ANTALYA, Turkey — World leaders are gathering in Antalya for a two-day summit at the COP31 climate conference, the first big test of political will at a meeting that organizers have billed as an “implementation COP” — one judged on delivery rather than new promises.
The 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference opened on Monday, November 9, and runs through November 20 at the Antalya Expo Center. The World Leaders’ Summit, scheduled for November 11 and 12, is expected to bring together 102 heads of state and government and about 300 ministers, with nearly 200 countries represented at the talks overall.
Turkey holds the COP31 presidency, with Environment Minister Murat Kurum as president, while Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen serves as President of Negotiations, a joint arrangement that followed an earlier dispute between the two countries over hosting rights. It is the first time Turkey has hosted and presided over the annual UN climate summit.
The meeting is the first COP since the United States left the Paris Agreement earlier this year, and it opens against a backdrop of war-driven energy security fears, surging electricity demand from artificial intelligence, and disasters linked to human-caused global warming. Negotiators say no landmark treaty text is expected; instead, the conference is expected to be mostly technical, focused on turning previously announced national climate plans into action.
On the agenda are climate finance for vulnerable countries, the transition away from fossil fuels, indicators to measure progress on adapting to climate change, and the operationalization of a just transition mechanism to coordinate decarbonization. An official Antalya Ocean Declaration is also expected to be among the outcomes, alongside pledges on electrification, food security, methane and waste reduction, and green industrialization.
Loss and damage funding is in focus after devastating floods in Nepal, to which the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage has provisionally allocated $20 million. Small island and climate-vulnerable states, whose concerns were elevated at a pre-COP meeting in Fiji in early October and a leaders’ event in Tuvalu, are pressing for the money to reach them faster.
Among the leaders associated with the summit are Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. French President Emmanuel Macron will not attend. Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Tarique Rahman arrived in Antalya on Tuesday for a three-day visit, is scheduled to meet Erdoğan and to address a plenary session on Thursday.
The real test, negotiators say, will come in the second week, when decisions on climate finance, the electrification pledge and a fossil-fuel roadmap will show whether COP31 can move from promises to delivery. Until then, the leaders’ summit is the first chance for heads of government to set the tone — and for the countries most exposed to a warming climate to measure how seriously their warnings are being heard.
Source: Anadolu Agency; Le Monde
