Two days before the U.N. climate summit opens on Türkiye's Mediterranean coast, the host country is promising delegates from 196 countries something different from the usual round of new pledges. "The Paris Agreement is 10 years old. The world is no longer struggling to set targets, it is struggling to deliver them," Türkiye's Climate Change President Halil Hasar told Anadolu Agency. "That is why we defined COP31 from day one as the 'implementation COP.'"
COP31 runs Nov. 9-20 in Antalya under an unusual shared arrangement agreed at last year's talks in Belém, Brazil: Türkiye hosts the conference, while Australia leads the negotiations. "Two countries are working as a single presidency," Hasar said.
The summit's official account kept up its countdown with this video, in which a narrator speaks as the Earth over images of wildfires, flooded coastlines and drought. "Just 2 days left to be whole with the Earth," the post said.
Closing the gap between money and projects
Hasar said the summit's centerpiece would be a platform called the Climate Implementation Bridge (BRIDGE), designed to match priority projects in countries' national climate plans with technical and financial partners. "Finance exists but doesn't reach projects; projects exist but can't reach finance. The bridge closes exactly that gap," he said.
He listed four outcomes Ankara hopes for: a short, balanced cover decision focused on implementation; progress on a just transition mechanism, indicators for the global adaptation goal and the second global stocktake; confidence on finance, including delivery of the new collective finance goal adopted in Baku; and new country commitments on electrification, green industry, resilient cities, zero waste and early warning. Technical issues are to be wrapped up in the first week, leaving the second for political deals.
Zero waste and local flavor
On Nov. 11, designated Zero Waste Day at the summit, leaders are set to launch two initiatives: a Circularity Knowledge-Sharing Network and a Global High-Level Dialogue on methane emissions from waste. Hasar noted that methane from landfills is about 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. Leaders arriving in Antalya will also receive wooden gift boxes of local products, including bitter orange, bergamot and pear jams, tahini and pomegranate molasses, prepared under the coordination of the Antalya governor's office.
The COP31 team also released "Fragile Blue," a short film on warming seas that follows the decline of the endangered noble pen shell from Egypt's Lake Timsah to Türkiye's Sea of Marmara.
Photos: COP31 Türkiye. Videos: COP31 Türkiye
