The Cop31 summit must produce progress, “a tangible outcome … that people can see is real”, its host has said as scores of world leaders and representatives of close to 190 countries gather in Turkey for the UN climate talks.
The high-stakes meeting begins on Monday, as countries around the world grapple with the strongest El Niño weather system on record, supercharged by fossil fuels, which is set to take hundreds of thousands of lives and cause damage costing trillions of dollars.
Friction is expected between the rich and poor worlds over who pays for the impacts of the climate crisis, and the slow pace of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. Temperatures have broken records this year, surpassing the limit of 1.5C above preindustrial levels aimed for in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Adão Soares Barbosa, the chair of the Least Developed Countries, a negotiating group of 44 nations, said: “Keeping 1.5C within reach by minimising the duration and magnitude of the overshoot, delivering accessible and predictable climate finance, strengthening adaptation, and addressing loss and damage [caused to poor countries by extreme weather] are not political choices but matters of survival. The credibility of the Paris agreement will be measured not by promises made, but by commitments fulfilled, and lives protected in vulnerable countries.”
Unusually, the talks will have dual hosts: they will take place in the Turkish city of Antalya but the formal negotiations will be presided over by Australia, following a compromise reached last year over their competing bids.
Chris Bowen, Australia’s climate and energy minister and president of negotiations for Cop31, told the Guardian in an interview: “We need a tangible outcome focused on implementation [of emissions cuts and finance] that people can see is real. We need progress, it needs to be a step forward on previous Cops.”
Australia also wants a “strong, ambitious outcome” to raise the plight of low-lying countries in the Pacific region for whom the climate crisis poses an existential threat. “We need to finally elevate some of the issues so important to our Pacific family,” Bowen said. “[Only] 0.2% of the world’s available climate finance goes to small island developing states for adaptation, for countries whose very existence is at stake.”
But climate advocates and more than 500 scientists in Australia said Australia must stop approving coalmines and gas projects if it wanted to escape the charge of hypocrisy.
The summit will have a notable absentee, with the US refusing to send a delegation for the second year in a row. The Trump administration wants no part of “extremist climate policies” embraced by other countries, according to a White House spokesperson.
Donald Trump expressed glee shortly before the US midterm elections about the huge profits made by oil and gas companies due to the Iran war, which he started and has caused an increase in living costs around the world. “I don’t give a damn,” the president said at a recent rally in Georgia. “I’m going to say it: we’re making a frickin’ fortune.”
However, a group of 20 Democratic members of Congress have made the trip to Antalya, buoyed by their party’s stunning success in the US midterms last week that will enable them to stymie Trump’s attempts to dismantle pollution rules and withhold financial support for clean energy.
Developing countries and civil society will seek to put climate finance and justice at the heart of the Cop31 talks. Rukiya Khamis, the east Africa programme manager at the 350.org campaigning group, said: “Across east Africa, people are facing the devastating impacts of a climate crisis they did not cause. From prolonged droughts to destructive floods, we are losing homes, livelihoods and access to food and water. Yet the money needed to respond to these impacts remains out of reach for many of the countries and communities most affected. It is fundamentally unjust that those least responsible are being left to carry the greatest costs.”
This summer more than 50,000 people died in Europe due to heatwaves, severe wildfire smoke shrouded swathes of North America and a glacier collapse in Nepal triggered a landslide that caused more than 1,500 deaths, while the El Niño weather event, described as “staggering” by scientists and still to reach its peak, is gathering strength.
However, while the pace of progress on cutting global emissions has been slow, the Iran war has spurred many countries to see fossil fuels as expensive and vulnerable to shocks, while renewables continue to plummet in price.
Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate chief, said before the talks: “Climate impacts hit every population and every economy harder each year. [But] almost every major economy, and many medium-sized and smaller economies, now see climate action as a central driver of economic growth, jobs, and affordable and secure energy.”
Cop host Turkey also wants more countries to switch to electric technologies, such as electric vehicles and heat pumps, as these are many times more efficient than their fossil fuel counterparts. A target for 35% of global final energy to come from electricity by 2035 will be on the table, but faces opposition from some.
Both presidency countries rely heavily on fossil fuels. Australia is one of the world’s leading exporters of coal and liquefied natural gas. The centre-left Labor government has targets to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, and have more than 80% of its electricity generated by solar and wind by 2030, but is off track to meet them.
Labor also faces a political threat from the resurgent rightwing One Nation party, which dismisses climate science. One Nation and the Liberal and National party coalition want to scrap the net zero goal.
The UK energy secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, said: “This summer, we all felt it: climate change is here, in Britain, now. No country can tackle it alone, which is why Cop31 matters. The answer to high bills and climate change is the same – more clean, homegrown power, creating good jobs and warmer homes. Cop31 is about Britain’s national interest.”
