UNEP's 'Limiting Overshoot' Report Warns of Hotter Future, but Says Immediate Fossil Fuel Cuts Could Still Change the Course

UNEP's new Limiting Overshoot report confirms that the world is now set to cross 1.5°C. To an outsider, that can sound like a number moving on a chart. For Pacific people, it is not new information, it is a confirmation of a reality we have been living, and warning the world about, for years, despite having contributed the least to the crisis that is now taking our homes.

"This report is terrifying for the young people of the Pacific," said Vishal Prasad, Director at PISFCC. "We know what 1.5, and what anything beyond it, means for our future, our families, our culture and our environment. 1.5 to stay alive has never been just a slogan. It is our reality."

We grieve that. But our grief is not our surrender, and this report is not permission for states to slow down, still less for the fossil fuel industry to keep expanding while our coastlines disappear. If anything, it sharpens the case we won in law at the world’s highest court.

The International Court of Justice has already told the world that 1.5°C is not merely an aspirational target. It is the agreed primary temperature goal, and states are legally bound to pursue it. States carry a stringent due diligence obligation to protect the climate system, an obligation the Court made clear does not soften as the risk grows, but rises with the probability and severity of the harm foreseen. The Advisory Opinion named what that means in practice: continued fossil fuel production, licensing and subsidies may amount to an internationally wrongful act. 

"The ICJ has made it clear: keeping to 1.5 is not a choice, it is a legal obligation," Prasad said. "Every new fossil fuel project drives us further from it. So we are not asking for your goodwill. We are not begging you. We are telling you what international law requires of you: end fossil fuel expansion. No new coal, no new oil, no new gas. Your corporate profits cannot be allowed to extinguish our future."

Belyndar Rikimani, Campaigns and Research Lead at PISFCC, said the report lands as a familiar kind of disappointment. "This report is deeply disappointing — not because the science is new, but because it shows, once again, how the world is failing to act with the urgency this crisis demands. For us in the Pacific, climate overshoot is not an abstract future scenario or a number in a report. We are already living through rising temperatures and seas, coastal erosion, increasingly frequent and severe disasters, and the erosion of the very conditions that make life on our islands possible."

UNEP's report sets out the one path still open: overshoot 1.5°C, then bring temperatures back down as fast as possible. Every year of delay, every fraction of a degree above 1.5°C, and every new fossil fuel project narrows that path further and deepens the loss that is already locked in.

"Overshoot must never become an excuse for surrender or for lowering ambition," Rikimani said. "The question is no longer whether we can afford urgent and ambitious climate action, but whether the world is prepared to finally act before even more irreversible loss and harm is locked in. UNEP's report must be a wake-up call — not another report that states acknowledge while continuing business as usual. For us in the Pacific, there is no version of 'later' that can undo what has already been lost."

PISFCC continues to call on states to treat this report as confirmation that curbing this crisis requires the fulfilment of the legal duties already set out in the Advisory Opinion on Climate Change, and to turn that legal clarity into real, accelerated action now.

We are used to having to fight to be heard. Today we mourn what human delay is set to take from us. Tomorrow we get back up, and keep fighting for a world where the Pacific still stands, scarred, but not lost.

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About PISFCC

The Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) is a youth-led organisation established in 2019 by 27 law students at the University of the South Pacific. Confronted by the inadequacy of political action on a crisis that threatens the existence of our nations, we launched a campaign to seek an Advisory Opinion from the International Court of Justice on States' obligations in respect of climate change.

That campaign persuaded the Government of Vanuatu to lead it, built a cross-regional coalition of States, and secured a UN General Assembly resolution by consensus in March 2023 requesting the Opinion. On 23 July 2025, the Court delivered a robust and comprehensive ruling on climate change - unanimously. In May 2026, the General Assembly endorsed it by 141 votes to 8. PISFCC is the organisation that started this, and it has stayed with it at every stage: the written and oral proceedings, the mobilisation around delivery, and now leads the campaign to operationalise the Advisory Opinion to realise climate justice for Pacific peoples.

Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change (PISFCC) is a Pacific youth-led climate justice organisation born from a classroom of law students at the University of the South Pacific and later moving into spaces such as The Hague, The United Nations, COPs, and more. PISFCC continues to champion Pacific youth leadership in international climate governance and looks to achieve a climate-just future for all. 

Media Contact

Francine Valmaria Elisaia | Digital Media Lead | francine@pisfcc.org | +685 7526986