The 31st United Nations climate conference, COP31, opened on Monday 9 November in Antalya, Türkiye, with nearly 200 countries gathering for twelve days of talks billed as an “implementation COP.”
According to the UN Climate Change secretariat, via Zark News, negotiators from more than 190 countries will spend two weeks testing whether years of climate promises can be turned into delivery. The conference runs from 9 to 20 November at the Antalya Expo Center.
The presidency has billed COP31 as an implementation conference, focused less on new pledges and more on carrying out the ones already made. Its slogan is “COP of the Future – COP of Implementation,” according to InfoHandle.
A first-ever dual presidency
COP31 is being held under an unprecedented dual presidency. Türkiye hosts the meeting and holds the presidency, with Environment Minister Murat Kurum nominated as COP31 President. Australia’s Climate and Energy Minister, Chris Bowen, serves as President of Negotiations, an arrangement agreed at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, and described by the United Nations University as the first shared presidency in the history of the talks.
Under the arrangement, Türkiye is responsible for the venue, logistics and the voluntary “Action Agenda,” while Australia holds authority over the formal negotiations, drafting of texts and steering of decisions, according to Dunyadesk.
A World Leaders’ Summit follows on 11 and 12 November. Organisers expect more than 100,000 people across the two weeks, according to Zark News. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan are among those expected at the high-level segment, according to Tanahair.
French President Emmanuel Macron will not attend the leaders’ summit, according to Dunyadesk.
Finance dispute delays opening
Proceedings on Monday opened with an unexplained one-hour delay after negotiators from developed and developing countries remained locked in late talks over whether to include contentious climate finance items on the official conference agenda, according to TreeTake.
That dispute goes to the heart of the fortnight. Developing countries are demanding greater financial support to cope with floods, droughts, heatwaves and other climate-related disasters, while the presidency is pushing a voluntary commitment to raise electricity to 35 per cent of global final energy consumption by 2035, up from 23 per cent today, according to Le Monde via World Daily News Hub. That target is known as the “35 by 35” electrification agenda.
The United States is absent
The United States will send no official delegation to the summit, after President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the Paris Agreement for a second time. Its withdrawal took effect on 27 January 2026, under the agreement’s one-year notice rule, and the US is no longer a member of the UNFCCC, according to multiple reports.
