Representatives from around the world will gather in Antalya, Turkey, from November 9 to 20 for the thirty-first Conference of the Parties (COP31) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Although it is an annual event, this year’s climate summit is notable for two reasons: first, it coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Paris Agreement entering into force; and second, the United States—the world’s second-largest and historically biggest emitter, which formally withdrew from the agreement at the start of this year—will not send an official delegation. (Members of Congress and US businesses will still attend.)
With the legacy of the Paris Agreement in question, COP31 president Murat Kurum has set the goal of moving beyond climate pledges to the concrete implementation of existing commitments. Alongside the formal COP agenda, Kurum has introduced an Action Agenda organised around 10 themes, including the clean energy transition and electrification, zero waste and methane reduction, and climate-resilient cities. The COP31 presidency has also put forward voluntary pledges, including a 35-by-35 pledge aimed at increasing electricity’s share of total energy consumption to 35% by 2035—up from 23% today—as well as a commitment encouraging countries, corporations and investors to make artificial intelligence (AI) more sustainable.
COP31 comes after three decades of work on climate change. Major concrete outcomes are not expected, but hope remains that parties can press forward on goals such as methane emissions reductions, adaptation and finance, and accelerating the implementation of existing COP agreements.
What progress has been made since the Paris Agreement?
There are achievements to be celebrated at COP31. When the Paris Agreement was negotiated in 2015, the world was on track to experience catastrophic warming of 3.7°C–4.8°C (6.7°F–8.6°F) by 2100. Thanks to policy shifts and the growth of clean energy, including a spectacular increase in global solar capacity by 2025 to over 10 times what it was in 2015, projected warming by the end of the century has fallen.
Under current policies, temperatures are now expected to rise by around 2.8°C (5.0°F), or around 2.6°C (4.7°F), if the most recent climate commitments are fully implemented. This is still an extremely dangerous level of warming, but bending the curve downward by a degree spares the Earth from some of the worst consequences of climate change. The heat is already beginning to bite: August 2026 joined July 2023 as the hottest month on record globally.
What’s on the agenda at COP31?
The summit in Antalya will cover familiar points of discussion from previous COPs, including climate finance, greater emissions reduction and funding for loss and damage in countries that have contributed the least to climate change. Of these, finance will likely prove the most contentious issue on the formal negotiating agenda.
Climate finance. Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement states that developed countries “shall provide” financial resources to developing nations “with respect to both mitigation and adaptation”—but who pays, in what form, and how much are matters of long-standing debate. At COP31, developing nations will continue pressing developed countries to deliver on existing funding commitments, including the COP29 goal to mobilise at least $300bn per year in climate finance by 2035 and the COP30 call to at least triple adaptation finance over the same period. Developed countries provided and mobilised a record $136.7bn in climate finance in 2024, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Although developing nations are seeking faster and larger payouts and note that loans can add to debt distress, developed nations are under financial stress from increased fuel costs.
Fossil fuels. How to treat fossil fuels is a recurring point of contention at recent COPs. At COP30, the parties failed to formalise a roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, even though the measure drew support from a broad coalition of more than 80 countries. The outcome of COP30—the Belém Political Package—omitted the words “fossil fuels” from the official text. Vulnerable nations, civil society groups, environmental nongovernmental organisations, and other actors viewed the omission as a major pullback from the Glasgow Climate Pact (COP26), which called for the phasedown of unabated coal power and phaseout of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and the United Arab Emirates Consensus (COP28), which explicitly called for transitioning away from fossil fuels. To quell the tension, the COP30 presidency published elements of a voluntary roadmap ahead of COP31.
Emissions reductions. The COP31 formal agenda includes the Mitigation Work Program, an initiative designed to accelerate emissions reductions. In a June lead-up meeting to COP31, however, nations could not agree on the terms of the initiative, including whether it should drive cuts or remain a space for dialogue. Negotiators have also clashed over the Global Goal on Adaptation, tussling over whether to reference the call to triple adaptation finance into the formal text and how to shape metrics and indicators to measure progress.
Other topics. Another issue likely to feature is the just transition mechanism agreed to be developed at COP30. The mechanism aims to strengthen cooperation and provide technical support to economies transitioning away from carbon-intensive industries. But questions remain over how the mechanism should operate in practice, and further dialogue on the topic is scheduled to take place at COP31.
Additionally, since COP26 in Glasgow, when the Global Methane Pledge was introduced, more than 150 countries have signed on to reduce methane emissions. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas that is responsible for about 30% of global warming and plays a significant role in near-term heating. There are low-cost, readily available ways to cut methane, and doing so now would help slow the rate of heating. There are hopes that COP31 will help accelerate ambition to cut methane emissions, particularly in the oil and gas sectors.
What’s standing in the way of climate action?
The Paris Agreement’s stretch goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) has slipped out of reach, according to the 2026 Emissions Gap Report by the UN Environment Program. The report finds that efforts to keep warming to well below 2°C (3.6°F) would require emissions to fall 18% by 2030, 45% by 2035, and 69% by 2040, compared with 2025 levels. Yet current national commitments will not yield that level of reduction. Beyond the lack of ambition shown by many countries, additional headwinds have emerged with the potential to push the 2°C goal even further out of reach.
One such headwind is the delay in science-based reporting. The second global stocktake—an inventory check of progress toward meeting the Paris Agreement’s goals—will begin at COP31, but the scientific process that underpins it is sputtering. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN-backed body of scientists responsible for assessing the latest climate science, has failed to reach agreement on when it will finalise the next set of working-group reports. The IPCC had proposed publishing the reports in 2028, but member states were unable to agree on a timeline at a meeting in October. A group of countries, including China and Saudi Arabia, argued that more time was needed because the dominance of developed nations in climate science skewed IPCC findings.
But delaying the timeline means that nations could base their next round of national commitments to reduce emissions on outdated science. Some scientists and experts warn that in the absence of updated, comprehensive climate science reporting, climate ambition could wane among some parties.
Adding to the headwinds is uncertainty over the outcomes of national elections. In the United States, control over both chambers of Congress could decide if climate change regains prominence in national policymaking or not. In Europe, recent electoral gains by right-wing parties could see climate policies falling out of favour and new limits placed on climate-related action.
Climate change is also receiving less attention now than it was during the heady days of the Paris Agreement. Media coverage of the issue has declined over the last four years in several regions around the world, including Europe and North America, according to a study by the University of Colorado Boulder. And the number of journalists registered to attend the June lead-up meeting to COP31 reached its lowest level since 2021.
Is COP worth all the effort?
While the summit in Turkey is not the first COP to take place without the United States’ participation, the country’s continued absence comes during a consequential time for the COP process amid continuing questions about its effectiveness. The emphasis on implementation, present at COP30 as well, reflects a widespread concern that the summits’ outcomes are long on dialogue and commitment and short on concrete action. Those are fair criticisms.
One thing that the COP process does well, however, is keeping the issue of climate change on the global agenda. Every year, countries know that they will be expected to show up and, to some extent, lay bare what they have (or have not) accomplished on climate action. Moreover, the annual convening provides countries with an opportunity to build coalitions on pressing problems, such as accelerating efforts to cut methane.
COP31 isn’t expected to be characterised by one big outcome or breakthrough. But that nations continue to convene in this formal channel shows that climate action and the hope for a better future that it portends is not going away.
The authors of this article are Alice C. Hill, a Council on Foreign Relations expert and David M. Rubenstein senior fellow for energy and the environment & Angus Soderberg, a research associate, climate change policy.
This work represents the views solely of the author(s). The Council on Foreign Relations is an independent, nonpartisan membership organisation, think tank and publisher, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
The article was originally published here on the Council on Foreign Relations website. It is republished under Creative Commons licensing (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) Licence).
Nine in 10 Turks oblivious their country is set to host world’s flagship climate summit COP, survey finds
Tomorrow (Monday, November 9) marks the start of Turkey’s 12-day hosting of the latest COP world climate summit – but it seems nine out of 10 people in the country are not even aware of the impending event.
Turkish media outlet bianet on November 6 reported on a survey conducted by KONDA Research and Consultancy. It found that just 10% of respondents had heard that the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31) was to be held in Turkey, while just 5% said they knew what it was.
The finding suggests Turkey has invested little in communicating the importance of COP31 to its own people, while ministers have been busy bigging up the country’s dedication to the energy transition before international media and financiers ahead of the summit in the Mediterranean setting of Antalya.
Nevertheless, despite the lack of climate summit awareness, survey data also reportedly pointed to 77% of respondents urging Turkey to prioritise and accelerate investments in solar and wind power and 78% calling for no additional coal mines to be opened. Half of those quizzed said Turkey’s planned construction of new coal-fired power plants would conflict with its goal of demonstrating leadership at COP31. To some embarrassment, Turkey in 2024 overtook Germany to become Europe's biggest user of coal in power generation.
Coal remains the largest single source of power generation in Turkey (Credit: Javabite, cc, wiki).
The survey outcomes also showed that some 71% of respondents were reported as worried or very worried about climate change, with that figure up seven percentage points from a poll conducted in November last year.
In 2025, 43% of Turkey’s electricity derived from clean energy sources, of which wind and solar accounted for 22%, according to energy think tank Ember.
Energy Minister Alparslan Bayraktar on November 5 set out plans to triple Turkey’s installed solar and wind capacity from around 40 gigawatts to 120 GW by 2035. Coal, is, however still the leading single source of power generation in Turkey at 33.5%, and despite its ambitious drive for a green electrification, Ankara as yet has no plan to make a definitive shift away from fossil fuels. It is still building coal-fired power plants and has not set a date to phase out fossil fuels.
"Türkiye's continued reliance on coal, alongside plans for further expansion, highlights the contradiction at the heart of its current trajectory," Duygu Kutluay of Beyond Fossil Fuels told AFP.
There could be no genuine energy transition while "coal remains the country's largest source of electricity generation", she said.
"As Türkiye increases renewable capacity, it must ensure clean electricity replaces fossil-fuel generation rather than simply meeting additional demand," Kutluay was further quoted as saying.
Bayraktar has talked about initially replacing coal with gas, prior to a medium to long term substitution achieved with nuclear. Last week, the energy minister said that the first reactor of Turkey’s first, and much delayed, nuclear power plant, Akkuyu, built by Russia’s Rosatom, should be online by the start of 2027.
Turkey is placing a big bet on nuclear as it seeks to hit emissions targets. The opening of its first nuclear power plant, the much-delayed Akkuyu (above), might be just around the corner (Credit: Rosatom).
Emin Emrah Danis, chief executive of MOBEN consultancy, observed in remarks to AFP that Turkey must ensure its "baseload" generation can deliver constant power around the clock.
"For coal's share of power generation to fall to meaningful levels, Türkiye needs substantial investment in electricity storage and nuclear power," he said, referring to battery storage for renewable power.
Turkey’s nuclear expansion, with two more plants planned, would be unlikely to provide enough baseload capacity to replace coal-fired electricity generation before around 2040, Danis also said.
Separately, COP31 will include the formal launch of the Türkiye Industrial Decarbonization Investment Platform (TIDIP), targeting hard-to-abate sectors in Turkey, including steel, aluminium, cement and fertilizer.
Developed jointly by the Turkish Industry and Technology Ministry, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), the International Bank for Reconstruction (IBRD) and the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), TIDIP will attempt to mobilise over $6bn by 2030. The capital will be invested in securing an annual reduction of 20mn tonnes of CO2 equivalent across carbon-intensive sectors.
TIDIP is supported with $250mn in initial seed funding from the Clean Technology Fund and up to €5.7bn in aligned EU IPA III support.
The platform prioritises green hydrogen, carbon capture, energy efficiency and renewable power integration.
Turkish Industry and Technology Minister Mehmet Fatih Kacir said TIDIP will aim to deepen strategic investment ties between Turkey and European markets while also preparing domestic industrial exporters for compliance rules in the pipeline, such as the EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, or CBAM.
