that is, the conference at which, after years of commitments that have often remained mere solemn declarations, decisions are taken on how to put them into practice. Here are a few figures
31
Thirty-one years have passed since the first Conference of the Parties on climate change, which took place in Berlin between March and April 1995. Three years earlier, in 1992, the Earth Summit had been held in Rio de Janeiro, during which the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was signed and the foundations were laid for international cooperation on climate change.
2
This year’s COP presidencies. This is the first time that leadership of the Conference has been divided: Turkey is the host country, managing logistics and the Action Agenda, whilst Australia has exclusive authority over the negotiations.
35
Key themes of the Conference include the phase-out of fossil fuels and electrification. The ‘35 by 35’ commitment calls for the share of electricity in global energy consumption to be increased to 35 per cent – from the current 20 per cent – by 2035.
10
The years that have passed since the Paris Agreement came into force – adopted in 2015 but fully operational from the following year. This year, the United States, the conference’s notable absentee, withdrew from the Agreement for the second time: it had already done so in 2017, during the first Trump administration, before rejoining under the Biden administration. Among other things, the second Global Stocktake (GST-2) – that is, the second round of the five-yearly assessment of progress towards the Paris Agreement’s targets – will be launched in Antalya.
1.5
According to the latest report from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), exceeding the critical threshold of 1.5°C of global warming compared with pre-industrial levels is now definitively inevitable. The priorities now are to limit the rise in temperature and bring it back below the critical threshold by the end of the century.
127
Countries with new climate plans. The NDCs (Nationally Determined Contributions) are the plans that every signatory country to the Paris Agreement must submit to the UN, setting out targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and measures to adapt to the effects of climate change.
300 billion
In dollars, the sum that developed countries have agreed to mobilise by 2035 to support the most vulnerable countries in tackling damage linked to the effects of climate change and in implementing adaptation plans. The figure – considered by recipient countries to be largely insufficient – was agreed two years ago at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, but the obligations of developed countries have not yet been definitively clarified.