Australia is ready to cede the rights to host next year’s UN climate talks to Turkey in a deal proposed Wednesday that would end a protracted battle over who would stage COP31.
Under the highly unusual arrangement, COP31 would take place in Turkey, but which country would preside over the meeting and lead the negotiations — Australia or Turkey — was still being negotiated.
Any decision has to be adopted by consensus among the nearly 200 countries meeting at COP30 in Belem, Brazil this week.
Turkey and Australia have been fighting for months over the right to host COP31, and Canberra had hoped to co-host it with Pacific island states whose very existence is threatened by rising seas.
Under COP rules, hosting duties rotate through five blocs of countries.
In 2026, that falls to the Western European and Other States — two dozen countries mostly in Europe but also Turkey, Australia, Canada and a few others.
Rival COP-hosting bids are not unprecedented, but none had ever come down to the wire like this.
The proposed deal was discussed at a meeting of Western European and Other States group, which was chaired by German state secretary for the environment Jochen Flasbarth.
Flasbarth told AFP the arrangement was “innovative” and he did not hear opposition to it, but it had yet to be proposed in writing — and only then would he reconvene the group to make a decision.
Australian climate minister Chris Bowen only said there had been “good progress” in the negotiations.
“What we’ve been trying to do is get a solution which works for Australia, the Pacific and also the multilateral process. We’ll have more to say very soon,” he said.
AFP
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