As COP31 Leaders meet today, what counts as climate progress?

As heads of state and government gather in Antalya for the COP31 Leaders’ Summit, the world is entering an era of climate overshoot. UNEP’s September 2026 Limiting Overshoot report concludes that long-term warming is likely to exceed 1.5°C within the next few years. But exceeding 1.5°C does not mean the Paris Agreement’s long-term temperature goal is beyond reach. New analysis from Climate Analytics shows that, with the highest possible ambition, warming could peak at around 1.7°C by mid-century and return below 1.5°C by 2100. Doing so would require a rapid fossil fuel phase-out, accelerated renewables and energy efficiency, steep methane reductions, action to halt deforestation and increased carbon dioxide removal. The task is not to abandon 1.5°C, but to limit the magnitude and duration of overshoot and create a credible pathway back below it.

“Overshoot is not surrender,” UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in response to UNEP’s Emissions Gap Report 2026: The Point of Return. The report projects around 2.8°C of warming this century under current policies, compared with 2.6°C if countries fully deliver their nationally determined contributions and sustain comparable efforts thereafter. The immediate priority is rapid and sustained emissions reductions.

Assessing the distance between ambition and delivery is central to the Paris Agreement’s Global Stocktake, which reviews collective progress and informs stronger action. The first Stocktake, concluded at COP28 in 2023, recognised progress but found that the world was not on track to meet the Agreement’s long-term goals.

As COP31 focuses increasingly on practical implementation, this demands a more careful account of what we call progress. Commitments can demonstrate greater ambition, but they are not, on their own, evidence of delivery. A policy may have been adopted without being implemented and implementation may have begun without yet producing the intended results. Distinguishing these stages helps establish what needs to happen next.

Finance is integral to that assessment. Article 2 of the Paris Agreement connects limiting warming, strengthening adaptation and, under Article 2.1(c), making financial flows consistent with low-emissions, climate-resilient development. Financing the transition is therefore part of the Agreement’s purpose, not a separate consideration. For sustainable finance, the question becomes more specific: are commitments translating into policy implementation, and what does the available evidence tell us about financial outcomes?

Looking beyond the existence of policies

The Sustainable Finance Progress (SFP) framework offers one way to examine these questions at country level. ZeniZeni Sustainable Finance worked closely with the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) on the South African pilot. Co-led by the Institute for Climate Economics (I4CE) and Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, the initiative also piloted the framework in Brazil, France, Germany and Indonesia.

The framework examines commitments, policy implementation and financial outcomes together. It considers whether policies exist, their ambition and application, and available evidence on the scale and allocation of finance. And it remains “a framework in the making”, with the pilots being a first step in refining its methodology and financial-outcome evidence, and therefore does not yet directly assess emissions impacts or establish that individual policies caused particular financial outcomes.

Preliminary findings from testing completed in April 2026 reveal different obstacles to implementation. In South Africa, strong commitments coexisted with fragmented financing arrangements and only partially quantified financing needs. Indonesia’s strategies and disclosure arrangements were accompanied by coordination challenges across institutions. In France, a multi-year financing strategy coexisted with a substantial climate investment gap and no binding financing roadmap.

Our reading of the findings is that a developed policy framework is not the same as a financed implementation pathway. Completing a financing plan, clarifying institutional responsibilities and addressing an investment shortfall require different responses. A useful assessment makes these distinctions visible.

Beyond organisational net-zero targets

The distinction between commitment and delivery also informs our net-zero work. In our series, Building a Net Zero Transition Governance Architecture, we explore why organisational targets need to be supported by credible transition plans, implementation and demonstrated progress.

Through our collaboration with Oxford Net Zero, we are engaging with how these expectations are defined and advanced, including through the draft standard ISO/DIS 14060. Still under development, it seeks to establish requirements for credible and verifiable organisational progress towards global net zero in line with the Paris Agreement.

For banks and investors, this matters when assessing whether the activities they finance support a credible transition because an organisation’s target alone cannot answer that question.

Evidence that informs action

For ZeniZeni, the purpose of assessing progress is to inform the next decision through better disclosure. However, better disclosure may reveal a financing shortfall, but it cannot close it. So as leaders meet at COP31, the priority is to identify and address the practical obstacles to delivering and implementing the goals of the Paris Agreement while preserving the ambition needed to bring global warming back below 1.5°C.

Because the ultimate test of progress is whether commitments translate into action at the scale needed to deliver sustained emissions reductions and greater resilience.