COP31: Six climate negotiations to watch in Antalya

While food and fuel costs are expected to increase due to supply chain shocks, the looming threat of war, inflation and a bull market, other unintended costs — of climate change — keep rising. At such a fractured time in geopolitics, delegates from around 196 countries are expected to descend on the Mediterranean coast of Antalya, Türkiye from November 9-20 for the annual climate conference, with the expectation of solving major bottlenecks that have plagued these negotiations for years.

Last year, COP30 ended with the Global Mutirão calling for greater cooperation to turn existing climate commitments into action. Countries made progress on adaptation finance, established a two-year climate finance work programme, created a Just Transition Mechanism and advanced the implementation of international carbon markets. However, major disagreements remained over how to accelerate emissions cuts and move away from fossil fuels. The Bonn conference (SB64), held in June this year, left several important questions unanswered. 

These unresolved questions will return to the negotiating table at COP31. Here are some of the main issues that might dominate the conference at Antalya.

Adaptation Finance

At COP30, countries adopted 59 indicators to measure progress towards the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) and agreed on a two-year process, called the Belém-Addis vision, to refine them. Countries agreed to triple adaptation finance by 2035. At Bonn, technical negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) ended in a stalemate, resulting in no formal progress from COP30, nor was it included in the Bonn text. 

This was caused by disagreements over the funding process. Arguing that adaptation targets could not be achieved without adequate finance, developing nations wanted $120 billion annually for adaptation by 2030, but developed nations resisted agreeing on a specific funding amount. As a result, this discussion will be taken up anew at Antalya.

Climate finance

Developing countries argue that richer nations should provide financial support because of their greater historical responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions. At COP29 in Baku, developed countries agreed to provide $300 billion a year in public climate finance by 2035, while the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap of mobilising $1.3 trillion from both public and private sources by 2035 was formalised just before COP30.  

COP30 established a two-year work programme on climate finance, including discussions on Article 9.1 within the broader context of Article 9 of the Paris Agreement. At Bonn, however, countries made little progress on how the programme should work. Developing countries wanted it to focus on developed countries’ obligation under Article 9.1 to provide financial support to poorer nations. Developed countries argued that discussions should cover Article 9 as a whole, including the role of private finance and other sources of funding. 

At COP31, the challenge will be figuring out how to achieve the stated funding targets, and how much of a role will private finance play in it? 

Mitigation Work Programme

Countries plan to cut down on their carbon emissions through self-proclaimed climate plans, known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). To accelerate this, the Mitigation Work Programme was established at COP27 2022 in Egypt, and is an important tenet of the Global Stocktake (GST), which takes place every five years to assess collective progress.

At COP30 in Belém, countries adopted a decision that included key messages on forests and waste, encouraged international cooperation on cutting emissions and began discussing the programme’s future beyond 2026. At Bonn, countries again struggled to agree on how the programme should help speed up emissions cuts. They remained divided over whether it should push countries to make more ambitious commitments or focus on helping them implement existing ones. There were also disagreements over how it should connect with the GST and the next round of NDCs.

The programme is due to end in 2026, making its future a key question at COP31. Countries will need to decide whether to extend it and what role it should play. 

Just Transition Work Programme

Moving away from fossil fuels and toward cleaner energy will affect workers and communities that depend on coal, oil and gas. A just transition ensures no one is left behind while this happens. At COP30, a major milestone was achieved when countries agreed to create a Just Transition Mechanism (JTM), built on the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) introduced at COP27. Belém established a legally grounded text protecting human and labour rights, gender equality, and the rights of indigenous communities affected by the transition.

At Bonn, countries made progress on what JTM should do, and texts outlining its functions were forwarded to COP31. But how the mechanism will work remains to be settled. At COP31, countries will take up these texts and decide on the mechanism’s structure and responsibilities, including whether it will offer support such as finance and technology, or mainly act as a forum for dialogue. 

Transition away from fossil fuels

At COP28 in Dubai, countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels, but the path to this goal remains contested. At COP30, around 80 countries pushed for a roadmap for the transition to be included in the formal outcome but did not succeed. Brazil’s COP30 presidency instead promised a voluntary, informal roadmap outside the formal negotiations. At Bonn too, this was not an official agenda item but was discussed. 

At COP30, Colombia and the Netherlands took the lead in pushing this issue, and hosted the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April this year, where 57 countries participated. 

On November 3, Brazil’s presidency released the roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, which outlines possible pathways for reducing dependence on fossil fuels and accelerating the shift to cleaner energy. It also acknowledges that all countries are not at the same level to shift away from traditional energy sources, and it is not a binding agreement. However, its release puts pressure on COP31 to build international support and translate the proposals into concrete action. 

Carbon credits 

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement allows countries to trade carbon credits as a measure to reduce emissions. At COP30, countries focused on putting rules about how this market should function into practice. Measures included improving the reporting and review of carbon-credit transfers under Article 6.2, advanced the transition of eligible projects from the older Clean Development Mechanism. 

At Bonn, this work continued. A new methodology for reducing emissions from nitric acid production was adopted, while work on non-market cooperation under Article 6.8 saw some progress. At COP31, the focus will remain on making the mechanisms operational and ensuring that countries can use them effectively.

Edit: Bhasker Tripathi, Production: Arkatapa Basu