Australia and Turkey share Cop31 presidency as coal reliance draws scrutiny

Delegates aim for 35% of final energy demand from electricity by 2035

Cop31, this year’s United Nations climate summit, opens on Monday 9 November in Antalya, Turkey, under a split presidency that divides the job between coal exporter Australia and coal-dependent Turkey. The talks carry a target on the table to meet 35% of final energy demand from electricity by 2035, according to the Guardian’s preview of the negotiations.

The dual arrangement is the product of a last-minute compromise struck at last year’s Cop30 in Belém, reached after both countries pursued the rotating presidency. For reasons dating to the signing of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992, Australia and Turkey bid from the same regional group as western Europe — one of five groups between which the presidency rotates each year — and the treaty contains no mechanism for resolving a contest between two claimants and no provision for a majority vote, the Guardian reported. Despite that start, the two governments seem to have worked well together in the run-up.

Australia has sought to host a Cop since 2021, when Anthony Albanese made the bid one of his key promises ahead of the general election he won the following year. As Cop31 president of negotiations, Australia will chair the formal talks, covering the “just transition” to help fossil fuel workers adjust to a low-carbon economy, the loss and damage fund — which has come into renewed focus after a catastrophic glacier collapse in Nepal — other forms of climate finance and progress on emissions cuts.

Turkey, which has long wanted to host and said it had agreed with the UK — hosts of the Glasgow Cop26 summit in 2021 — that 2026 would be its year, takes charge of the “action agenda”, a programme of voluntary commitments running alongside the formal negotiations. Electrifying the global economy is this year’s central plank, and the agenda also includes initiatives on cutting waste and methane, causes the Guardian described as favourites of Turkey’s first lady, Emine Erdoğan.

The summit is the first major international meeting since several consequential elections: the US midterms, which went badly for Donald Trump and the Republicans, and Brazil’s presidential election, won by Lula da Silva. The Guardian called Lula’s victory a relief for the Amazon, arguing his opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, would likely have opened the rainforest up to further rampant exploitation. The gathering is also the final Cop for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, who has used his two terms in the job to speak out on the climate; Guardian correspondent Fiona Harvey anticipated a “fiery farewell.”

Harvey judged the geopolitical outlook for Cop31 worse than for almost any recent summit, citing conflicts in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza destabilising global alliances, economic uncertainty from an unpredictable White House, and artificial intelligence threatening to unleash “digitised chaos.” An El Niño weather system supercharged by fossil fuels, she wrote, is already wreaking havoc and has yet to peak — in her assessment, the climate is showing where the real potential for catastrophe lies.

Citing the latest UN reports, Harvey wrote that delegates would do well to study what it will take to minimise the now-inevitable overshoot of the 1.5C threshold: preventing temperatures from rising beyond 1.8C would require massive and urgent cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, while global carbon emissions have yet to peak. In her words, “phasing out fossil fuels has never been so urgent.”

Both hosts’ reliance on fossil fuels is set to come under scrutiny in Antalya, according to the preview. Australia’s Cop31 president of negotiations, Chris Bowen, told the Guardian at the mid-year climate talks in Bonn in June that Australia could begin shifting its reliance on fossil fuel exports toward clean electricity — but he refused to put any kind of end date on coal.

Coal remains Turkey’s biggest source of power despite a push for renewable energy, and the country’s national climate plan allows for an increase in greenhouse gas emissions rather than a cut, the Guardian reported.

Fifty frontline organisations from Turkey, Australia and other coal regions around the world wrote to the Cop presidents this week to call for an end to coal mining and use. Mehmet Dalkanat of the Afşin-Elbistan Platform for the Protection of Life and Nature in Turkey said: “People in Afşin-Elbistan have lived with coal for 40 years and have already paid a heavy price in pollution and the impacts of coal.” He pointed to the July cancellation of plans to expand the country’s largest coal-fired power plant, calling it “a major victory for local communities who have been fighting for years, and a powerful source of hope for a coal-free future,” and said: “The Cop31 presidencies must build on this local victory to accelerate the phaseout of coal and deliver a just transition.”

The Guardian noted that freedom of expression is curtailed in Turkey — as it has been in three of the previous four Cop host countries — and anticipated more such protests in Antalya as the negotiations proceed.