By Faridat Salifu
The United Nations has urged world leaders to intensify efforts to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, strengthen climate adaptation and improve access to climate finance for vulnerable countries ahead of the next UN climate summit.
UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed made the call during pre-conference engagements in Tuvalu and Fiji, two Pacific island nations facing growing threats from rising sea levels, coastal flooding and intensifying extreme weather events.
Speaking at the pre-COP meeting in Fiji, Mohammed stressed the need for urgent action to protect communities across the Pacific and ensure that future generations could continue to live and prosper in their home countries.
“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 said.
A major priority highlighted by the UN deputy chief was preserving the ambition of the 1.5°C temperature limit established under the 2015 Paris Agreement, which seeks to keep global warming well below 2°C while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
With the world at risk of temporarily exceeding the threshold, Mohammed urged countries not to abandon the target, but to accelerate emissions reductions and limit the duration and extent of any overshoot.
“Overshoot is not a reason to surrender,” she said in Tuvalu. “It is a call to accelerate – to make overshoot as short and small as possible and bring temperatures back down below 1.5 as quickly as possible.”
She called on governments to translate commitments made at previous climate conferences into concrete action, particularly agreements reached at COP28 in Dubai in 2023 to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems, triple global renewable energy capacity and double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030.
Mohammed linked the transition to renewable energy with energy security, arguing that expanding access to clean electricity could improve livelihoods while reducing countries’ exposure to volatile fossil fuel prices and disruptions caused by geopolitical conflicts.
“For the 655 million people still living without electricity, clean power means a mother surviving birth with the lights on, and a child doing her homework after dark,” she said in Fiji.
“It frees economies from the price swings from impacts of global conflicts on fossil fuels.”
Beyond emissions reduction, Mohammed called for stronger adaptation measures to help communities cope with climate impacts that are already occurring.
She urged governments to expand early warning systems capable of forecasting extreme weather events and alerting vulnerable communities before disasters strike.
“An early warning that reaches a family hours before a cyclone gives them time to get to safety,” she said.
She stressed that early warnings must be supported by resilient infrastructure, reliable water supplies and healthy ecosystems to reduce the vulnerability of communities to climate-related hazards.
The UN deputy secretary-general also highlighted the importance of strengthening coastal protection and restoring marine ecosystems, particularly in Pacific island communities exposed to rising seas and flooding.
On climate finance, Mohammed called for funding arrangements that are timely, fair, transparent and accessible, especially for developing countries that face significant climate risks but have limited resources to respond.
She reiterated that developed countries should take the lead in mobilising climate finance, pointing to the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap, which aims to scale up climate finance for developing countries to at least $1.3 trillion annually by 2035.
Mohammed stressed that increasing the amount of climate finance would not be sufficient unless vulnerable countries could access the funding without unnecessary delays and complex procedures.
“Every dollar has to arrive where it is meant to go. A small island ministry with a handful of staff should be able to reach concessional finance quickly and simply,” she said in Fiji.
Her remarks underscored the need to ensure that climate finance reaches communities and institutions on the front lines of climate change, including small island developing states that face disproportionate risks from rising sea levels and extreme weather.
As countries prepare for the summit, the UN’s message is that governments must honour the Paris Agreement, accelerate the transition to cleaner energy, strengthen climate resilience and ensure vulnerable nations receive the support needed to respond to climate change.
Mohammed said the world must continue working to limit the scale and duration of any overshoot of the 1.5°C threshold, rather than treating the possibility of exceeding it as a reason to weaken climate ambition.
