In two weeks, the world's climate negotiators will gather in Antalya, on Türkiye's Mediterranean coast, for a summit its hosts say must be judged by a different standard than the ones before it. The 31st United Nations climate conference, COP31, runs from 9 to 20 November 2026 and will cover nearly 100 agenda items under the UN climate convention and the Paris Agreement.
Turkish officials have given the meeting a label that sums up the ambition: an "implementation COP". Speaking on 23 October, Turkish Deputy Foreign Minister Berris Ekinci said the conference would prioritise the practical delivery of climate policies, reflecting a growing view that the second decade of the Paris Agreement should be about carrying out commitments rather than negotiating new ones. After a decade of targets and pledges, the question hanging over Antalya is simple: can countries show they are actually doing what they said they would do?
From writing the rules to keeping them
For most of its first decade, the Paris Agreement was mainly an exercise in writing rules: how countries would set climate plans, report emissions and review each other's progress. China's vice minister of ecology and environment, Li Gao, put the shift plainly at a press conference in Beijing on 21 October: global climate governance has moved from negotiating rules to implementing them, and COP31 should help countries, particularly developing economies, deliver on their national climate plans.
The recent record explains the urgency. The closing statement of the Bonn climate conference in June acknowledged gridlock in advancing negotiating texts. Last year's COP30 summit in Brazil finished without firmer pledges to restrain greenhouse gas emissions. And the world's own assessments now confirm that holding warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is no longer the path the world is on. Negotiators arriving in Antalya face a credibility problem, not a blank page.
There is also a geopolitical strain earlier summits did not face in the same way. The United States has exited global climate negotiations, leaving others to carry a process designed around universal participation. European diplomats have said their tactic this time is to avoid public confrontations and instead cooperate with willing countries to carry out existing commitments. Antalya is thus a test of whether climate action can advance without everyone moving at the same speed.
An unusual presidency: Türkiye hosts, Australia leads the talks
COP31 has an unusual shape. Türkiye hosts the summit and holds the presidency, while Australia leads the official negotiations under a split arrangement agreed after a long dispute over who would host. The Pacific island nations, whose survival is most directly threatened by rising seas, hosted the pre-COP meeting in Fiji, keeping their concerns at the centre of the process.
The Turkish presidency has paired formal negotiations with a climate action agenda involving cities, businesses, investors, researchers, civil society and young people. UN Resident Coordinator Babatunde Ahonsi has described the approach as "inclusive multilateralism". Türkiye's environment minister, Murat Kurum, said on 23 October that the country expects 85 world leaders to attend, with 26,000 security personnel deployed.
One practical idea stands out. Ekinci highlighted the Climate Implementation Bridge, developed with the UN Development Programme to link national climate priorities with financing and turn ambitions into bankable projects. That is the unglamorous machinery an implementation summit needs: a route from a plan on paper to a project a city or ministry can actually build.
The six files that will decide COP31
Strip away the ceremony and six linked questions will decide whether COP31 succeeds or stalls.
First, national climate plans. By 1 September 2026, 124 countries had filed new climate plans, known as nationally determined contributions, covering about 75 percent of global emissions. The key test in Antalya is not how many plans exist, but whether the cuts inside them are being delivered.
Second, climate finance. At COP29, countries agreed a goal of at least 300 billion US dollars a year for developing countries by 2035, within a wider call to mobilise 1.3 trillion dollars a year from all sources. China now wants detailed talks on a roadmap to meet the 300-billion-dollar goal, with money that is predictable and transparent. The European Parliament's environment committee has warned against double-counting existing funds, and urged priority for grants and debt relief so finance does not worsen vulnerable countries' debt.
Third, adaptation. COP30 called for efforts to at least triple adaptation finance by 2035, and the need is stark: adaptation needs in developing countries are estimated at 310 to 365 billion dollars a year, against just 26 billion dollars of international public finance in 2023. Adaptation — sea walls, drought-resistant crops, early-warning systems, cooling for hot cities — is where the funding gap is widest, and Antalya's credibility will depend heavily on whether it starts to close.
Fourth, the just transition. A mechanism to manage the economic and social costs of moving away from fossil fuels was agreed in principle at COP30, but its design is still open. This is where climate policy meets real livelihoods: miners, factory workers, farmers and fishing communities whose jobs are reshaped by the green transition. Bangladesh's workers' charter for COP31, unveiled in Dhaka on 14 October, sets out 23 demands, including fair compensation for climate-affected workers and a seat for workers, particularly women, in the official delegation. A transition that ignores those voices will be neither just nor durable.
Fifth, fossil fuels. Remarkably, fossil fuels are not on COP31's formal agenda, even though more than 80 countries called for a phase-out roadmap at COP30. The discussion now runs mostly outside the UN talks, through coalitions of willing countries. Whether Antalya brings that conversation back into the room will shape how the summit is judged.
Sixth, the second global stocktake. COP31 launches the second review of collective progress under the Paris Agreement, running until 2028. The first stocktake, concluded at COP28, produced the landmark call to transition away from fossil fuels. The second will measure whether that call has changed the world's emissions trajectory. Its design — what it measures, and how honestly it reports failure — is one of Antalya's most consequential decisions, even though it sounds like procedure.
The numbers that frame the talks
The UN Environment Programme's latest assessment gives negotiators an unforgiving frame. To return to 1.5 degrees with the lowest possible overshoot, global emissions must fall 45 percent by 2035 compared with 2025. If every national climate plan is fully implemented, emissions fall only 11 to 15 percent — a path leading to about 2.6 degrees of warming this century. Under current policies, without full delivery of the plans, warming reaches about 2.8 degrees.
Those three numbers explain why "implementation" dominates the run-up to Antalya. The plans on the table are not enough on their own, and even the plans are not yet fully delivered. Closing the gap requires stronger plans and faster delivery — extending the mitigation work programme, where governments examine emissions cuts, through 2040, as the European Union wants, and turning plans into projects through tools like the Climate Implementation Bridge.
The stakes are not abstract. How Hurricane Simon sent invisible waves into the sky shows how a single storm can reach far beyond its path, while the record 2026 El Niño reshaped weather across the globe. Delayed climate action is paid for in heat, floods and storms.
What the big players want
China's position, set out by Li Gao on 21 October, is the clearest statement of the developing world's core demand: implementation plus finance. Beijing wants COP31 to focus on inadequate emissions cuts and inadequate financial support from developed countries, a roadmap for the 300-billion-dollar goal, tripled adaptation finance, and a just-transition mechanism narrowing the gap between the global North and South. It also wants discussion of trade measures that could undermine collective action, and support for the free flow of green and low-carbon technologies.
The European Union is pushing a mitigation package: translating pledges into tangible actions, extending the mitigation work programme through 2040, and responding to the confirmed reality that the world will miss the 1.5-degree goal. Irish climate minister Darragh O'Brien has said the bloc will reinforce partnerships for practical advances, particularly the shift away from fossil fuels and electrification. The European Parliament's environment committee adopted its COP31 priorities on 1 October by 50 votes to 16, calling for a faster fossil fuel phase-out and grant-based finance without double-counting.
Smaller and more vulnerable countries push a complementary agenda: recognition, resources and a voice. Bangladesh, for example, plans to showcase jute as a biodegradable alternative to plastic at COP31 — climate diplomacy built around a product its economy already produces.
What success in Antalya would actually look like
It is worth being precise about what would count as a good outcome, because summits are often declared successes on warm words alone. A genuinely successful COP31 would deliver: a credible roadmap for the 300-billion-dollar finance goal with clear rules against double-counting; measurable progress on tripling adaptation finance; a designed, funded just-transition mechanism with worker representation; an extended mitigation work programme running to 2040; and a stocktake designed to report honestly on failure as well as success.
The presidency's action agenda adds voluntary 2035 targets worth watching: electricity reaching 35 percent of final energy use, up from 23 percent today; a cut of at least 25 percent in the energy intensity of buildings; and halving the growth in global waste. These are not negotiated commitments, but they are measurable — and measurability is exactly what an implementation summit should prize.
There is one encouraging precedent. Our report on the 2026 ozone hole shows that a global environmental agreement can work when countries follow through. The ozone story took decades, but it is a reminder that implementation, dull as it sounds, is where environmental promises become real.
What to watch when the gavel falls
When COP31 opens on 9 November, watch the finance text first. If the 300-billion-dollar roadmap is vague, or existing funds are simply relabelled, the summit's credibility will suffer immediately. Watch the adaptation numbers next: they reveal whether the summit cares about countries already living with climate damage. Watch whether workers and vulnerable communities get a real seat at the table, not just a mention in a preamble. And watch the stocktake design, because a review that cannot name failure cannot drive success.
Antalya will not solve climate change in twelve days. No summit can. But it can prove that the system built to solve it still works. After a decade of promises, the world does not need another declaration of intent. It needs evidence — in funded projects, delivered finance and emissions that actually fall — that the promises mean something. That is the test COP31 has set for itself, and it is the right one.