COP31 Opens in Antalya With a Call to Deliver on Past Promises

ANTALYA, Türkiye — The United Nations climate conference opened here on Nov. 9, 2026, and elected Türkiye's environment minister, Murat Kurum, as its president. Kurum called for COP31 to become an "Implementation COP" meant to deliver promises countries have already made.

Kurum pressed Türkiye's voluntary electrification pledge, which it calls 35-by-35, aiming to lift electricity to 35% of final energy use by 2035, and the Climate Implementation Bridge, an initiative to match projects seeking finance with investors. He recalled the goals agreed at COP29 in Baku: at least $300 billion a year for developing countries by 2035, and a call to raise climate finance from all sources to at least $1.3 trillion a year. "Now our promises must be backed by capital. That capital must fund investment. And that investment must deliver results," he said, in the presidency's English text. Kurum said the presidency wants Antalya to leave behind not a list of decisions but a working culture.

Türkiye hosts the conference and holds the presidency, while Australia runs the negotiations. Chris Bowen, Australia's climate and energy minister and the COP31 president of negotiations, said COP31 would follow a party-driven process aiming at a focused, practical outcome. "There will be no surprises," he said. "It will not be a lengthy political declaration."

Simon Stiell, executive secretary of UN Climate Change, raised the secretariat's own finances, saying its budget needs serious work with governments in the next six months. "Mandates are growing. Funds are shrinking," he explained. "We can't keep doing more with less."

Jim Skea, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, noted that it is "no secret that IPCC faces operational challenges and reputational risks from the current impasse on the timeline for our three working group reports," and that "our authors don't know what is expected of them in the early months of 2027." Governments revisit that timeline when the IPCC resumes its suspended plenary on Dec. 1, 2026, he said.

André Corrêa do Lago, who presided over COP30, explained that analyses now put projected warming at around 2.7 degrees Celsius, against more than 4 degrees before the Paris Agreement.

The session runs to Nov. 20. The opening day's ask of delegates was narrow: a focused outcome with no surprises, and a working culture that outlasts the talks. Next, on Nov. 11 and 12, heads of state and government give national statements at the leaders' summit.