COP31 offers chance to turn climate pledges into action, UN official says

'COP31 is a COP that needs to deliver on the pledges, the commitments and the promises that have been made,' UNEP climate chief Martin Krause tells Anadolu Phasing out fossil fuels, cutting methane emissions, increasing adaptation financing among priorities for Antalya summit We cannot ignore at COP31 the messages that are coming from climate scientists,' Krause warns amid growing misinformation The upcoming UN climate summit in Türkiye offers a chance to turn years of promises into action by cutting emissions, phasing out fossil fuels and helping countries adapt to a warming world, a senior UN Environment Programme (UNEP) official told Anadolu.

"COP31 is a COP that needs to deliver on the pledges, the commitments and the promises that have been made," said Martin Krause, director of UNEP's Climate Change Division. The 31st UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) will take place Nov. 9-20 in Antalya, Türkiye, bringing together world leaders, government officials and other stakeholders to advance international climate action. Nearly 11 years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement, which aims to keep global warming well below 2C (3.6F) above preindustrial levels while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5C (2.7F), Krause warned that recent UNEP analyses showed the world remained on course for warming well above that threshold.

The October 2026 Emissions Gap Report found that full implementation of current national climate commitments would still leave the world on a path toward approximately 2.6C (4.7F) of warming this century. The first step to implementing commitments is gradually phasing out fossil fuels across the energy, transport and industrial sectors, Krause said, calling for clear national plans to eliminate coal first, followed by oil and natural gas.

He also highlighted cooling measures such as shading and natural ventilation, alongside improvements in urban planning and infrastructure, to help communities cope with extreme heat. Cutting methane emissions, better waste management Krause identified methane reduction as an area where countries could make significant progress using existing solutions. "Methane emissions contribute substantially to global warming, and we have a lot of solutions to curb and reduce them, in the fossil fuel sector, the waste sector and the agricultural sector,” he said.

“This is low-hanging fruit.” Describing methane reduction as an "emergency brake for runaway climate change," Krause said COP31 could help accelerate efforts to curb emissions. He also highlighted waste management as an area where the summit could deliver tangible progress, pointing to its prominence on Türkiye's agenda. Türkiye's COP31 presidency has identified 10 priority areas for climate action, with waste management at the top of the list.

"Landfills are a major source of methane emissions. If we can capture the methane that is released by landfills, goes into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming, or even better, if we can prevent food waste from going into landfills in the first place, then we have done a lot to mitigate climate change," he said. Krause said UNEP fully supported Türkiye's focus on waste management and viewed COP31 as an opportunity to accelerate action.

Climate science must guide COP31 decisions Krause outlined three main priorities for UNEP at COP31, placing climate science at the top of the agenda. He urged political leaders, private sector representatives and other participants to heed scientists' warnings, particularly amid growing misinformation about climate change. "We should not, and we cannot, ignore at COP31 the messages that are coming from climate scientists. And this is not a given anymore, because there is a lot of misinformation about climate change out there in the world," he said.

Krause said ensuring that scientific evidence guides negotiations and decisions at the summit would be a major achievement. UNEP's second priority is accelerating emissions cuts to limit global warming, he said, warning that greenhouse gas emissions have yet to peak, let alone begin declining. "We need to bend that curve and go down. It is very important that we accelerate the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions," he said. The third priority is climate adaptation, as countries prepare for the growing impacts of global warming, including extreme heat, floods, melting glaciers and thawing permafrost.

Krause said stronger resilience measures would be essential as the world confronts the consequences of exceeding the 1.5C threshold. He expressed hope that COP31 would send a strong signal in support of increased adaptation financing and faster implementation of measures to protect vulnerable communities. However, he said existing mechanisms, including the Green Climate Fund and the Global Environment Facility, were insufficient to meet the scale of investment needed.

Calling for additional resources, he pointed to national budgets and private sector investment as potential sources of funding. "Each country has a public budget, and if a measure falls under, for example, the ministry of agriculture, it can be funded through regular domestic budgets,” he said. “Then there is private sector money: investments in companies providing clean solutions," he added. Türkiye's climate action, international cooperation Krause highlighted the steps Türkiye has taken over the past five to 10 years to tackle the climate crisis, citing the adoption of its Climate Law, net-zero targets and ongoing work on an emissions trading system.

He also stressed that developing and least developed countries face some of the greatest impacts of global warming despite having limited resources to respond. Questions remain over contributions to the Loss and Damage Fund, the amount of financing required and how support should reach the countries most affected, he said. Krause, who plans to attend the two-week summit in Antalya, emphasized the importance of international cooperation in addressing the climate crisis.

"Although we are living in a deeply divided world at the moment, we have to show that international cooperation and multilateralism can deliver a credible response to the climate crisis,” he said. ​​​​​​​