Can Cop31 in Turkey put the fight against climate change back on top of the world's agenda?

Tens of thousands of negotiators, activists, scientists and lobbyists will gather in the Turkish city of Antalya for the Cop31 climate change conference from November 9 to 20. The event comes three years after Cop28 in Dubai, which broke new ground by being the first to explicitly call for the world to <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/climate/cop28/2023/12/13/countries-strike-historic-cop28-deal-to-avert-climate-catastrophe/" target="_blank" rel="" title="https://www.thenationalnews.com/climate/cop28/2023/12/13/countries-strike-historic-cop28-deal-to-avert-climate-catastrophe/">transition away from fossil fuels</a>.

At the close of the 2023 conference at Expo City Dubai, Simon Stiell, the UN climate change executive secretary, heralded the final agreement as “the beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. But subsequent events, notably last year's gathering in Brazil, have been seen by some as having <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/climate/2025/11/22/final-deal-at-cop30-stops-short-of-commitment-to-phase-out-fossil-fuels/" target="_blank" rel="" title="https://www.thenationalnews.com/climate/2025/11/22/final-deal-at-cop30-stops-short-of-commitment-to-phase-out-fossil-fuels/">failed to push the agenda forward</a>.

Also, with the US, the world’s second-biggest greenhouse-gas emitter, having <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/us/2025/01/21/paris-climate-agreement-trump/" target="_blank" rel="" title="https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/us/2025/01/21/paris-climate-agreement-trump/">withdrawn from the 2015 Paris Agreement</a> on climate change, and with a backlash against climate action spreading to other nations, efforts to limit such emissions face political headwinds.

Negotiations at Cop31 are being presided over by Australia, which alongside the host country has proposed a “35 by 35” global target of 35 per cent of total energy consumption being provided by electricity by 2035. Also at Cop31, under a framework set up through the Paris Agreement, the second Global Stocktake – a review of progress made towards achieving the agreement’s goals – will be launched. As part of this, countries are expected to submit their latest Nationally Determined Contributions – plans to cut emissions and deal with the effects of climate change.

Asher Minns, executive director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia in the UK, said global progress in reducing emissions was not where it was supposed to be to keep to the aims of the Paris Agreement. This deal was forged at Cop21 with the aim of limiting global temperature increases to no more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, a goal now widely seen as out of reach. Nevertheless, Mr Minns said the picture regarding climate action was “not as bleak” as it might appear, with “a lot of action going on” and much change being driven by technology in the face of political reluctance.

“There’s a realignment of priorities to do with signals from government and economies not doing as well as they would like to do if there was exponential growth, [but] there’s a lot of action going on,” he said. Sam Fankhauser, professor of climate change economics and policy at the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and Environment, said market economics were promoting the spread of renewable energy, which has become much cheaper, and electrified transport.

Separate to the main Cop negotiations, he said there was now more of a development of coalitions of countries pushing for climate action. “Smaller coalitions – they will probably start to get stuff done. We see this working in parallel [to the Cop process],” he said. He warned, though, of a risk of a “bipolar” transition, in which some nations pushed ahead with emissions reductions, while others, including the US, resisted. Although “the world is not in co-operation”, there had been progress in dealing with carbon emissions, indicated Dr Niklas Hoehne, co-founder of the NewClimate Institute, a research organisation in Germany.

“There are a few countries that have moved forward – France, the Netherlands and Germany have provided road maps,” he said, referring to plans the three nations have published this year outlining how they intend to transition from fossil fuels. “There’s new momentum for countries to do that by [promoting] renewables and electrification. Especially with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, there’s been an extra push away from fossil fuels.”

Energy analysts, too, have highlighted the importance of the recent turmoil in the Gulf in promoting the transition, although there are concerns that <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/energy/2026/10/09/iran-war-drives-south-east-asia-towards-renewables-but-investment-falls-short/" target="_blank" rel="" title="https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/energy/2026/10/09/iran-war-drives-south-east-asia-towards-renewables-but-investment-falls-short/">a lack of energy storage</a> is acting as a brake on the move to renewables.

An “energy security imperative” is “rejuvenating the rationale for the transition” despite political pushback, according to Dr Jim Krane, energy research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute in Houston, in the US. “For countries that are importing oil and gas and refined fuels, right now these things are tough to find and getting more and more expensive,” he said. “Finally there’s a substitute in some uses of that. Oil had a monopoly on the transport sector.

Now the growth of battery-powered vehicles is creating a possibility to substitute from oil-powered vehicles.” Dr Krane noted a major push by Chinese electric-vehicle (EV) manufacturers into sub-Saharan Africa, a region that was “supposed to be the growth market for oil and gas”. “These countries are being inundated with solar panels and battery vehicles,” he said. “Long-term oil and gas demand is affected.” Within the world’s biggest emitter, China – which accounts for more than half of global coal use – Dr Krane said the spread of solar power was limiting demand for coal.

Last year China’s coal-fired electricity generation fell 1.9 per cent, according to a report by Wood Mackenzie, which said “new non-fossil generation … has finally outpaced demand growth”. Dr Krane said: “Coal is starting to become a back-up for solar in China in some small ways. Eventually the growth of solar and renewables and nuclear will start to reduce the use of coal.” He cautioned, however, that demand in India and South-East Asia was “still growing pretty rapidly”.

While global carbon emissions hit an all-time high in 2025, analysis by CarbonBrief indicates they are likely to fall by about 0.5 per cent this year, although this is largely attributed to the effects of restrictions on oil travelling through the Strait of Hormuz. A slight increase in coal demand this year is, CarbonBrief states, more than offset by falls in the use of gas and, in particular, oil. There have been previous declines in global carbon emissions, notably during the Covid-19 pandemic and, overall, emissions have largely plateaued but not yet fallen significantly.

The World Meteorological Organisation recently announced that in 2025 the average concentration in the surface atmosphere of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, was 426.8 parts per million (ppm), 53 per cent higher than before the large-scale burning of fossil fuels began. Between 2011 and 2020, the concentration rose by 2.4 ppm per year on average, three times the annual increase during the 1960s. Since Cop26 in Glasgow in 2021 there have been fewer “bold announcements” by governments on climate, said Lauri Myllyvirta, a lead analyst for the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and a senior fellow at the Asia Society.

“But on the other hand, more on the ground level, the energy transition has accelerated – especially solar, electric vehicles, energy storage have been deployed at far larger rates and volumes than anyone predicted,” he said. “The engineers and the businesses and the consumers have overdelivered, but the politicians have underdelivered and politicians are much more playing catch up … so national energy plans and national climate targets lag behind in most cases what’s already happening on the ground.

“China is one very clear example of that … China’s emissions are on a very different trajectory than they were after 2023 [when they surged after the Covid-19 pandemic]. The era of rapid emissions increases from China is definitely over.” Although the world has failed to cut emissions to the extent hoped for in the Paris Agreement, the Cop process remains useful as a way for countries to meet and indicate their willingness to act on climate issues, Dr Hoehne indicated.

Dr Hoehne, who will be attending his 29th Cop next month, said without the annual process “we would be in a much worse place”. “They may be disappointing because they’re not doing the full job, but they have a signalling function … [that] the whole world minus one are moving to renewables. “ … I hope this conference can give a push to the idea we need to move away from fossil fuels and towards electric vehicles, heating systems and industrial processes,” Dr Hoehne added.

Echoing this, Prof Fankhauser said that without the Cop gatherings, the world would be “even worse off” when it came to dealing with climate change.