{"id":401263,"date":"2026-01-10T21:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T21:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/401263\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T21:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T21:35:07","slug":"australias-cop31-chief-negotiator-plans-to-lobby-petrostates-on-fossil-fuel-phaseout-cop31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/401263\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia\u2019s Cop31 chief negotiator plans to lobby petrostates on fossil fuel phaseout | Cop31"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Bowen wants to use his stint as the world\u2019s chief climate negotiator to lobby Saudi Arabia<\/a> and others to stop resisting progress at UN summits, heeding calls for a \u201chard-nosed\u201d approach in dealing with big emitters obstructing the transition.<\/p>\n

Appointed \u201cpresident of negotiations\u201d for Cop31 under the deal that handed Turkey<\/a> hosting rights for the conference, Australia\u2019s climate change and energy minister has told Guardian Australia a focus ahead of the summit would be talking to countries \u201cwith whom we don\u2019t traditionally agree\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bowen mentioned Saudi Arabia, the oil-rich Gulf state<\/a> accused of repeatedly obstructing efforts at UN summits to accelerate the phaseout of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe won\u2019t get anywhere if we just have a jamboree of the willing,\u201d Bowen said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to have a Cop which really tries to cross some of those bridges that have been very difficult to cross in recent Cops.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up: AU Breaking News email<\/a><\/p>\n

Asked how that would be achieved, Bowen said: \u201cengagement, engagement, engagement\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bowen\u2019s comments follow a direct appeal from the former US secretary of state John Kerry<\/a> for Australia to actively push the world\u2019s big emitters \u2013 including China, Russia, the US and India \u2013 to develop a roadmap to end the era of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration this week pulled out of the foundational international agreement<\/a> to address the climate crisis and has effectively abandoned the UN climate arena, meaning Bowen has little capacity to influence the US via the Cop negotiations.<\/p>\n

The Labor minister said the fact Australia was itself a major exporter of fossil fuels meant it had \u201ccredibility\u201d when it came to lobbying petrostates to do more.<\/p>\n

The Cop30 summit in Brazil ended with a deal that omitted direct mention of fossil fuels after opposition from Saudi Arabia and its allies.<\/p>\n

However, more than 80 countries \u2013 including Australia \u2013 signed a separate \u201cBel\u00e9m declaration\u201d that committed nations to working towards a \u201cjust, orderly and equitable\u201d phasing out of fuel fuels.<\/p>\n

Bowen wants to achieve a more successful outcome at Cop31, targeting a \u201cmeaningful step forward\u201d from the 2023 summit in Dubai, when nations agreed<\/a> for the first time to start phasing out fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

Under the deal Australia agreed with Turkey, a pre-conference event will be hosted in the Pacific with the aim of drawing global attention to small island nations under existential threat from the climate crisis.<\/p>\n

Despite the disappointment of missing out on full hosting rights after a years-long bidding process, Bowen said Cop31<\/a> was a \u201cremarkable opportunity for Australia\u201d.<\/p>\n

Bowen has asked the Pacific Islands Forum to choose a host for the event, which will be used, in part, to encourage countries to contribute to the region\u2019s climate resilience fund<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Labor frontbencher made the comments in an interview outlining his priorities for 2026, where he will balance his international duties with managing the domestic energy transition.<\/p>\n

Bowen described progress in cutting pollution as \u201cgood, a lot done, but a lot more to do\u201d, after the government\u2019s latest projections showed it was tracking well to achieve its 2030 target but would need to substantially ramp up<\/a> policies to meet its new 2035 goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions 62% to 70% below 2005 levels.<\/p>\n

Upcoming reviews of the safeguard mechanism, which is designed to reduce pollution at major industrial facilities, and the national vehicle efficiency standard, introduced to drive uptake of electric cars, present two early opportunities to move faster.<\/p>\n

The productivity commission<\/a> last month recommended expanding the safeguard mechanism to capture more polluters, building on the changes Labor made to the scheme in 2023.<\/p>\n

The scheme<\/a> captures facilities that emit more than 100,000 tonnes of Co2 equivalent each year, which applies to 219 sites.<\/p>\n

Bowen would not pre-empt the review \u2013 which is a legislated requirement \u2013 but cautioned that including more businesses was not necessarily the answer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we\u2019re looking at the threshold, there will be a balancing act. You don\u2019t want to expand it so much that you\u2019re bringing in a whole bunch of new companies without much bang for buck in terms of emissions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not a sort of slam dunk to say, well, obviously, covering a lot more businesses is the obvious thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chris Bowen wants to use his stint as the world\u2019s chief climate negotiator to lobby Saudi Arabia and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-401263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}