COP31 Offers Critical Opportunity to Put Climate Solutions to Work

This month, leaders from around the world will meet in Antalya, Turkey, for COP31, the U.N. climate change conference. One of the most pressing issues that attendees will address is the need to invest in practical climate solutions, especially ones that are already known to work.

The negotiations will be set against the backdrop of a new U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) report that finds that global temperature will almost certainly increase by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius within the next few years. In 2015, as part of the Paris Agreement on climate change, 195 nations set global goals of holding planetwide temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius as well as pursuing efforts to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius because every additional fraction of a degree increases climate-related risks for people and nature.

Although the planet is likely to temporarily exceed that goal, practical, financeable climate solutions can help limit further warming and reduce risks over time. Investments made today to modernize electric grids, expand clean energy, and protect coastal wetlands and other natural systems that buffer communities from climate impacts can cut emissions and build resilience to a warmer world.

The Pew Charitable Trusts’ work on these and other solutions—as well as innovative ways to pay for them, including debt conversions that can unlock funding for community resilience—provides key insights that can help leaders at COP31 take practical, targeted action that benefits people and nature.

Modernizing the grid can help cut emissions

The UNEP findings point to a clear opportunity: Rapidly expanding renewables offers one of the greatest opportunities to cut emissions by 2035. The report finds that limiting warming would require renewable sources to supply 60% to 70% of the world’s electricity by 2030.

In the United States, where electricity demand is expected to rise by 78% by the middle of the century, keeping power reliable and affordable will require more generation and a grid capable of delivering it. But throughout the country, 70% of transmission lines were at least 25 years old in 2023. And although new high-voltage lines are essential, they can take a decade to deploy. Fortunately, addressing this aging infrastructure and modernizing the grid does not mean building from scratch. Advanced transmission technologies (ATTs), such as sensors and stronger wires, can boost the capacity of new or existing lines by up to 110% and can be installed in as little as three months, helping wind and solar farms connect to the grid sooner.

The grid can also make better use of the clean energy already available. Distributed energy resources (DERs), such as local solar, batteries, and microgrids, that shift electricity use to match supply can also reduce waste. In a study of Germany’s energy system, demand that adjusted to supply cut peak load in half and reduced wasted renewable generation by 80%. Pew’s work on DERs has similarly found that they can help expand grid capacity—and improve affordability and resilience.

DERs can also help communities withstand disruptions from extreme weather and are already being deployed in communities throughout the U.S. to keep critical services running when the broader grid goes down. A 2026 study found that solar panels and batteries, backed by a generator, could keep a midsize hospital running through grid outages lasting 7 to 24 hours while cutting lifetime costs for such a hospital’s electric system by 9% to 14% compared with relying on the grid alone.

And because ATTs and DERs build on existing infrastructure, they can deliver energy and climate resilience benefits more efficiently and years sooner than new construction alone.

Coastal wetlands store carbon, protect against floods

Coastal wetlands, such as mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrasses, keep carbon out of the atmosphere and help communities adapt to increasing flood and extreme weather risk. Mangroves alone can store more than 1,000 metric tons of carbon per hectare on average while preventing more than $65 billion in flood damage each year and reducing flooding for about 15 million people worldwide.

But more than a third of the world’s coastal ecosystems have been lost in the past 50 years. Protecting remaining wetlands helps preserve the carbon they already store, while restoring damaged areas can help capture more carbon. Restored mangroves generally store more carbon than equivalent areas of bare tidal flats. Expanding existing mangrove area by 30% could sequester about 1.17 billion metric tons of carbon out of the atmosphere.

Throughout the Western Indian Ocean and Latin America and Caribbean regions, countries have partnered with Pew to put this approach into practice. For example, Belize’s national climate plan aims to protect 6,000 more hectares (about 15,000 acres) of mangroves by 2030 and another 2,000—for a total of 8,000 hectares (nearly 20,000 acres)—by 2035. In August, Belize and the Turneffe Atoll Trust agreed to place about 6,900 hectares (17,000 acres) of the atoll’s mangroves in an irrevocable conservation trust, exceeding the 2030 goal and achieving most of the 2035 goal. Pew has provided scientific research and technical policy assistance to help Belize develop and implement its mangrove and seagrass conservation goals. With this foundation in place, sustainable financing approaches can help ensure that these ecosystems remain protected over the long term.

Conservation finance can make commitments last

Commitments such as Belize’s need durable funding. According to the UNEP report, in 2030, global climate finance needs to be three to six times higher than current levels to meet the Paris Agreement targets for limiting warming. At COP29, governments set a goal of mobilizing at least $300 billion a year in climate finance for developing economies by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead, and called for the scaling up of public and private climate finance to at least $1.3 trillion a year by 2035. Financial tools such as debt conversions, sustainability-linked bonds, and project finance for permanence agreements can help narrow this gap:

• Debt conversions can generate savings and funding for climate solutions. In 2023, with support from Pew Bertarelli Ocean Legacy and others, Ecuador converted $1.6 billion in commercial debt into a new $656 million loan tied to conservation. The deal is expected to save the country more than $1 billion in borrowing costs and generate more than $450 million over 20 years for conservation of the Galápagos and Hermandad marine reserves. Debt conversions can also be deployed to help countries with high debt and climate risks fund their climate resilience commitments without adding to their debt burdens.
• Sustainability-linked bonds are another important climate financing tool. They enable countries to raise flexible capital on favorable terms, while creating a powerful financial incentive for borrowing countries to meet climate and conservation goals. Early this year, Chile’s 1.5-billion-euro (US$1.7-billion) bond included incentives tied to its climate and biodiversity targets, such as protecting at least 30% of its land by 2030.
• The project finance for permanence (PFP) model brings communities, partner organizations, donors, and governments together to secure long-term financing for shared conservation and development goals. Large-scale conservation challenges require large-scale solutions, and PFP models are proven mechanisms to deliver durable protection across whole seascapes and landscapes. Pew is a founding member of Enduring Earth, a collaboration created to expand this approach globally. In Canada, Pew has worked with Indigenous governments, Inuit leaders, and their partners to support the locally led planning and launch of PFP agreements, including Our Land for the Future in the Northwest Territories and SINAA in Nunavut’s Qikiqtani region. Pew is also collaborating with partners to explore potential PFP in Panama, the eastern tropical Pacific, and Botswana.

At COP31, world leaders will have a critical opportunity to make good on their climate commitments by investing in a modern grid, coastal wetlands, and financing tools to support solutions over the long term.

Courtney Durham Shane advances The Pew Charitable Trusts’ work on energy and conservation policy across sectors and political perspectives at the subnational, national, and international levels in support of practical, durable solutions.