Amsterdam – Greenpeace has called on governments meeting at the UN climate change conference COP31 next week to take urgent action to transition away from fossil fuels and step up climate finance as two major reports warned of the growing risk to the world's cryosphere from global heating.
The reports from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI) outlined the large-scale and in many cases irreversible impacts to the the world's melting ice sheets, permafrost, glaciers and sea ice as the global temperature edges towards an overshoot of the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C global warming goal.
Dr. Jerry Jose, Senior Scientist at the Greenpeace International Science Unit said: "The accelerating loss of ice is an emergency demanding immediate and far-reaching action to limit the extent and duration of a 1.5°C overshoot. What we must understand is that the impacts to the cryosphere during overshoot are irreversible in most cases in human relevant time scales and will have global implications.
"What was once viewed as a far-off consequence of climate change, the world's melting ice is now impacting everyday life: accelerated global sea-level rise, reduced water security and worsening mountain hazards. The question now is how fast these changes will happen and what decisions governments take to reduce the rate of ice loss and avoid the worst impacts of overshoot."
The reports, Overshoot and the Cryosphere: Averting Global Meltdown - a 'thematic' companion to the UNEP's recent Limiting Overshoot Report - and the accompanying report State of the Cryosphere 2026, examine the impacts of overshoot on the cryosphere and outline the threats which may exceed the limits of adaptation and cause extensive loss and damage.[1]
In combination, the UNEP and ICCI reports detail a range of actions to reduce global temperatures down from overshoot to slow down the rate of sea-level rise to an 'adaptable' level, potentially halt and partially reverse glacier, snowpack and sea ice loss and to limit the damage from impacts such as the destabilisation of permafrost.
Avinash Kumar, Deputy Program Director at Greenpeace South Asia said: "These reports highlight how the heartbreaking tragedy from the glacier collapse in Nepal might not be the last and reinforce why action is needed now more than ever. More than 1,500 lives were lost in the August mudslide and although the UN's Loss and Damage fund has contributed USD$20 million in aid for Nepal, the reconstruction bill is close to USD$5 billion. This is what climate injustice looks like.[2]
"But the costs of global inaction should not be borne by the families, communities and governments of nations struggling to recover from one disaster after another. Instead, all governments around the world must respond to disasters like this not only with emergency relief, but also with action to prevent the next one and that starts at COP31."
At COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, Greenpeace is calling for concrete progress on the just transition away from fossil fuels, alongside scaled up climate finance to fund the transition in developing countries, making those most responsible for climate pollution pay for the crisis they've caused. Greenpeace is also calling for the implementation of developed countries' commitment to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035, aligning with the $120 billion Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) agreed at COP30 in 2025.[3]
