“IF we weaken science, we can weaken the basis of action.”
Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) Director Vishal Prasad has warned that challenges to climate science at COP31 could undermine efforts to keep global warming within the 1.5°C limit.
“The challenge that is coming to science is precisely from the same parties that are against action. They don’t want us to move as quickly on fossil fuel phase-out and other elements of ambition that are needed to address climate change. And so science has really become a battleground,” Prasad said.
The issue emerged on the opening day of negotiations, according to Pacific Islands Climate Action Network (PICAN) International Policy Lead Sindra Sharma, who reported on discussions over the likelihood of global temperatures temporarily exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and the role of scientific assessments in guiding future climate decisions.
Prasad said scientific evidence must remain central to the negotiations and the decisions governments make to address climate change.
“Science provides us the guidelines, the basis of action and tells us the paths we need to take to achieve the 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature target,” he said.
“We need to be protecting the science, protecting the 1.5 degrees target because that is the survival threshold of the Pacific and for many coastal communities.”
The debate was reflected in the opening plenary, where COP31 President of Negotiations Chris Bowen told delegates that the latest science indicated the world would overshoot the 1.5°C threshold, but could subsequently return below it.
UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell also referred to methane reductions and electrification as measures that could help bring global temperatures down following an overshoot.
COP31 President Murat Kurum reiterated that 1.5°C remained the guiding objective of the conference.
For Pacific representatives, however, temporarily exceeding the threshold does not remove the risks communities would face during an overshoot, including impacts that could be irreversible.
The European Union, Least Developed Countries and other negotiating groups also called for stronger efforts to limit warming and ensure scientific assessments inform future climate decisions.
Another point of contention concerned the timeline for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Seventh Assessment Report (AR7).
The IPCC Chair warned parties that the absence of an agreement on the assessment timeline was placing the organisation at operational and reputational risk, with authors still without an agreed work schedule.
Several countries called for the assessment to be completed in time to inform the second Global Stocktake, which will evaluate collective progress towards the goals of the Paris Agreement.
The IPCC plenary is scheduled to resume discussions on the assessment timeline on December 1.
For Pacific countries, access to the latest scientific assessments is critical to ensuring international climate decisions reflect the scale and urgency of climate impacts.
Pacific Community (SPC) Director of Climate Change Coral Pasisi also raised concerns about how scientific evidence is treated in international climate discussions, saying established scientific processes must be considered alongside Indigenous and traditional knowledge.
“In our region, the science of lived experience, of traditional knowledge, is often the largest source of information and science we have,” she said.
“We are not lacking evidence. We are not lacking science. We are not lacking data and information. What we are lacking is wisdom of doing the right thing with that knowledge and that data.”
Pasisi said Pacific communities had accumulated generations of practical knowledge about their marine environments and the changes taking place within them.
She said this experience should inform international decision-making alongside established scientific assessments and technical expertise.
The IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report has documented widespread adverse impacts and losses to nature and people resulting from human-induced climate change, with risks increasing with every additional increment of global warming.
Its Working Group II assessment on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability identifies warming of 1.5°C in the near term as a level that would bring unavoidable increases in multiple climate hazards and risks to ecosystems and human populations.
The report also warns that temporarily exceeding 1.5°C would expose human and natural systems to additional severe risks, some of which could be irreversible even if temperatures were subsequently reduced.
For Pacific communities experiencing coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion, changing weather patterns and increasing pressure on food and water systems, the implications of these findings are significant.
The opening day’s discussions also highlighted concerns about maintaining the integrity of scientific assessments, with several countries calling for the IPCC’s work to inform negotiations and for scientific contributions to reflect recognised expertise and regional balance.
As negotiations continue in Antalya, the debate over the 1.5°C threshold and the timeline for the IPCC’s next assessment will remain important to discussions on the global response to climate change.
For Pacific representatives, the position is clear: scientific evidence must guide climate decisions, and the 1.5°C limit must remain central to global climate action.
