The Cop31 climate talks are upon us, and the guest list reads like a diplomatic potluck where everyone brought fossil fuels and nobody brought a binding agreement. Australia, which pledged to host way back in 2021 when Anthony Albanese was still in opposition, had to wait its turn thanks to arcane rules, then got into an angry row with Turkey over the hosting. The compromise: Australia runs the negotiations, Turkey hosts them in Antalya. The bitter taste lingers, and Australia has seemed to some a rather half-hearted host - its media coverage has been notably quieter than previous host countries, and while Albanese will speak at the opening of the leaders' segment, he is unlikely to linger.
Chris Bowen, Australia's climate and energy minister, will be in daily charge of negotiations. Because Australia's energy supply also falls under his portfolio, he's been in the uncomfortable position of boosting fossil fuels while insisting on a clean energy transition. Still, Australia has a positive story: while remaining one of the world's major fossil fuel exporters, it has invested heavily in renewables, and solar power has expanded so much that consumers are sometimes offered free electricity. A decarbonisation narrative with a side of coal exports - classic.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey's autocratic president, showed little interest in climate before bidding to host this year's summit. In the last five years, Cop has been held in Egypt, the UAE, and Azerbaijan - all in the same broad region - giving an outsize role to the Arab group of countries, who have a strong interest in ensuring fossil fuel interests, including their lobbyists, are well represented. Turkey's environment minister, Murat Kurum, controls the action agenda, a programme of voluntary initiatives, which Erdoğan has used to push a key interest of his wife, Emine Erdoğan: cutting waste and promoting the circular economy. She has called for an end to "throwaway culture" and for recycling instead of landfill - though Turkey still has sites leaking vast quantities of methane. The circular economy, it turns out, is easier to preach than to practice.
Fatih Birol, 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 industry. This could halve the amount of energy we need and is the next biggest step, after boosting renewable generation, needed for a low-carbon world. A rare instance of an adviser actually advising something sensible.
Brazil's recently re-elected President Lula da Silva will attend Cop31 for his first trip abroad after winning his historic fourth term. He brings two roadmaps: one a global plan for the transition away from fossil fuels, the other for halting and reversing deforestation. These are non-binding, contain no deadlines or firm requirements from governments, but show a series of steps governments can take. In other words, a lovely brochure.
Xi Jinping, China's president, will not attend, 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 biggest emitter, making up nearly a third of global annual carbon output, owing mainly to fossil fuels powering its explosive economic growth over the last 25 years. But it has also invested in renewable energy, reshaping the global energy business. Xi may be absent from 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. Money talks, and it speaks both dialects.
For several months this year, India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, mulled an intriguing proposition: hosting 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 renewable capacity, 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 and leader of its Cop delegations, enjoys a mutually supportive relationship with the UK's Ed Miliband and a reputation as a forward thinker. A rare breed in this crowd.
Donald Trump's attention has been fixed on the crucial midterm elections, a verdict on his second term 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 Belém last year as he started dismantling the US's renewable energy sector and boosting fossil fuels, setting the US on course to increase greenhouse gas emissions again after decades of decline. 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 - democracy's awkward comeback tour.
Andy Burnham will attend Cop for the first time this year, after a mixed climate record since taking office. During this summer's record-breaking heatwaves and droughts, the British prime minister was criticised for failing to speak out on the climate crisis. He subsequently made strong interventions affirming support for the UK's target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but then backed the Jackdaw gas field. No decision has been announced on the Rosebank oilfield yet. From December, Burnham will have a bigger opportunity: the UK takes over the revolving presidency of the G20, comprising the world's biggest developed and developing economies. The Guardian understands the UK will emphasise building resilience against climate impacts as a key focus of its year-long presidency. Resilience, it turns out, is what you call adaptation when you've given up on prevention.
Ed Miliband, now foreign secretary and a veteran of many Cops in government and opposition, is expected to accompany the prime minister to the leaders' summit segment. Miliband was hailed, publicly and privately, by many participants last year for his patient bridge-building that helped Brazil 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 collapsing ecosystems posed a national security risk, threatening food shortages, mass migration, and potential nuclear war. Cheery stuff for a Tuesday briefing.
The energy and net zero secretary, Miatta Fahnbulleh, will head the UK's Cop31 delegation for the final negotiations in the last days of the fortnight, after leaders have departed. 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 key regulations - watering down its green deal package, loosening 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 EVs - preferring to lobby against emissions standards, a poor strategy as consumers turn in droves to cheap-to-run EVs - has led to threats to slap tariffs on China. The EU commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, called this summer's record-breaking heatwaves and drought a "summer of truth" that must be answered; she is now confirmed for the summit. Wopke Hoekstra, the Dutch climate commissioner, will oversee the final stages for the EU and is expected to make competition with China a key focus.
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 has still not 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 UAE, Lana Nusseibeh. Simon Stiell, the determined executive secretary of the UNFCCC, will oversee the talks, with an added twist this year: liaising between the two co-hosts as well as the fractious parties. Herding cats, but with diplomatic credentials.
Saudi Arabia failed to confirm with the Guardian before Cop who would lead its delegation, but its recent behaviour at international climate meetings tells its own story. The country has a long history of obstructing 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 in the final text until the final moments. At recent meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Saudi led a small group - including China, India, Russia, and Kenya - that fought to delay publication of the next comprehensive assessment of climate science. That landmark report, expected to warn of catastrophic impacts from further temperature rises, was due in 2028, in time for Cop33, where countries will assess progress on emissions-cutting goals under the Paris agreement - the "global stocktake." Delaying it by a year or more, as Saudi wants, would mean a loss of urgency for the stocktake and could help countries get away with inadequate decarbonisation measures. In other words, business as usual, but with better PR.