COP31 talks: small islands plan remittance fund, 1.5C goal seen as out of reach

A remittance fund for islands

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) want a fund financed by a charge on money that islanders abroad send home. The group aims to raise around $3 billion (€2.69bn) a year for projects that make island nations less exposed to climate change. That would exceed the roughly $2bn in international public adaptation finance the states received in 2021 to 2022, according to a 2025 study by the Climate Policy Initiative. Delegates meeting in Antalya, Turkey, for COP31 are weighing ways to lift adaptation funding, and the island group has concluded it cannot depend on slow international financing talks. Antigua and Barbuda's UN ambassador Walton Webson put the reasoning bluntly:

“We cannot rely solely on development assistance again.”

Webson said preliminary discussions had been held with several development banks. A broader meeting with those banks and SIDS leaders is planned for January, with the aim of making progress before COP32 in 2027. The platform would be the first to use diaspora earnings, rather than international aid, to build a permanent endowment for climate resilience.

Remittances as the funding base

Total remittances from islanders who have emigrated were around $22bn, according to figures supplied by the SIDS group, and they grew at a compound annual rate of 7% between 2010 and 2023. The platform aims to capture about a third of that total by its tenth year of operation. Its rollout would be phased by country. In year one, the fund would draw on remittances linked to the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana. Fiji, Samoa and Tonga would join in year two, and Comoros, Cabo Verde and Mauritius in year three. The design was drafted with help from the International Institute for Environment and Development.

The 1.5C goal under strain

Scientists now say that without drastic cuts in greenhouse gases, the planet will very likely warm at least 2.6C by the end of the century. The UN said in October 2026 that even with rapid emissions cuts, the best outcome would be a rise of 1.8C, and that returning to 1.5C after overshooting would depend on carbon removal technology that remains unproven at scale. Chris Bowen, Australia's minister for climate change and energy, who is leading the negotiations, put it plainly:

“The world has no chance of holding to 1.5 degrees,”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen took a similar line in her speech to fellow leaders on 11 November:

“We are on course to overshoot the 1.5 degree target, and every fraction of a degree matters. So we must double down,”

Hilda Heine, president of the Marshall Islands, urged leaders to show that the fight for 1.5C is not over, while Danish Climate Minister Samira Nawa said Denmark wanted the target kept at the heart of global climate ambitions. Other ministers have revived slogans about keeping 1.5 alive, yet the collective ambition of national climate plans is weaker than projected last year.

Paris goal1.5

UN best-case outcome1.8

Likely minimum by end of century without drastic cuts2.6

Paris goal

1.5 °C

UN best-case outcome

1.8 °C

Likely minimum by end of century without drastic cuts

2.6 °C

Data from the article text

Electrification and trade

Turkey's COP31 president Murat Kurum has backed a '35 by 35' target that would lift electricity's share of global final energy consumption from about 23% today to 35% by 2035. The target carries no clean energy requirement, although some European countries are trying to add one, and existing renewables pledges would not stop countries expanding fossil-fuel generation to reach it. Carolyn Deere Birkbeck, executive director of the Forum on Trade, Environment and the Sustainable Development Goals (TESS) in Geneva, argued in a letter that the electrification goal cannot be met without trade in solar panels, batteries, turbines and the minerals they require. On Finance and Trade Day at COP31, 10 trade ministers from the Coalition of Trade Ministers on Climate set out three steps for co-operation.

Today (about)23%

2035 target35%

Today (about)

23 %

2035 target

35 %

Data from the article text