The UN puts the price tag for developing countries at $1.3 trillion a year by 2035, and it wants the money to move faster. That was one of the points UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed pressed at a pre-COP gathering in Tuvalu and Fiji, ahead of the COP31 summit in Türkiye in November.
She spoke to senior government figures and policymakers from two Pacific nations on the front line of rising seas and intensifying floods. Her main message was about the 1.5°C warming limit set in the 2015 Paris Agreement. The world is heading to exceed it, and she told states not to give up. “Overshoot is not a reason to surrender,” she said in Tuvalu. “It is a call to accelerate,” she added, to keep any overshoot as short and small as possible and bring temperatures back below 1.5 quickly.
Energy as security
Mohammed urged leaders to deliver on the COP28 promises made in Dubai in 2023: moving away from fossil fuels, tripling renewable capacity and doubling energy efficiency by 2030. She tied the shift directly to energy security, saying clean power frees economies from the price swings that conflicts cause in fossil fuel markets. For the 655 million people still without electricity, she said in Fiji, it means “a mother surviving birth with the lights on, and a child doing her homework after dark.”
Adaptation and money
With warming impacts already being felt, she also called for stronger protection. Early warning systems should expand, she said, because a warning that reaches a family hours before a cyclone gives them time to reach safety. Resilient infrastructure, secure water supplies and healthy ecosystems must go alongside them, and she pointed to Pacific communities already working to strengthen coastal resilience and restore marine ecosystems.
On finance, she repeated that developed countries should lead, citing the Baku to Belém Roadmap and its $1.3 trillion target. Access matters as much as volume. “A small island ministry with a handful of staff should be able to reach concessional finance quickly and simply,” she said.
Her closing line was blunt: keep the promise of Paris, fight harder, and make the tragic overshoot as small and short as possible.
