Turkiye to host COP31 climate summit after Australia concedes bid

New Delhi, Nov 20 Turkiye has been confirmed as the host to next year’s UN Climate Change Conference named COP31 after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the withdrawal of Canberra’s bid.

However, Australia will take on the role as President of Conference of the Parties (COP), the supreme decision-making body of the convention.

The standoff had come down to the wire as the COP30 summit entered its final week in Brazil’s Belem, prompting concerns that next year’s event might revert to Bonn or that the uncertainty could overshadow crucial negotiations still underway.

Australian Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen will be appointed as COP31 President (negotiations). This means that Australia will set the negotiating agenda, appoint Chairs and leads and prepare the draft decision text.

A pre-COP will be held in the Pacific, and will be used as an opportunity for pledging to the Pacific Resilience Fund by world leaders and others.

Experts say the hosting location matters less than outcomes for the climate. Australian campaigners are now urging the Australian government to ensure that COP31 nonetheless continues the momentum that has been built at COP30 to accelerate action and transition away from fossil fuels and stop holding up progress in adaptation finance in the final few days of these current negotiations.

Responding to the development, Umit Sahin, Senior Scholar and Head of the Climate Change Program at the Istanbul Policy Centre, Turkey, said, “Turkish governments have never embraced climate denialism or the obstructionist rhetoric seen in the Trump era. Yet Turkiye maintains close political and economic ties with major fossil fuel producers such as Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan.

“As Turkiye presides over the negotiations, these relationships warrant careful scrutiny, as they could shape the impartiality, ambition, and integrity of conference outcomes.”

“Turkish civil society has a remarkable ability to create, adapt, and claim space for itself and international partners, meaning observers can expect surprisingly vibrant, diverse, and robust activism despite the constraints.”

Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, said: “While it is disappointing that Australia’s bid for hosting the Pacific COP31 was unsuccessful, the Pacific’s fight for survival does not rise or fall on a single hosting decision. For us, climate action has never been about prestige -- it is about protecting and preserving our homelands, our cultures, and our future with dignity and humility.”

The decision about the location of COP31 has come down to the wire, said Christiana Figueres, former UNFCCC executive secretary. “But the climate progress we need to see in 2026 does not depend as much on the hosting country as it does on the acceleration of the multitude of decarbonisation efforts we have seen displayed at COP30.

“All countries need to remain engaged at the highest level and align their domestic efforts with the Paris Agreement targets.”

Senator Steph Hodgins-May, Assistant Climate Spokesperson for Australian Greens, said: “This is extremely disappointing, but it shows that the world recognises Australia’s significant role in making dangerous climate change worse. The Prime Minister’s words about the Pacific ring hollow while he’s ignoring the pleas from island nations to stop opening new coal and gas mines.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, “Chris Bowen (Minister for Climate Change and Energy) and Australia will have the COP presidency for negotiations in the lead-up to the conference in Turkiye, but also at the conference in Turkiye.

“Part of that will be a pre-COP meeting to be held in the Pacific at a location to be determined by our Pacific family friends. That will enable us to invite world leaders to make sure that the issues confronting this region, the very existence of island states such as Tuvalu and Kiribati, the issue of our oceans -- all of those issues will be front and centre, so it's an outstanding outcome.”

COP30 is the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Belem from November 10 to 21.

UN Climate Change Conferences (or COPs) take place every year, and are the world’s only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change that brings together almost every country on Earth.

To put it simply, the COP is where the world comes together to agree on the actions to address the climate crisis, such as limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, helping vulnerable communities adapt to the effects of climate change, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

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