Turkiye to host COP31 climate summit after Australia concedes bid
Turkiye will host next year’s COP31 summit in the city of Antalya, ending a long standoff with Australia over the location of the top United Nations climate meeting, Al Jazeera reports.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced on Thursday morning that Australia had reached an arrangement with Turkiye to host negotiations in the lead-up to the 2026 UN climate meeting along with Pacific nations while Turkiye will assume the presidency of the official meeting.
“What we’ve come up with is a big win for both Australia and [Turkiye],” Albanese told the Australian public broadcaster ABC Radio Perth.
The announcement comes as this year’s COP30 climate summit in the Brazilian city of Belem is due to close on Friday.
Australia had been pushing to host COP31 next year as a “Pacific COP” alongside low-lying South Pacific nations, which are increasingly threatened by rising seas and climate-fuelled disasters.
Despite Australia’s efforts, Turkiye refused to back down in its bid to host the summit.
Turkiye had said that as an emerging economy, it would promote solidarity between rich and poor countries at its summit, which would have a more global rather than regional focus.
Turkiye will now have just 12 months to plan the meeting at the Antalya Expo Center due to the unusually long process to secure hosting duties and the lack of procedures in place to handle a situation in which two countries wanted to host at the same time.
The presidency of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change traditionally rotates among five regions: Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Central and Eastern Europe, and Western Europe and others.
Australia and Turkiye both fit within the latter category of Western Europe and others, meaning that Australia will now have to wait another five years until it can bid to host the meeting again.
Ethiopian Minister for Planning and Development Fitsum Assefa Adela announced last week that her country had already secured the support of African negotiators to host COP32 in 2027.
Earlier Qazinform News Agency reported, California broadened its climate partnerships at COP30 in Belém this week, signing new agreements with Brazil, Colombia, and Chile. The initiative highlights the state’s widening global engagement at a time when climate policy in the United States remains divided, with Governor Gavin Newsom positioning himself both as a prominent political opponent of President Donald Trump and as an advocate for more ambitious climate action within the country.
