Intensifying climate impacts—including the deadly glacier collapse that struck Nepal and Tibet in late August—and growing debate over the increasingly imminent prospect of “overshooting” the 1.5°C limit will shape climate negotiations in Antalya.
Content
Approaching 1.5°C Overshoot: Fossil Fuel Phase-Out, Not Speculative Technology
COP31 Presidency Arrangement: Türkiye & Australia
Electrification Done Right: A Just, Renewable-Powered 35x35 Target
Climate Finance Remains at the Centre of the Debate
Global Goal on Adaptation (Gga) Must Address Adaptation Finance Shortfall
Just Transition and Emissions Reductions
Loss and Damage: Renewed Focus After Himalaya Glacier Collapse?
Carbon Markets in an Era of Overshoot: The Risks of Article 6
Backlash Against Gender and Human Rights
Domestic Politics in Türkiye Ahead of COP31
At the heart of COP31 lies the growing contradiction between the escalating climate crisis and governments’ continued failure to deliver the decisive action needed to keep the 1.5°C limit within reach, including an immediate and equitable phase-out of fossil fuels rather than reliance on speculative technologies. Deeply unequal access to climate finance, the persistent failure to adequately fund adaptation and address loss and damage, and the continued burdening of the Global South with debt expose the structural injustices undermining global climate action. Meanwhile, the expansion of carbon markets risks entrenching false solutions and prolonging fossil fuel dependence.
Yet COP31 also presents opportunities to make tangible progress: a genuinely just electrification agenda, powered exclusively by renewables and backed by public climate finance, could reduce fossil fuel dependence, expand access to affordable energy and ensure that communities currently left behind benefit from the transition. Fully operationalising the Belém-Antalya Mechanism could likewise strengthen international cooperation and provide developing countries with the technical assistance, knowledge-sharing and support needed to advance inclusive and equitable transitions across their economies and societies. Whether these opportunities translate into meaningful progress will depend on confronting entrenched inequalities and fossil fuel interests, rather than allowing false solutions, inadequate finance and political resistance to undermine an inclusive and just transition.
Approaching 1.5°C Overshoot: Fossil Fuel Phase-Out, Not Speculative Technology
Overshoot of 1.5°C and its wider implications will likely loom large over COP31 – and possibly even find its way into a potential COP31 cover decision. The UNEP Limiting Overshoot Report, published in early September 2026, has shaped and shifted the debate on overshoot of 1.5°C by establishing a trajectory of “overshoot, peak and decline” as the best remaining option to address the climate crisis. The report is unequivocal that this is far from a benign scenario – overshoot of 1.5°C will mean excessive harm for communities, ecosystems and economies, and in part those impacts will be irreversible on human timescales.
However, the ‘decline’ part of the equation implies very large amounts of CO2 being removed from the atmosphere and stored away permanently. Even just reducing temperature by 0.1°C requires around 200 Gigatonnes of CO2 removals from the atmosphere – which is equivalent to 4-5 years of total global annual emissions. The technologies to implement such large-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) do not exist at any meaningful scale; and it is highly uncertain if it will ever be possible to effectively remove CO2 from the atmosphere at the Gigatonne scale.
All of the proposed CDR technologies, if implemented at climate-relevant scales – in addition to doubts about their feasibility and effectiveness – would come with serious detrimental impacts on people and communities, land, ecosystems, water availability and resource extraction. Large-scale CDR would likely exacerbate other global ecological crises, like ecosystem and biodiversity loss. The impacts of such technologies would once more fall on those already hit hardest by the climate crisis, while allowing continued fossil fuel extraction and consumption decades into the future.
For many communities and ecosystems, 1.5°C is an existential limit. So what does approaching 1.5°C really mean? Scaling up support for adaptation actions, as well as paying up for loss and damage and climate reparations. It must also mean moving much faster on the known and tested solutions to the climate crisis – phasing out all fossil fuels (oil, gas, and coal) immediately in the rich producing and consuming countries across all sectors, and globally in an equitable, fair and funded way, shifting to renewables, agroecology and circular economy approaches as well as protecting and restoring our global ecosystems in a rights-based way.
In this context, the Santa Marta Conference on Transitioning Away From Fossil Fuels (TAFF), co-convened by Colombia and the Netherlands in April 2026, provides a glimmer of hope. The second International Conference on the Just Transition Away from Fossil Fuels, hosted by Tuvalu and Ireland, will take place in the Pacific in July 2027 – creating a space to make progress on a just and equitable decline of fossil fuels in line with the international legal obligation to limit warming to 1.5ºC. Importantly, the process also aims to tackle some of the structural barriers and challenges – like excessive debt burdens, high costs of capital, limited fiscal space, technological barriers and investment frameworks – facing the Global South in the transition away from fossil fuels.
COP31 also comes on the heels of another failed attempt to reach agreement on the schedule for the IPCC’s 7th Assessment Report (AR7) – a sustained negotiation deadlock that will likely cast another shadow over COP31, including in the discussions on the preparation of the second GST in 2028. Whichever final publication timeline will eventually be agreed upon by governments in the IPCC (hopefully when the suspended session is resumed in the very near future), it is crucial that IPCC scenarios centre climate justice and equity, show what an accelerated fossil fuel phase-out can contribute to keeping 1.5°C within reach, and stop overrelying on speculative and unproven technology like Carbon Capture (Use) and Storage (CC(U)S) and CDR.
COP31 Presidency Arrangement: Türkiye & Australia
For the first time, COP31 has a shared presidency split between Türkiye as the official and logistical host and Australia as the president of negotiations. This arrangement was agreed after a long and deadlocked standoff between the two countries vying for COP31 presidency.
The Action Agenda of the Turkish-Australian presidency revolves around a number of priorities, including electrification, zero waste, climate-resilient cities and oceans, while trying to sideline debates about fossil fuel phase-out, which risks turning not just the electrification agenda into a trojan horse for continued fossil fuel consumption.
According to the bilateral agreement between Türkiye and Australia, in case of difference, “consultations will take place until the difference is resolved to mutual satisfaction.” To what extent that complicates negotiation dynamics in practice remains to be seen. In order to keep front and centre the profound challenges faced by Pacific Island nations in Australia’s neighbourhood, the Pre-COP was held in Fiji, Tuvalu and Palau.
Whether this year’s split presidency arrangement sets a precedent for future COPs is also open. COP32, however, is scheduled to take place in Addis Ababa, under the solo presidency of Ethiopia.
A legacy from last year’s presidency - COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago – are two Presidency-led Roadmaps that were announced at the closing of COP30 in Belém and will have to report back at COP31 on progress made: one on “transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly, and equitable manner” (TAFF Roadmap) and another on “halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030” (Deforestation Roadmap). For both Roadmaps, contributions and submissions by governments and non-government stakeholders were invited; the TAFF Roadmap also draws on deliberations and outcomes of the Santa Marta TAFF Conference, and the Deforestation Roadmap is accompanied by the Brazilian-led initiative for a Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF, for a critical assessment see here).
Electrification Done Right: A Just, Renewable-Powered 35x35 Target
The COP31 Presidencies are proposing as a key element of COP31 – possibly as part of an anticipated cover decision – a global target of 35% electrification of final energy demand by 2035. Political momentum is picking up around electrification through initiatives like the COP31 35 by 35 Global Electrification Pledge and the Electrify Now campaign. Civil society has largely welcomed a focus on electrification as renewables-based electrification can be a powerful tool to address both the climate crisis and the fossil energy crisis that has led to price shocks and shortages around the world. Importantly, civil society has also drawn attention to crucial guardrails to ensure electrification serves the objective of climate justice: Electrification has to be built on renewables, reduce fossil fuel dependence, and deliver for people without energy access, without repeating the harms of extraction.
An open letter, signed by 90+ civil society networks and organisations, argues that electrification targets must be exclusively based on renewable energy, and exclude both fossil and nuclear power, as well as go hand in hand with the commitments of tripling renewable energy and doubling energy efficiency by 2030, and transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, as agreed under the first Global Stocktake (GST). In high-income countries in particular, energy efficiency and sufficiency should be prioritised, for instance by shifting to public transport rather than private electric vehicles. Also: People should come before data centres.
655 million people worldwide have no access to electricity, and many more remain without reliable or affordable supply. Electrification must also serve to close the energy access gap by supporting distributed and community-based renewable energy, including off-grid solar and mini-grids, to reach unserved communities faster and at lower cost than waiting for grid extension, and ensuring affordability. Electrification must be implemented in a just, equitable and rights-based way, and backed by public climate finance and means of implementation.
Finally, critical energy transition minerals must not create new technological dependence or reproduce the harms of fossil fuel extraction and existing mining: The transition must respect rights and due diligence, including the rights of Indigenous Peoples and free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) and the rights of affected communities and workers, as well as protect ecosystems, water and biodiversity and exclude deep-sea mining. Primary demand for critical minerals has to be reduced through sufficiency, efficiency, reuse, recycling and circular design. Signatories also call for multilateral implementation of the principles of the UN Secretary-General's Panel on Critical Energy Transition Minerals.
Climate Finance Remains at the Centre of the Debate
In times of drastically sinking official development assistance and record military expenditure by developed countries, the focus in Antalya will remain on climate finance as a cross-cutting enabler of progress in other negotiation streams, such as for the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), progress in operationalizing the Belém Antalya Mechanism (BAM) under the Just Transition Work Programme or preparing the second Global Stocktake (please see our detailed technical analysis on climate finance issues at COP31).
While the new collective quantified goal on climate finance (NCQG) agreed at COP29 with promises of delivering US$ 300 billion per year by 2035 to developing countries is now technically under implementation, there is still no clarity on a stepwise action plan to scale up climate finance, nor on how much would be public versus private finance and how the money would be allocated for mitigation, adaptation and to address loss and damage. An even more ambitious, ‘Baku to Belém Roadmap to 1.3 Trillion’ counting on massive private sector mobilizations and growing carbon revenues, which was presented in Belém, is pushed forward by the outgoing Brazilian COP30 Presidency, which will report back on its implementation progress in Antalya. However, the roadmap’s future is uncertain in times of competition for and increasing costs of capital for climate actions in developing countries.
Most finance controversy in Antalya will be likely around the two-year climate finance work programme (CFWP) approved at COP30. This was the imperfect consolation prize for developing countries unhappy with the NCQG and its fuzziness regarding who will contribute the lion’s share of the goal. While some discussions were already held in Bonn in June, countries in the Global South want to reset it as a separate agenda item to focus the work of the program exclusively on the obligation of developed countries to provide public climate finance to developing countries and opposed by developed countries. This commitment is enshrined in Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Placed on the initial agenda for COP31 by the outgoing Brazilian Presidency, in Antalya it could very well come to a repeat of the agenda fight from Belém on this item, which could delay the start of the negotiations.
The focus on the role of public climate finance provision looks beyond quantity also to the quality of climate finance in times of sinking finance delivery – grants instead of loans which would aggravate already unsustainable debt burden in developing countries, easier and more direct access to funds, including for local communities, as well as the integration of human rights and gender equality in climate finance flows. This discussion is even more important in light of the headwinds multilateral climate funds under the UNFCCC are facing in seeking their regular replenishment, including underwhelming outcomes for the Adaptation Fund and the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in 2026, and concerns for the upcoming mobilization efforts of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD).
Antalya will also see discussions under the Veredas Dialogue on making all financial flows consistent with low-emission and climate-resilient development under Article 2.1.c of the Paris Agreement. Developing countries successfully pushed for safeguards to ensure that recommendations such as on green taxonomies or domestic mobilization efforts are non-prescriptive and respect national circumstances. Initial talks have seen a focus on ‘practical solutions’, including at a High Level Roundtable bringing climate negotiators together with finance ministers, central banks and regulators during the recent IMF-World Bank annual meetings, such as debt-for-climate swaps or guarantee instruments to give developing countries a bit of breathing room. Yet to be meaningful, the dialogue must go beyond temporary fixes to address some of the structural inequities and imbalances in the global financial system that makes access to capital for developing countries onerous and costly.
Global Goal on Adaptation (Gga) Must Address Adaptation Finance Shortfall
Climate adaptation, and in particular addressing the adaptation finance shortfall of some US$387 billion annually by some accounts, remains a priority in Antalya and will also likely be at the heart of the African COP32 in Addis Ababa. COP30 advanced the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA) by agreeing on a set of 59 Belém Adaptation Indicators (BAI). However, technical negotiations crashed in Bonn following the refusal of developed countries to establish a clear link in the GGA implementation to provision of financing. Countries of the Global South want a clear reference included to the Belém promise to triple adaptation finance by 2035 to roughly US$120 billion from 2025. This builds on the old target from COP26 in Glasgow to double adaptation finance from 2019 levels by 2025 – which is likely to be missed. According to the OECD, in 2024 only US$31.7 billion was provided for adaptation, most of it in the form of loans, many even at market rates. This adds insult to injury as the most climate-vulnerable developing countries are already heavily indebted and spend more on debt service annually than on education or health – and thus missing the fiscal space for investments in climate action, especially for resilience.
Just Transition and Emissions Reductions
An agreement under the Just Transition Work Programme (JTWP) on setting up a new Belém-Antalya Mechanism (BAM) was the success story of COP30, and in Bonn in June further progress was made on drafting the framework and guidance on how the BAM would operate. A decision in Antalya would fully operationalize the BAM, which was deliberately not set up as a separate fund but as a coordination, technical assistance and knowledge sharing body to help developing countries with an inclusive and equitable just transition not just of their energy sector, but their society and economies more broadly. Language on the BAM noted the importance of social dialogue, human rights, and the inclusion of care and informal work in such considerations, and was a bright spot in a process where integration of human rights language in other negotiation strands has faced significant pushback.
On emissions reductions, negotiators in Antalya will have to decide if they are going to extend the Mitigation Work Programme, which technically concludes at COP31. Efforts under this work programme have been contentious and underwhelming, and there might be no appetite to continue with a similar format. This comes as the ambition of bottom-up emissions reduction commitments under nationally determined contributions (NDCs), the cornerstone of the Paris Agreement, remains quite lackluster. So far 150 countries covering 75% of global emissions have submitted their third five-year NDCs, which show a significant ambition gap between intended climate protection efforts and what would be necessary for a 1.5°C pathway. An updated synthesis report by the UNFCCC Secretariat was published just before COP31. The link to (a lack of) climate finance is important, as many countries in the Global South are making the level of ambition of their national efforts dependent on whether financial support is provided by developed countries as historic emitters.
Loss and Damage: Renewed Focus After Himalaya Glacier Collapse?
The horrific flood with thousands of victims following a glacier collapse in the Himalaya in Nepal and Tibet has refocused global attention in the lead-up to COP31 in Antalya on loss and damage, including continued advocacy push by civil society to establish a separate COP agenda item. It has also highlighted both the resource challenges and the implementation delays of the Fund for responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD). The FRLD is significantly underfunded with its start-up financing phase limited to US$342 million against US$2.8 billion in initial funding requests received, and it has still to figure out its long-term operational policies and priorities, which have to include rapid response finance release after climate disasters. International civil society is increasing the pressure with a #FillTheFund campaign.
In Antalya, there will be also further discussion on the governance of the Warsaw Mechanism on Loss and Damage and its work, including a mandate from Belém to move ahead with preparing a global ‘State of Loss and Damage’ report which would highlight support needs of developing countries, including for capacity building, technical assistance and finance to address increasingly catastrophic losses and damages.
Carbon Markets in an Era of Overshoot: The Risks of Article 6
Article 6 is moving from negotiating the rules of international carbon markets toward implementing the systems that will make those markets operational. Key areas of contention are related to who sets the standards, what kinds of activities can generate credits, how those credits are accounted for, and whether the rules can prevent inflated climate claims and protect affected communities from exploitation and harm.
Interlinked developments at COP31 include: the continuing integrity and transparency problems in Article 6.2; and the operationalization of Article 6.4 with critical discussion on CDR and overshoot, and the Sustainable Development Tool (SDT) safeguards. The tension at the heart of the new emerging carbon markets is between wasting more time and finance on “improving” the machinery for measuring and trading carbon, and how these long and involved processes shift us even farther away from phasing out and reducing dependence on fossil fuels. Using the very limited amount of feasible or potentially feasible CDR – whether through biological or ‘engineered’ approaches – for purposes of carbon offsetting also flies in the face of wanting to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere after 1.5°C overshoot.
Article 6.2: Reporting, Transparency, and International Accounting
Article 6.2 allows countries to transfer mitigation outcomes toward their climate commitments based on nationally determined contributions (NDC). Its operation depends on countries authorizing transfers, reporting, tracking transactions, and applying corresponding adjustments to avoid double-counting.
Environmental-integrity issues were reported in every Article 6.2 country report examined in a June 2026 analysis of the UN technical reviews. Existing rules leave too much discretion to participating countries and insufficient transparency for independent scrutiny leaving countries to make up their reporting and trading processes as they go along.
Further, blockchain and AI are increasingly used for building and tracking registries. Big technology companies are increasingly claiming space and power in this process raising questions around transparency and power.
The Article 6.2 Ambition Dialogue will begin on Day 1 of COP31. In addition, the Article 6 Technical Expert Review (TER) dialogue will take place. Funding for Article 6.2 will also be discussed.
Article 6.4: Cdr, Lock-in and Safeguards
COP31 will be an important checkpoint. The UNFCCC has published the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body's annual report for consideration at the eighth session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA8). The Supervisory Body's annual report to CMA8 covers its governance, implementation progress, work programme, and finances. Its recommendations provide a space for countries to give further direction to the mechanism. The SBM will formally report back to the CMA at COP31. Parties at COP31 will review the report's progress updates and address its specific recommendations to issue further structural guidance for the Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM).
Meanwhile, the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body's October 2026 meeting approved updated standards and tools addressing issues such as non-permanence, reversals, leakage, additionality, and lock-in risks.
Standards for carbon dioxide removals (CDR) remain shaky. Serious questions remain regarding permanence, reversals, and the expansion of eligible activities. These rules are particularly important for distinguishing between biological (‘nature-based’) CDR and engineered CDR. Forest carbon can be released through wildfire, drought, or land-use change; engineered removals depend on energy, infrastructure, storage, and long-term monitoring. Currently, accounting rules do not adequately address these different risks.
Safeguards continue to be the most contested issue surrounding Article 6. A coalition of civil society organizations, Indigenous Peoples, community advocates, labor unions, and human rights experts called for stronger safeguards in September 2026, arguing that the Sustainable Development Tool does not adequately protect communities affected by carbon projects. From insufficient recognition of customary and informal land tenure, weakening requirements for free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC) to inadequate benefit-sharing and grievance mechanisms, the process does not allow transparency or meaningful decision-making for impacted Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities.
Transitioning Legacy Clean Development Mechanism Projects Into Article 6.4
The transition of projects registered under the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) into the new Article 6.4 Paris Agreement Crediting Mechanism (PACM) remains a significant concern. The CDM's history includes longstanding criticism of additionality, inflated crediting, and questionable climate benefits. Ongoing concerns about environmental and human rights shortcomings in early batches of projects seeking to transition to the PACM remain unaddressed.
Backlash Against Gender and Human Rights
COP31 comes at a time of continued significant backlash against human rights and gender equality in the UNFCCC negotiations. While Belém adopted a nine-year gender action plan (GAP), the inclusion of human rights and gender language and references to intersectionality and gender diversity was challenged, and it lacks a clear link to resources for implementation. So far, most countries have largely resisted efforts to bring a more comprehensive recognition of human rights as obligatory considerations for all climate actions as mandated by the ICJ advisory opinion into the various negotiation rooms.
The negotiations in Antalya are also facing possible restrictions for international human- and gender-rights advocates coming to Türkiye as the UNFCCC host country agreement with the Türkiye COP31 Presidency includes an explicit passage that participants must respect local laws and avoid interfering in the host country’s ‘internal affairs’. In light of the recent crackdown of the Turkish government against domestic LGBTI+ groups and gender organizations – with more than 80 people currently in custody –, international human rights groups and climate activists warn that this clause could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly. This could include the traditional climate protest march outside of the UNFCCC venue, which was a highlight of civil society convening in Belém at COP30 as the previous three COPs were hosted in authoritarian countries, as well as separate civil society convening outside the conference halls in the People’s Summit.
Domestic Politics in Türkiye Ahead of COP31
Since March 2025, the Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, has been in custody. He is accused of corruption and other offences; the prosecution is seeking a prison sentence of up to 2,430 years. İmamoğlu’s detention marked the start of an unprecedented campaign to literally dismantle the largest opposition party, the CHP. Hundreds of elected representatives and party officials have been detained, whilst mayors have been removed from office and replaced by appointed administrators. What had previously only befallen the pro-Kurdish DEM party is now tearing the CHP apart. According to many political analysts, İmamoğlu had simply become too dangerous a rival for the President, as his popularity was soaring. To make matters worse for the government, inflation has fallen but still stands at 30 per cent officially – and is likely to be significantly higher in reality. Above all, for years now, most people’s incomes have been losing purchasing power, as prices are rising faster than wages. And now a financial scandal involving billions is rocking the country: dodgy investment funds worth 18 billion dollars have collapsed, with senior officials from the ruling AKP party directly implicated. And the small investors, who now fear for their deposits, largely belong to the AKP’s electorate – in other words, the very base of the government and its party, whose approval ratings are dwindling.
President Erdogan wants to be re-elected. But there should be no unexpected results. Consequently, pressure on critical civil society is also mounting. The European Parliament is not alone in its assessment that Turkey is experiencing “serious backsliding in the rule of law and a deteriorating human rights situation”. Free and critical thought in Turkey are going through difficult times, even in the places where they are most at home: the universities. And that is not good news for climate policy, which perhaps relies on free science more than any other policy sector.
