COP31 opens in Antalya with leaders urging the world to “move faster” on climate

Antalya opens late, with money on the table first

The 31st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change opened on Monday 9 November 2026 in Antalya, in Türkiye, with thousands of delegates gathered at the Antalya Expo Center for two weeks of negotiation. The opening ceremony began an hour and a half late after a debate over including finance items on the agenda; the first sign of the argument that will shadow the fortnight.

Andrea Correa do Lago, president of last year’s COP30 in Brazil, formally declared the conference open. Then the warnings came. UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged world leaders to “get serious” by cutting emissions faster, accelerating a just transition away from fossil fuels, and delivering the finance and protection vulnerable countries need. UN climate chief Simon Stiell told the opening session that “the urgency of this moment must drive us forward”, adding that progress so far was “nowhere near fast enough”.

The summit opened under an unusual arrangement: Türkiye holds the COP31 presidency while Australia leads the negotiations. COP31 President Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s environment minister, and Australia’s climate minister Chris Bowen raised their clasped hands to applause.

The numbers behind the opening speeches

The bleakest numbers in Antalya come from the United Nations Environment Programme. Its Emissions Gap Report 2026 concludes that the chance of holding global warming to 1.5°C with no or limited overshoot is now gone. In the report’s lowest-possible overshoot pathway, warming peaks at 1.7 to 1.8°C around mid-century and returns to 1.5°C or below by 2100, with about a 50 per cent chance. Getting there requires global emissions to fall by 18 per cent by 2030, 45 per cent by 2035 and 69 per cent by 2040, plus removing around 320 gigatonnes of CO2 from the air by century’s end.

What governments have pledged falls far short. Full implementation of current national climate plans would cut emissions by only 5 to 8 per cent by 2030 and 11 to 15 per cent by 2035, leaving the world on course for about 2.6°C this century; the policies now in force point to 2.8°C. A separate UN report found 2026 on track to become one of the four hottest years on record, driven by a powerful El Niño.

Türkiye’s presidency has set the theme as the “COP of the Future; COP of Implementation”, with a headline goal of raising electricity’s share of the global economy to more than a third by 2035, up from around a fifth today. A UNFCCC synthesis counted 127 new national climate plans from 154 parties, and UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report puts the adaptation bill for developing countries at $305 billion a year by 2035. One chair is empty: the United States, the largest historic polluter, is not taking part after President Donald Trump withdrew it from the Paris Agreement. US emissions rose by about 133 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2025, the largest increase of any country.

What Antalya has not settled yet

The opening-day delay was about finance, and nobody in Antalya has yet said the argument is over. The agenda debate that held up the ceremony concerned items on climate finance, and African negotiators have already asked for dedicated talks on the finance pledge at COP31; raising the prospect of an early dispute over the summit's agenda, and over who pays the adaptation bill that UNEP now puts at $305 billion a year by 2035.

Nor is it clear what the summit's headline product will be. Türkiye and Australia want countries to approve a single overall decision setting out how to deliver existing promises on emissions cuts, protection against climate damage and funding; but no text has been agreed, and the shape of that decision, or whether it survives the fortnight, is still open. The same is true of the electrification goal: the target raises electricity's share of the economy to more than a third by 2035, but whether the pledge will require the new electricity to be low-carbon has not been settled.

Why this summit is the test of the Paris deal’s second decade

COP31 is the first climate summit of the Paris Agreement’s second decade and it arrives at the moment the agreement’s central promise has slipped out of reach. The 1.5°C limit was written as a ceiling; UNEP now describes it as a destination to return to, after an overshoot that must be kept small and short. That change of framing rewrites what success looks like at every summit, and puts the burden on the hardest part of the transition: cutting emissions by nearly half within nine years while building the carbon-removal capacity the return depends on.

The summit also tests whether the multilateral system can move without its largest historic polluter. Bowen said he hoped the conference would show the world that multilateralism works, and that “Paris is working… But we must move faster.” If Antalya produces a single agreed decision and a credible finance pathway without Washington, the Paris framework proves it can advance alone; if it stalls, the countries facing the floods, the heat and the adaptation bill will pay for it. The stakes were already visible at the previous climate summit, where the gap between pledge and delivery was the story.

The electrification bet, and the finance fight underneath it

Three facts have to be held together to read COP31. First, the presidency’s headline goal, electricity to more than a third of the global economy by 2035, is industrial policy as much as climate policy: it promises cheaper energy, cleaner transport and new jobs, and Kurum framed it exactly that way, as practical benefits for households. That is why it could survive as the summit’s centrepiece. But electrification only cuts emissions if the electricity is clean, and the pledge as presented carries no requirement on the source; the hole in the plan that will be argued over in the second week.

Second, the finance fight is not a side argument; it is the summit. The opening ceremony was delayed by a debate over finance items on the agenda, African negotiators want dedicated talks on the finance pledge, and the adaptation bill, $305 billion a year by 2035, is now a published UNEP number rather than a negotiating claim. Every other ambition in Antalya, including the electrification goal, depends on money flowing to the countries that cannot fund the transition alone.

Third, the summit is a test of whether the Paris framework can deliver without the United States. Washington’s absence removes the largest historic polluter from the room and, paradoxically, the largest obstacle to agreement; but also the largest source of finance and technology. Bowen’s bet is that a single overall decision, agreed by everyone else, proves multilateralism works. The risk is the opposite: a decision so thin that it proves only that the process can still meet.

What a slow COP31 would set in motion

A thin outcome is measured in the UNEP numbers: every year of delay pushes the peak higher than 1.7 to 1.8°C and makes the return to 1.5°C harder, since the pathway already demands cuts of 18 per cent by 2030 and depends on removing 320 gigatonnes of CO2. A summit that cannot settle the finance question also raises the price of the next one: the adaptation bill does not shrink while negotiators argue, and the second Global Stocktake would inherit a finance dispute instead of a settlement.

The second-order effects run through politics as much as physics. If the Türkiye–Australia arrangement produces a single agreed decision, it becomes a template for COPs without a dominant power. If the sustainable-AI pledge wins signatories, a new axis enters climate diplomacy: the governance of AI’s energy appetite, negotiated alongside emissions rather than after them. And if African negotiators secure dedicated finance talks, the centre of gravity of the next COP shifts south, towards the countries that experience the warming first and pay for it longest.

The fortnight ahead: leaders, then the hard bargaining

The World Leaders’ Summit on 11–12 November is the next set-piece, with heads of state and government, including Brazil’s President Lula, due to address the conference and set the political tone. After they leave, negotiators take up the finance text, the electrification pledge, the sustainable-AI pledge and the single overall decision. Watch whether the finance fight returns, whether the electrification target gains a low-carbon condition, and whether a draft decision emerges early enough to be negotiated. The conference closes on 20 November.