Iceland and Monaco: Ambition on Melting Ice Ministers

Ministers call on greater progress at COP29 in Baku to keep warming to 1.5°C to avert disastrous global loss and damage from ice melt. As the climate negotiations enter their end phase, members of the Ambition on Melting Ice High-level Group (AMI) on Sea-level Rise and Mountain Water Resources called on all countries to make greater progress at COP29, given sharpening risks of irreversible impacts from cryosphere loss.
The statement from AMI ministers said that the latest cryosphere science underscores the need for transformative climate action by 2030 to avert “destabilization, disruption and displacement at global scales” - all because of growing loss of the planet’s vital ice stores. “Latest science points to feedbacks from polar and mountain regions from our current emissions trajectory that will have extreme and irreversible economic, social and environmental consequences throughout the planet,” said the joint statement, descrying the lack of progress.
“As a scientist, these impacts terrify me, said Dr. James Kirkham, AMI Chief Scientist. “But what terrifies me more is that the pace of global action to address these threats remains light-years away from what the science unanimously says we must do to minimize the global damage that continues to grow hour by hour.”
“Ice stores in our mountains are our fundamental life support system,” said Secretary Deepak Kharal, Government of Nepal. “On one side of the earth, ice is melting from the high altitudes. On the other side of the earth, countries are sinking into the ocean….in coming days, we need to work together to solve this.”
The AMI statement noted that science makes clear that the only way to avert and slow these global impacts from cryosphere loss is to implement rapid carbon emissions cuts, fully consistent with the lower 1.5°C Paris Agreement goal. Countries are due to update their climate targets or “Nationally Determined Contributions” (NDCs) early in 2025. “1.5°C is not [just] an option. We have to do it…but the window is very nearly closing,” stated Minister Céline Caron-Dagioni of Monaco.
Ambassador Julio Cordano, AMI Co-chair and Head of Delegation for Chile said that, “With the new scientific information that we have available, we need to increase ambition and mitigation in order to contain the ripple effects that loss of cryosphere will have in many economic and social domains.” The State of the Cryosphere 2024 report, published last week at COP29, warns that current climate commitments, leading the world to well over 2°C of warming, would bring disastrous and irreversible consequences for billions of people from global ice loss. Over 50 leading cryosphere scientists contributed to the annual report on the status of the world’s ice stores, coordinated by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative (ICCI), which serves as the AMI Secretariat.

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