More than $480 million in new philanthropic funding has been announced at the COP31 Leaders’ Summit in Antalya, Turkey, to accelerate efforts to reduce methane and other non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions, in one of the first concrete outcomes of the 2026 UN climate summit. The funding was announced at a leaders’ summit co-hosted by Brazil, China and the United Kingdom, alongside the COP31 presidency, and chaired by UK Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband.
The funding will support emission reduction initiatives across the energy, agriculture and waste sectors, as well as efforts targeting black carbon, clean cooking, transport and cooling. It builds on $300 million pledged by philanthropies when the Global Methane Pledge was launched in 2021. Since then, philanthropic partners have provided more than $530 million to support implementation efforts, according to UN Climate Change. The UK also announced an additional $25 million for the Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Super Pollutant Country Action Accelerator, expanding it to seven more countries: Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Fiji, Morocco, Pakistan, the Philippines and Uzbekistan.
France Wants Methane in the Deal
France is rallying countries to write near-zero methane targets for oil and gas into the COP31 climate deal, as leaders at the summit said it was time to move beyond the voluntary pledges on track to deliver little more than a third of the cuts promised under the 2021 Global Methane Pledge. French Ecological Transition Minister Monique Barbut told the leaders’ summit that COP31’s overarching decision should call on the oil and gas sector to reach near-zero methane emissions intensity by 2030 at the latest, and to end routine flaring and venting. The Global Methane Pledge, backed by 159 countries and the European Union, aims for at least 30 percent below 2020 levels.
A Summit Still Searching for Its Deal
COP31 runs from November 9 to 20 in Antalya, with Turkey holding the presidency and Australia leading the official negotiations, while the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, has sent no official delegation after formally withdrawing from the Paris Agreement at the start of this year. On Friday, negotiators saw the first iteration of the draft cover text, the political statement from the summit, which at this early stage is a laundry list of parties’ priorities. Draft texts now exist for 44 agenda items, with 48 still blank, and adaptation finance remains unresolved. For the climate stakes, read WMO: 2026 stays among hottest years as ice melts and seas rise.
