First major international conference to discuss the science behind the 1.5 °C climate goal starts today

The University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI) will host a conference attended by over 200 scientists, policymakers and business people. Findings will contribute to a Special Report on 1.5 degrees that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will produce in 2018.

CONFERENCE: ‘1.5 degrees: Meeting the challenges of the Paris Agreement’

LAUNCH: 5pm on 20 September 2016 (conference runs 20-22 Sept)

VENUE:  Oxford Town Hall, St Aldate’s, Oxford, OX1 1BX

The ambition of the 2015 Paris Agreement of the 21st Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change caught the world by surprise. The largest emitters, the United States and China, have already signed up to the agreement, which sets the goal of limiting global warming to ‘well below’ 2 degrees, with an aim possibly as low as 1.5 degrees Celsius. The University of Oxford’s Environmental Change Institute (ECI) will host a conference attended by over 200 scientists, policymakers and business people to understand its implications, looking particularly at how this goal could be achieved. Findings will contribute to a Special Report on 1.5 degrees that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will produce in 2018.

Keynote speakers launching the conference on 20 September include some of the figures behind the Paris climate agreement: Janos Pasztor, Senior Advisor to the UN Secretary-General on Climate Change; and Laurence Tubiana, French climate ambassador.

‘The Paris Agreement was a great achievement,’ says Janos Pasztor, ‘but it was only the beginning. Governments made it clear where they would like to go, but the details of how to get there still need to be worked out. Success depends on implementation: what countries do to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change. The academic community has a responsibility and an opportunity here to think outside the box and come up with new ideas on pathways and implications of rapid climate stabilisation.’

The conference was organized by the Environmental Change Institute in Oxford in collaboration with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Future Earth.

For more information about the conference, go to http://www.1point5degrees.org.uk/

For information on the Tyndall Centre contact:  r.woolliams@uea.ac.uk

"Oxford: Town Hall" by David Nicholls is licensed under CC BY NC 2.0