African push to triple climate adaptation finance left off Cop31 agenda
African countries’ proposal to triple finance for adaptation to the effects of climate change has been left off the agenda at the United Nations climate summit Cop31, currently under way in Antalya, Turkey. Wealthy nations pushed back against efforts to make it a formal, binding agenda item.
Issued on: 12/11/2026 - RFI
By: Farai Shawn Matiashe
The first day of talks at the summit saw friction between the two sides, as the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) sought a dedicated slot on the issue. The group has been pressing for this since the climate talks held in Bonn, Germany, in June.
The proposal failed to reach consensus at Monday’s opening session, and Cop31 president Murat Kurum ruled that it could instead be discussed under existing agenda items.
The European Union had signalled before the summit that it would not accept a separate agenda item on the issue, according to Agence Europe. After the African Group’s request, the EU and the United Kingdom took the floor to restate the climate finance commitments they had already made.
As a result, there will be no formal negotiating track to define, monitor and enforce the pledge to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035. That pledge was made at Cop30 in Belém, Brazil, under the Global Mutirão decision, the main outcome of the Belém talks.
Dr Antwi-Boasiako Amoah, chair of the AGN, said tripling adaptation finance was one of the group’s core demands at Cop31.
“It is important to set the better structures right for better implementation of the tripling of adaptation finance,” he told a press conference in Antalya on 10 November.
“Where are we starting from? Are we starting from the doubling? Which numbers are we starting from? If you do not know the baseline, you cannot measure how much has come in. That is important.”
He added that a clear timeline for reaching the target was just as important.
“Without a trajectory, you will not be able to track progress being made,” Amoah said.
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African Group's position
The African Group is now pushing for the target to be given priority in the cover text, the non-binding political declaration adopted by consensus at the end of the summit.
It remains unclear which figure is to be tripled. If the baseline is the one set by the Glasgow Climate Pact, international adaptation finance would rise to between $85 billion and $120 billion a year by 2035.
Adjusted for inflation, however, that would cover just 20 to 29 percent of developing countries’ adaptation needs in 2035, according to the UN Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report 2026.
International public adaptation finance from developed to developing countries reached between $28.2 billion and $31.7 billion in 2024, up $1 billion on the previous year.
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Amos Wemanya, senior climate adviser at Kenyan research group Power Shift Africa, said the negotiations gave priority to mitigation over adaptation. But with climate change devastating communities, he argued, countries must put adaptation first.
“Africa is spending much of its own budgets, trying to adapt. We cannot allow a continent that has contributed the least to the climate crisis to be spending its own resources to adapt,” he told RFI.
“We need support. But this is not the end. We will find every room to discuss adaptation finance.”
For the tripling to succeed, Wemanya said, it must come with the means to deliver it.
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United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres railed against the oil and gas lobby on Wednesday, telling world leaders fossil fuels "must go the way of the dinosaurs" at a climate summit that is missing several prominent figures.
Issued on: 11/11/2026 - RFI
The two-week Cop31 talks kicked off in Turkey this week with governments under pressure to tackle climate change, after a year of searing heatwaves and wildfires in Europe and deadly floods in Nepal.
"The brutal truth is that the climate crisis is outrunning us," Guterres told dozens of world leaders assembled in the Mediterranean city of Antalya for two days of speeches by heads of state and government.
But few major breakthroughs are anticipated at the Cop31 negotiations, which run until 20 November, as countries grapple with an oil price shock and geopolitical tensions fuelled by the United States' war with Iran and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Since agreeing in 2023 for the first time to transition away from fossil fuels – the main driver of climate change – nations have struggled to advance that goal at the annual UN conferences.
"Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs, but that won't happen on its own. The dinosaurs did not have a lobby, but fossil fuels do," Guterres said, urging governments to tax the windfall profits of oil companies.
"Their strategy is simple: Distort the science. Delay the policy. Delay the action. Delay the accountability. It's time to kick the habit, and end the fossil fuel addiction," he said to sustained applause.
Leaders missing
Guterres, who has made the climate change fight a central issue since taking office in 2017, is attending his last Cop before his term ends in December.
Some big names are missing at Cop31, with British Prime Minister Andy Burnham the only leader from a G7 country scheduled to address the summit.
"Since the start of this year, climate change has disappeared from speeches and documents from our global leadership," recently re-elected Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told fellow leaders.
"We've turned to talking more about arms and tariffs than the survival of future generations," he said.
Climate campaigners breathed a huge sigh of relief when Lula, who has overseen a dramatic drop in deforestation in the Amazon, defeated right-wing rival Flavio Bolsonaro in last month's presidential election.
"Brazil is back to defend the continuity of a healthy planet," Lula said.
While European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen is coming to Antalya, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are staying away. Cop31 coincides with an EU leaders' summit in Ireland on Thursday.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Japanese counterpart Sanae Takaichi are also absent from the most recent list.
Cop31 opens in Turkey as climate funding and fossil fuels divide nations
Unsurprisingly, President Donald Trump, who pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement and has not sent officials to climate talks since his re-election in 2024, is not attending the summit.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who rarely attends Cop summits, will be represented by Vice President Han Zheng. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is also absent.
The United States and China are the world's top economies and biggest emitters of planet-heating emissions.
Low expectations
"It is a shame that some of the bigger European leaders aren't coming. We need Europe to be showing up strongly at this Cop," Cosima Cassel, a climate diplomacy expert at think-tank E3G, told French news agency AFP.
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU's top climate official, said the absences were "not completely atypical" as leaders may have "practical" reasons for not being able to attend a summit.
But he also told reporters in Brussels that "expectations are not necessarily high" for this climate conference.
Cop31 host Turkey is championing a voluntary initiative to accelerate the electrification of transport, buildings and industry, with a target of raising electricity's share of global energy consumption to 35 percent by 2035.
The EU has stressed that electrification must be "clean", which could spark debate over the role of oil, gas and coal in the Turkish proposal.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the world needs a "fair" energy transition that "takes into account the energy security and different development needs of different countries".
'Everything we love is at stake': Greta Thunberg blasts COP climate summits as being full of lobbyists
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres blasted fossil fuel companies for "killing our planet".
Climate activist Greta Thunberg has blasted the annual COP climate summit as being hypocritical and "full of lobbyists".
Attending the talks for the first time since 2021, she urged leaders to put people and the planet ahead of profits and power.
The two-week COP31 talks kicked off in Turkey earlier this week with governments under pressure to tackle climate change after a year of searing heatwaves and wildfires in Europe, and deadly floods in Nepal.
“It’s a hypocrisy every year that the host countries are given an opportunity to whitewash themselves and we know that these negotiations are filled with lobbyists, paid by the very destructive industries which are benefiting from our extremely violent status quo,” Thunberg said as she arrived. “Our political and economic systems that have become incompatible with human nature.”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also spoke about these "very destructive industries" while addressing the conference: "Fossil fuel interests keep making a killing, while killing our planet," Guterres said, urging governments to tax the windfall profits of oil companies.
"Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs, but that won't happen on its own. The dinosaurs did not have a lobby, but fossil fuels do," he said.
'Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs'
"The brutal truth is that the climate crisis is outrunning us," Guterres told dozens of world leaders assembled at a sprawling expo centre in the Mediterranean city of Antalya.
But few major breakthroughs are anticipated at the COP31 negotiations, which run until 20 November, as countries grapple with an oil price shock and geopolitical tensions fuelled by the US war with Iran and Russia's war in Ukraine.
Since agreeing in 2023 for the first time to transition away from fossil fuels - the main driver of climate change - nations have struggled to advance that goal at the annual COP conferences.
"Fossil fuel interests keep making a killing, while killing our planet," Guterres said, urging governments to tax the windfall profits of oil companies.
"Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs, but that won't happen on its own. The dinosaurs did not have a lobby, but fossil fuels do," he said.
"Their strategy is simple: Distort the science. Delay the policy. Delay the action. Delay the accountability. It's time to kick the habit – and end the fossil fuel addiction," he said to applause.
Guterres, who has made the fight against climate change a central issue since taking office in 2017, is attending his last COP before his term ends in December.
Greta Thunberg: 'Everything and everyone we love is at stake'
Electrification and waste reduction are set to be key focus points of this year's negotiations, which run until 20 November. Many EU countries are expected to advocate for the role of renewables and the transition away from fossil fuels, however the leaders of France, Germany, Italy and Spain have all been criticised for not attending the Leaders' Summit which runs today and tomorrow.
COP31 co-hosts Turkey and Australia are promoting renewable energy and rooftop solar installations, but both still rely heavily on fossil fuels, especially coal, to generate electricity. Previous hosts, including Brazil, the United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan, are major oil producers.
Climate change is “threatening everything,” Thunberg said, warning that “everything and everyone we love is at stake.”
“We should act to protect and benefit people rather than constantly sacrificing the global majority and the very planet we are all living on, for a fortunate few to keep making unimaginable profits and maintaining geopolitical power,” she said.
Thunberg blasts annual climate talks
This is the first climate summit Thunberg has attended since the 2021 talks in Glasgow, Scotland, where she dismissed world leaders’ promises as “blah, blah, blah.”
She rose to prominence in 2018 when, aged 15, she began a solitary 'School Strike for Climate' outside the Swedish Parliament. In 2022, she published 'The Climate Book', outlining actions to address the climate crisis.
She has won multiple awards and advocated for other causes, including the Free Palestine movement. Last year, she was arrested in London while supporting hunger-striking pro-Palestinian activists. More recently, she supported French students protesting for more school resources.
In 2024, she joined a protest in Georgia against Azerbaijan’s hosting of COP29.
A key goal for Turkey is global electrification: shifting sectors such as transportation, buildings and heavy industry away from fossil fuels and toward electricity. Turkey wants electricity, preferably generated from renewable sources such as solar and wind, to account for 35 per cent of global energy consumption by 2035, up from 23 per cent today.
“We have to take the victories we have, of course, because we are so desperate in this situation that we have to take all the positive signs we can get to save as much as we can still save,” said Thunberg, who is expected to spend several days at COP31.
Youth activists rally around Thunberg
Thunberg's arrival at the conference created excitement among many youth climate activists
“In this time of heightened geopolitical tensions, I hope that Greta’s presence here reminds us of why we started this work in the first place: to push for meaningful change, hold decision-makers accountable, and work towards a better future for all of humanity,” said Amber Turner, a 26-year-old fellow with the Alliance of Small Island States.
“Worsening climate change impacts make it challenging for young people to be sure of a safe and thriving future,” Turner added.
Protests at COP31 demanded more climate finance and criticised growing interest in nuclear energy.
“The presence of such a headline climate activist at one of the world’s biggest conferences on climate is symbolic, and I hope that it will put pressure on the COP itself to deliver real action and implementation,” said Kamori Osthananda, a youth negotiator with Thailand’s COP delegation.
Qiyun Woo, a youth environmentalist from Singapore, said Thunberg's “powerful” presence "adds to calls from a generation that inherits the consequences of these negotiations.”
“Besides her, there are many youth activists from around the world who are also on the ground who are actively fighting for their communities, home and collective future,” she said.
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