What are the relationships and dominant interests in play, as the summit kicks off after a bitter row over its hosting?
Australia
Hosting Cop was a key pledge from Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese in 2021, while in opposition, before his successful election campaign. But arcane rules meant the country had to wait its turn to bid, and was then embroiled in an angry row with Turkey over the hosting. The final compromise put Australia in charge of the negotiations which will take place in the Turkish city of Antalya. The bitter taste left by the row lingers, and Australia has seemed to some a rather half-hearted host. The country’s media has been much quieter on Cop than previous host countries, and although Albanese will speak at the opening of the leaders’ segment, he is unlikely to stay long.
Chris Bowen, Australia’s climate and energy minister, will be in daily charge of the negotiations. As aspects of Australia’s energy supply also fall under his portfolio, he has been in the sometimes uncomfortable position of having to boost fossil fuels while insisting on the need for a clean energy transition.
Yet Australia has a positive story to tell on decarbonisation: while remaining one of the world’s major fossil fuel exporters, the country has also invested heavily in renewables, and solar power has now expanded so much that consumers are sometimes offered free electricity.
Turkey
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s autocratic president, showed little interest in climate and environmental issues before bidding to host this year’s Cop summit.
In the last five years Cop has also been held in Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Azerbaijan, all in the same broad region. This has given an outsize role to the Arab group of countries, who are neighbours in the region and have a strong interest in ensuring that fossil fuel interests – including their lobbyists – are well represented.
Australia runs the overall direction of the negotiations, and Turkey’s government, with the environment minister, Murat Kurum, has control of the action agenda, a programme of voluntary initiatives. Erdoğan has used this to push forward a key interest of his wife, Emine Erdoğan, in cutting waste and promoting the circular economy. She has called for an end to the “throwaway culture” and for recycling instead of landfill – though Turkey still has sites that leak vast quantities of methane.
Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency and one of the world’s leading energy economists, is understood to be one of the advisers behind this year’s emphasis on electrification, displacing fossil fuels with electricity for heating, transport and industrial uses. This could halve the amount of energy we need, and is the next biggest step, after boosting renewable energy generation, needed for a low-carbon world.
Brazil
The recently re-elected President Lula da Silva will come to Cop31 for his first trip abroad after winning his historic fourth term, and will bring two roadmaps, one a global plan for the transition away from fossil fuels, the other for halting and reversing deforestation. These are non-binding, and contain no deadlines or firm requirements from governments, but show a series of steps that governments can take to achieve these key goals.
China
Xi Jinping, the president of China, will not come to this year’s Cop, but his country’s rapid energy and industrial transformation will determine the course of the planet’s future. China is the world’s second biggest economy and the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, making up nearly a third of global annual carbon output, due mainly to a huge use of fossil fuels to power its explosive economic growth for the last 25 years. But it also invested in renewable energy, which is reshaping the global energy business.
Xi may not be present in Antalya, but the top officials he sends will know that petrostates – including Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – are his important allies. However, countries pushing for a low-carbon future may be more important still – as China’s customers.
India
For several months this year, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, mulled an intriguing proposition: to host the Cop33 UN climate summit in 2028. In the end, India withdrew its bid in April without specifying why, leaving the field open. India is torn between its burgeoning clean energy sector – it now has the world’s third biggest installed capacity of renewable energy, after China and the US – and its coal sector, which still supplies about 70% of electricity, and has close links to Modi. Bhupender Yadav, India’s environment minister, who leads its Cop delegations, enjoys a mutually supportive relationship with the UK’s Ed Miliband, and a reputation as a forward thinker.
US
The attention of Donald Trump has been fixed on the crucial midterm elections, a verdict on his second term as president that has shown Republicans the electoral dangers of an unpredictable White House. No US delegation is expected at Cop31, and soon Trump’s withdrawal of the country from the UN framework convention on climate change will mean none can take part.
Trump’s shadow was felt at Cop30 in Belem last year, as he started to dismantle the US’s renewable energy sector and boost fossil fuels, setting the US on course to start increasing greenhouse gas emissions again, after decades in which they fell. But his administration’s unpopularity with the US electorate, and a drought and fire-filled summer, has bolstered the pro-climate stance of scores of Democratic congresspeople and state governors, despite a campaign of “climate hushing” before the midterms. Some of them, and a scattering of business leaders, may attend Cop31.
UK
Andy Burnham will attend Cop for the first time this year, after a mixed record on the climate since taking office. During the record-breaking heatwaves and droughts of this summer, the British prime minister was criticised for failing to speak out on the climate crisis. He subsequently made strong interventions affirming his support for the UK’s target of reaching net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but then backed the Jackdaw gasfield. No decision has been announced on the Rosebank oilfield yet.
From December, Burnham will have a much bigger opportunity to craft climate policy on the international stage: the UK will take over the revolving presidency of the influential G20 group, which comprises the world’s biggest developed and developing economies. The Guardian understands that the UK will emphasise building resilience against the impacts of the climate crisis as a key focus of the G20 for its year-long presidency.
Miliband, now foreign secretary, and a veteran of many Cops both in government and opposition, is expected to accompany the prime minister to the leaders’ summit segment of Cop31. Miliband was hailed, in public and private, by many participants last year for his patient bridge-building that helped Brazil to rescue a deal from the fractious final hours of Cop30.
At this year’s UN general assembly, he also briefed other governments on the findings of the UK’s joint intelligence committee, which warned that the impact of collapsing ecosystems around the world posed a national security risk, threatening food shortages, mass migration and potential nuclear war.
The energy and net zero secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, will head the UK’s Cop31 delegation for the final negotiations in the last days of this fortnight of talks, after the leaders have departed.
Europe
The EU has faced a quandary over its climate convictions in recent years. Far-right populists are on the rise, pushing climate denialism, and the bloc has backed down from some key regulations, watering down its green deal package, loosening the strings on corporate climate liabilities, delaying rules on trade in goods from deforested areas, and extending the phase-in of new car rules. The failure of Europe’s car industry to move decisively to electric vehicles – preferring lobbying against emissions standards, which has turned out to be a poor strategy as consumers turn in droves to cheap-to-run EVs – has led to threats to slap tariffs on China.
Despite calling this summer’s record-breaking heatwaves and drought a “summer of truth” that must be answered, the EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, is not confirmed for Cop31. Wopke Hoekstra, the Dutch climate commissioner, will oversee the final stages of the talks for the EU, and is likely to make competition with China a key focus.
UN
Cop31 will mark the final outing at a UN climate summit for António Guterres, the UN secretary general, who has regularly intervened powerfully on this subject. A successor to Guterres has still not yet been chosen – the US has tried to get Viktor Orbán, the far-right former president of Hungary, into the role, or a former minister from the United Arab Emirates, Lana Nusseibeh.
Simon Stiell, the determined and serious executive secretary of the UNFCCC, will oversee the talks, with an added twist to his job this year from having to liaise between the two co-hosts as well as the fractious parties.
Saudi
Saudi failed to confirm with the Guardian before Cop who would lead its delegation, but the country’s recent behaviour at international climate meetings tells its own story. Saudi has a long history of obstructing the UN climate negotiations, though its behaviour was sometimes muted when the US intervened. With Trump in the White House, Saudi has felt emboldened to interfere further, with allies including Russia, Venezuela, members of the Arab group, and the Like-Minded Developing Countries grouping.
At Cop30, the Saudi delegation refused to allow even an oblique mention of the pledge to “transition away from fossil fuels”, made at Cop28 in Dubai in 2023, into the final text until the final moments.
At recent meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Saudi led a small group of countries – including China, India, Russia and Kenya – that fought to delay publication of the next comprehensive assessment of climate science. Publication of the landmark report, which is expected to warn of catastrophic impacts from further temperature rises, was expected in 2028, in time for Cop33 at which countries will assess their progress on meeting emissions-cutting goals under the Paris agreement, a process known as the “global stocktake”. Delaying it by a year or more, as Saudi wants, would mean a loss of urgency for the global stocktake, and could help countries to get away with inadequate measures on decarbonisation.
