Pacific pushing for 1.5 degree commitment at COP 22

Pacific Island nations at the United Nations climate negotiations are leading the call for a global warming limit of 1.5 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels.

RNZ reports they are meeting at the COP 22 meeting in Morocco.

The Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) said the chant of "1.5 to stay alive" has been given wider recognition within the Paris Agreement, which was produced at last year's COP meeting.

SPREP said that by 2018, a special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and the related global greenhouse gas emissions will be released, giving further weight to the chants of "1.5 to stay alive".

It said the special report on the impacts will bring all the relevant science together under the IPCC, the UN body that is assessing the science related to climate change.