Nearly 200 nations will gather in the Turkish Mediterranean resort city of Antalya on Monday for the COP31 United Nations climate summit, but tensions over geopolitics, climate finance and fossil fuels are already tempering expectations of a major breakthrough, AFP reported on Saturday.

Source: AFP via Malay Mail

More than 100,000 people are expected at the two-week negotiations, which run from November 9 to 20. The talks follow deadly floods in Nepal, searing heatwaves in Europe and major wildfires in Indonesia, and come as an exceptionally strong El Nino weather pattern is forecast to peak later this year — possibly helping to make 2026 or 2027 the hottest year on record, AFP said.

An unusual two-country presidency

Turkey is presiding over COP31, with Australia leading the negotiations, under an unusual split arrangement that settled a dispute over who would host the conference. COP31 president Murat Kurum, Turkey's environment minister, said the conference would strive to turn the commitments of past COPs into real results. Australian climate minister Chris Bowen said COP31 comes at a difficult time for the world and that reaching consensus among nearly 200 countries will not be easy, but cooperation remains essential.

Source: AFP via Malay Mail

Electrification is the hosts' centrepiece

Turkey is promoting an action agenda alongside the formal negotiations, centred on an electrification drive to raise the share of global energy demand met by electricity from around 20 per cent today to 35 per cent by 2035. This year's energy crisis has shocked us out of our complacency, Kurum said. Electrification is the answer. It protects communities from volatile global markets and cuts emissions. Turkey and Australia also want electrification written into the summit's cover decision, its overarching political statement. The European Union has called for clean electrification — wording that could spark debate over the role of fossil fuels in the initiative, and climate diplomacy expert Cosima Cassel of the think tank E3G noted the pledge's careful language on diverse and sustainable energy sources is designed to bring many countries on board.

The money fight and the fossil-fuel question

Countries committed at COP28 in 2023 to transition away from fossil fuels, but COP30 ended with a deal that made no explicit mention of fossil fuels after oil-producing countries opposed the language, and Brazil instead produced a voluntary roadmap. Observers say Turkey and Australia are keen to avoid a repeat of that fight. A separate feud looms over wealthy nations' unfulfilled financial commitments: the group of African negotiators is demanding that a pledge to triple adaptation finance be added to the negotiation agenda, and the UN Environment Programme's Adaptation Gap Report, released on November 4, found developing countries will need roughly US$305 billion a year by 2035 to build resilience to climate impacts — yaani about 305 billion dollars, or roughly 2.7 lakh crore rupees, every year.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press published on Friday, called the summit a moment of truth and argued that fossil-fuel companies enjoying windfall profits should be taxed, with the proceeds directed to countries suffering severe climate impacts. COP31 is Guterres's last climate summit as secretary-general; his second and final term ends in December 2026.

Source: Associated Press via Simpson Global Media

The United States administration will not take part in the negotiations after President Donald Trump withdrew the country from global climate talks, though a US congressional delegation will attend — and Democrats' capture of Congress in the midterms has given campaigners a boost, AFP reported. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, fresh from re-election, will also travel to Antalya.

The outlook heading into the summit is stark: the United Nations warned in September that global temperatures are on course to exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, breaching the Paris Agreement's most ambitious threshold, and UNEP has warned of a possible 2.8-degree rise by the end of the century on the current course. France's former chief climate negotiator Paul Watkinson cautioned that this is not going to be the COP that changes the world, calling it an intermediate COP that still needs to make progress.

Source: The Guardian via The Bull Post

India has already set out its climate-finance demands ahead of Antalya, pressing rich nations to deliver adaptation money before new targets are set. Read: India's COP31 climate-finance push