With the UNFCCC COP31 is just about 60 days away, a question arises: ‘Are the parties going to be prepared for COP31?’
The UN’s renewed call on September 2, 2026, to understand the ‘reality’ of repeatedly missing the Paris 1.5C goal highlights a scientific framing that the temporary overshoot will occur within the next 10 years. During this time, the goal is to keep the overshoot as low and short as possible, bringing temperatures down.
In its report, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) quoted scientists as saying the situation poses grave risks, necessitating the best option of navigating temperature overshoot instead of simply avoiding it. The co-author of the UNEP report, Richard Betts, says, “We have to live with this warmer world… but there’s still a lot we can do to limit warming”. UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2025 estimates that, if we fully implement the existing Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), warming would range from 2.3–2.5C this century. This may touch 2.8C.
Surprisingly, the incumbent NDCs only hint at about 12–15 per cent reduction, with a huge shortfall against needs. Nations must bridge this shortfall with stronger commitments to limit temperature rises to a safer threshold.
Amid this debate, the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO)’s latest warning of September 3, 2026 says, “El Nino is firmly established and will intensify into a very strong event in the coming months, with big impacts on rainfall and temperature patterns and associated risks of floods, drought, and extreme heat”. El Nino is likely to persist through February 2027. WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo says: “This exceptional El Nino demands exceptional preparation and response. Never before in the 50-year history of the World Meteorological Organization have we launched such a major mobilization with National Meteorological and Hydrological Services that are on the frontline of delivering the forecasts and services to save lives and livelihoods”.
The warnings in these two reports call for adequate action, response and preparedness against global warming, which requires financing for adaptation, preparedness, and sustainable infrastructure. The Nepal tragedy is the latest in a series of some of the worst disasters directly linked to temperature shifts and requires the massive financial aid Kathmandu is asking for.
The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2025, ‘Running on empty: The world is gearing up for climate resilience, without the money to get there’, updates the cost of adaptation finance as $310 billion per year in 2035 for developing countries based on modelled costs. When calculated based on the needs identified in NDCs and National Adaptation Plans, it rises to $365 billion a year. One cannot be sure how these amounts were calculated, but they appear in the UNEP report.
The dilemma is that the adaptation needs are ever-increasing, whereas international public adaptation finance flows to developing countries remained $26 billion in 2023, down from $28 billion in 2022. This makes adaptation financing needs in developing countries 12–14 times higher than the current flows, and this trend fails the Glasgow Climate Pact goal of doubling international public adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025. The New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) for climate finance is not ambitious enough to close the finance gap.
Amid this situation, let’s analyse how parties are prepared to play their role at COP31 to bridge this gap. At the close of the June 2026 Bonn Climate Meeting, the COP31 presidency, held by Murat Kurum, Turkiye’s minister of environment, announced the agenda, set three new targets on global electrification, cutting waste and resilient cities, and also pledged that in Antalya they will build broader consensus and stronger climate action from words to implementation, and from implementation to results on earlier commitments and agreed actions. He said the electrification target is to raise the share of final energy demand met by electricity from just over 20 per cent today to 35 per cent by 2035, halving the growth in global waste by 2035, and a resilient cities target of reducing energy consumption intensity in the building sector by at least 25 per cent by 2035. Other new priorities include food security, green industrialisation, youth participation, health and education as a framework for implementation, designed to produce concrete results.
Through the Climate Implementation Bridge, COP31 aims to help countries turn their NDCs into investable project portfolios, so climate finance reaches the ground faster and with greater impact. To keep the presidency reminded of the Bonn announcement, I would like to flag some issues that need attention at COP31. There is a need to shift the role of the COP30-COP31 voluntary ‘Global Implementation Accelerator’ mechanism from facilitating to pushing national governments to close emissions gaps by turning NDCs into implementation.
Keeping the Belem Mission to 1.5C in mind, the COP presidencies need to move from just identifying barriers, investment needs, and high-impact interventions for NDC and adaptation-plan delivery to coming up with targeted projects, financial commitments, responsible institutions, and delivery dates at Antalya. Otherwise, COP31 risks becoming another report-writing shop.
Turkiye has already proposed one idea: converting national climate plans into investment portfolios. Though doable, who will ensure developing countries receive affordable public and concessional finance without adding to their debt? Similarly, the three new targets, while measurable, also sit in the voluntary action domain.
There are indications that the Global Goal on Adaptation indicators, National Adaptation Plans, the Baku Adaptation Roadmap, and the COP30 call to triple adaptation finance by 2035 may advance at COP31, but again, finance availability, burden-sharing, and delivery mechanisms will remain weak without tangible, countable adaptation finance. The UNEP Adaptation Gap Report 2025 already warned of a huge shortfall. The same is the case with the Loss and Damage Fund (L&DF); the stated COP31 agenda includes initial funding operations of the Loss and Damage Fund and continued work through the Santiago Network, but the real test is predictable replenishment and direct access to the Fund.
These inactions and miscommitments show that successive COPs have failed to ensure finance and anticipatory action to strengthen trigger-based early-warning preparedness in vulnerable countries, especially developing countries bearing the brunt of climate change despite being low emitters. The WMO and national meteorological departments need to link temperature and weather warnings to anticipatory action, as forecasts alone do not protect people unless tied to agreed triggers, pre-arranged finance, and anticipatory action protocols. In my analysis so far, the UNFCCC Conferences of the Parties (COPs) seem faster at taking initiative than at building the capacity to implement decisions; they seem more focused on paper than on making financial transactions real.
As scientists have reminded us of the ‘reality’ of overshoot, nations should not allow overshoot to become permission to delay anticipatory action and preparedness; otherwise, continued warming will keep increasing irreversible losses, adaptation costs and dependence on uncertain and expensive carbon-reducing technologies.
World leaders at COP31 should treat mitigation, adaptation and preparedness as key agenda points as part of ‘the parties going prepared to the conference’, as strong El Nino conditions necessitate urgent investments in heat-related health plans, drought preparedness, flood forecasting, shock-responsive social protection, and forecast-based, pre-agreed finance. The Antalya COP31 will succeed only if polluters translate climate warnings into pre-financed action before Nepal-like disasters hit the world.
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