‘Going for the vibes’: Cop31 climate summit expectations ‘pretty much zero’

Global and domestic political difficulties overshadow the annual negotiations at this year’s summit, co-hosted by Australia and Turkey

Sat Nov 07 2026 - 06:00 • 5 MIN READ

Pity Monique Barbut. The French environment minister has been assigned the task of nudging countries towards agreement on finance at the Cop31 global climate summit beginning next week in Turkey.

She and her counterpart from the Philippines have been given the dubious honour by the Cop31 presidency under a ministerial pairing arrangement aimed at keeping talks on tricky issues moving.

They will face demands from developing countries for richer nations to make good on promises to increase the flow of money for loss and damage, for investment in low-emissions technologies and to pay for extreme weather defences.

But back home in France, the economy is tanking, the public are protesting, riot police are on the streets and Barbut’s government is facing an existential crisis.

Now is not a good time to be asking for more money.

But pity takes on a whole different complexion when climate change is viewed outside of the narrow focus of domestic politics.

Pity Nepal where towns and villages and thousands of people were erased when glacier collapses sparked raging floods last August.

Pity the communities of the Andes and Patagonia where wildfires destroyed national parks and their irreplaceable ecology and culture.

Pity Zambia where the annual rains critical to food production that should be just weeks away look set to fail and cause excruciating drought and hunger.

The clash between political and literal survival is never clearer than at the annual climate summit.

This year’s gathering, the 31st since the United Nations Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992, takes place against a backdrop where the odds are stacking increasingly against both.

UN scientific reports have confirmed global average temperature rise will soon breach the 1.5 degree threshold agreed as the do-not-pass point in the 2015 Paris Agreement, and will head for almost three degrees by the end of the century.

They found that all the individual pledges made by countries to cut emissions would achieve only a fraction of what was needed.

They warned that even if countries increased and fulfilled their pledges, unproven technologies such as carbon capture and storage would still need to be deployed at scale to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Prof Peter Thorne of the Icarus climate research centre at Maynooth University doesn’t sugarcoat the implications.

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“We are at an ever increasingly critical moment of precarity the further we continue to push the climate system,” he says.

“This is as good as it’s going to get. The further we continue to sail into uncharted waters the worse things will get. And they will get worse rapidly.”

Logically, the response would be for countries to approach Cop31 determined to make every possible effort to simultaneously cut emissions and prepare to adapt to the chaos of a “three degree world”.

Instead, they are displaying muted ambitions.

“There seems to be a fairly widespread exercise in expectation management going on,” says Diarmuid Torney, director of the Dublin City University Institute for Climate and Society.

“I’m not expecting any massive decisions.”

That is certainly the signal from the organisers of this year’s summit, Australia and Turkey, who are co-hosting because neither country would withdraw its bid to stage the event.

“We want to create a Cop31 that prioritises action and implementation, where commitments are finally put into practice,” said Turkey’s climate minister, Murat Kurum.

Ireland’s climate minister, Darragh O’Brien, said the same. “Cop31 is an implementation Cop and we should focus on that.”

It is true there have been many commitments that have yet to be honoured in full, or even in part.

They include the Paris Agreement from Cop21, the creation of the Loss and Damage Fund from Cop27 and agreement to transition away from fossil fuels from Cop28.

All were breakthrough achievements but much work is required to realise their goals.

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Other recent pledges – to triple renewable capacity by 2030, double energy efficiency and scale up climate finance – came without instructions as to how to proceed and have been slow to progress.

There is one new buzz word around this year’s summit, however – electrification.

Turkey and Australia want a Cop31 agreement that commits to having 35 per cent of global demand for power, heat and transport supplied by electricity by 2035.

The idea behind the “35 by 35” goal is that it will kick-start the transition away from fossil fuels.

“A lot is being made of this electrification target,” says Torney. “The key thing, though, is that it doesn’t seem to include a commitment to clean energy.”

It certainly doesn’t sound like much of a win if electric cars replace petrol and electric heating replaces coal but the electricity itself is generated by burning gas.

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With a so far underwhelming agenda, Cop31 might be considered less of a draw than previous summits but the number of delegates accredited and pavilions booked by countries, alliances and industries is touching a record high.

Peter Thorne despairs of this burgeoning sideshow element to the negotiations.

“Cops have become an absolute circus,” he says. “Many will be going to network or for the vibes with no official role and at best talking to 20 mates in some country pavilion.”

He attends Cops rarely and reluctantly, conscious of air travel emissions, and is going this year as deputy chair of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS).

GCOS tracks vital signs such as how oceans are warming and rising, how temperatures are increasing and how concentrations of greenhouse gas are accumulating.

With the US decommissioning monitoring points, key data will vanish just when precision becomes all the more critical.

Thorne will do his best to flag those concerns but says given the state of geopolitical affairs, his expectations of Cop31 are “pretty much zero”.

“There will be inevitable window dressing applied and positive words, but the fundamental issues will remain,” he says.

“A lack of ambition amongst even the handful of states with the means to progress reductions emissions, a growing adaptation gap even in developed countries, and yawning finance, equity and justice gaps.”

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