Halfway through the world’s biggest climate summit, the negotiations are stuck exactly where they always get stuck: on fossil fuels.
COP31 — the 31st annual Conference of the Parties to the UN climate convention — opened on 9 November at the Antalya Expo Centre on Turkey’s Mediterranean coast and runs until 20 November. Nearly 200 countries are in the room. The presidency is split: Turkey’s environment minister, Murat Kurum, holds the COP presidency and runs the venue and the voluntary “Action Agenda”, while Australia’s climate minister, Chris Bowen, leads the formal negotiations.
On Friday 13 November, with the first week drawing to a close, UN Secretary-General António Guterres delivered the bluntest message of the summit so far. “The central question is in the hands of member states, particularly the big emitters,” he said. “They must recognise the need for an immediate and drastic reduction in emissions to keep the 1.5 goal still possible by the end of the century.”
The 1.5 goal is the warming limit agreed under the 2015 Paris Agreement: holding the rise in global temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. A UN report published last month found the world is on course to exceed it.
The fight in the room
The deadlock is over language — but the language is the policy. Major oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia have long resisted any text that would constrain fossil fuels. Large developing economies such as India have opposed measures they say could limit their development and energy choices. The world’s biggest oil consumer, the United States, has skipped the talks for the second year running; the Trump administration, which calls global warming a hoax, withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, a withdrawal that took effect in January 2026.
Guterres, attending his final COP before leaving office at the end of December after two five-year terms, aimed his sharpest words at the industry itself. “We must confront the disproportionate influence of the fossil fuel lobby,” he said. “The future of our planet cannot be negotiated on the terms of those profiting from its destruction.” Earlier in the week he had proposed a Climate Justice Compact: coal phased out by 2040, oil and gas use down by a third, and windfall taxes on fossil fuel profits.
COP30 in Belém ended in disarray in 2025, when a fossil-fuel roadmap backed by more than 80 countries was kept out of the final decision. Brazil has presented its own transition roadmap at COP31 — whether it survives into the final text is what week two will decide.
The host’s answer: plug everything in
Turkey, as host, has steered the summit towards something it can deliver: electrification. Its flagship proposal, known as “35 by 35”, would raise electricity’s share of global final energy consumption from about 23% today to 35% by 2035, speeding the shift away from petrol cars, gas boilers and other fossil-fuelled equipment. At least 14 countries have publicly backed the voluntary pledge, including Australia, Germany, Norway, Finland and South Korea. Brazil and Saudi Arabia have not signed.
The catch, flagged by several backers themselves, is that the pledge does not say how the electricity should be generated — a country could hit the target while still burning coal and gas to make the power. Critics call it a slogan that lets producers sign up without giving up anything; supporters call it the only target with a chance of consensus in this room.
The money gap underneath it all
Running alongside the fossil-fuel fight is the question of who pays. The UN Environment Programme’s Adaptation Gap Report 2026 put the numbers in stark terms: international public adaptation finance — money from rich countries to help developing ones cope — reached only $28.2–31.7 billion in 2024. Developing countries will need around $305 billion a year by 2035. Even if finance is tripled by then, as COP30 aspired to, it would cover just 20–29% of what is needed.
Guterres warned on Friday that climate disasters are erasing decades of development gains and pushing vulnerable countries deeper into debt. “Even tripling adaptation finance would meet less than 30 per cent of what is needed,” he said.
The Australian team is taking further submissions from countries until Saturday night, with a draft text expected early next week. The presidency has circulated a first outline of a possible declaration, with finance and fossil fuels still unresolved.
Why this matters
Thirty-one summits in, the pattern is familiar: a week of warnings, a week of haggling, a final text that says less than the science demands. But Antalya is sharper than usual. The 1.5°C limit is slipping away in plain sight, the money promised to the hardest-hit countries covers a fraction of the bill, and the world’s largest historical emitter is not even in the room.
What happens next depends on whether week two produces a text that names fossil fuels at all. A declaration that ducks the question, as Belém’s did, would confirm the critics’ case: that these summits can agree on everything except the cause of the problem. A text with firm transition language and real finance would be the first sign in years that the process can still bite. The draft lands early next week.
Related: COP31 opens in Antalya: the summit where delivery matters more than promises.
Sources: UNFCCC — COP31 · UN News — COP31 climate finance falls short
