AOSIS rejects calls to abandon 1.5°C goal amid overshoot warning

The Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) is warn­ing gov­ern­ments not to treat the pos­si­bil­i­ty of glob­al tem­per­a­tures ex­ceed­ing 1.5°C as a rea­son to aban­don the cli­mate tar­get, fol­low­ing the re­lease of a new Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme re­port on lim­it­ing tem­per­a­ture over­shoot.

In a state­ment is­sued in New York on Wednes­day, AO­SIS said 1.5°C is not an ar­bi­trary tar­get that coun­tries can aban­don, but a tem­per­a­ture lim­it they com­mit­ted to pur­sue un­der the Paris Agree­ment.

The al­liance said the goal is ground­ed in the need to pro­tect peo­ple and the plan­et from the most dan­ger­ous im­pacts of cli­mate change and point­ed to the In­ter­na­tion­al Court of Jus­tice's recog­ni­tion of coun­tries' le­gal oblig­a­tions to pro­tect the cli­mate sys­tem.