{"id":143791,"date":"2025-11-19T23:36:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:36:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/143791\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T23:36:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:36:07","slug":"turkey-to-host-cop31-climate-conference-after-australia-drops-push-to-hold-it-in-adelaide-cop31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/143791\/","title":{"rendered":"Turkey to host Cop31 climate conference after Australia drops push to hold it in Adelaide | Cop31"},"content":{"rendered":"

Turkey will host the Cop31<\/a> climate conference after the Australian government dropped its push to hold the event in Adelaide at the last moment \u2013 despite having invested in a more than three-year campaign.<\/p>\n

Independent sources confirmed to the Guardian that the fortnight-long event would be held in Turkey\u2019s Mediterranean resort city of Antalya in November 2026.<\/p>\n

The details of a deal were thrashed out between the countries\u2019 climate ministers, Chris Bowen and Murat Kurum, at the Cop30 conference in Brazil this week.<\/p>\n

Sources said Australia had proposed an arrangement under which it would take on the Cop presidency and lead the negotiations, in return for backing down on the hosting venue.<\/p>\n

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The agreement was also expected to include a separate leaders\u2019 meeting to be held in the Pacific. Pacific islands nations had been promised they would be co-hosts, and that there would be a significant international focus on the threat the climate crisis poses to their survival, if Australia had been successful.<\/p>\n

Bowen and Kurum were meeting with the rest of the Western Europe and Others Group of countries, which has responsibility for nominating next year\u2019s host, late on Wednesday in Brazil.<\/p>\n

The Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, had signalled he had changed his messaging on hosting<\/a> the world\u2019s biggest climate meeting in a press conference in Perth late on Tuesday, local time, when he said his government would not block Turkey\u2019s bid if it was chosen.<\/p>\n

Longtime observers at climate negotiations said Albanese\u2019s comments on Tuesday appeared to have undermined the Australia-Pacific bid and left Bowen to sort out the details.<\/p>\n

Murat Kurum, Turkey’s environment and climate change minister. Photograph: Pablo Porci\u00fancula\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The prime minister\u2019s intervention came just hours after Bowen, the main driver of the Australian bid, declared in a public event and media interview at Cop30 that Australia was \u201cin it to win it\u201d on Cop31.<\/p>\n

The country\u2019s position was further muddied by a statement issued by a government spokesperson a few hours after Albanese\u2019s remarks. It said Australia had \u201cthe overwhelming support of our peers\u201d and Turkey should not block Australia. It concluded: \u201cBut of course we will continue to negotiate with Turkey in good faith for an outcome in the best interests of the Pacific and our national interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Guardian has been told cabinet ministers later rang Pacific leaders to say the conference was likely to be in Turkey and to discuss the potential details of a deal.<\/p>\n

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Under the UN rules, Cop31 would have defaulted to the UN climate headquarters in the German city of Bonn if the standoff between Turkey and Australia had not been resolved this week. But the Germans did not want to host the negotiations, which attract tens of thousands of delegates and run alongside the world\u2019s biggest green industry trade fair.<\/p>\n

The Australians argued they had the declared support of at least 24 of the 28 members of the Western Europe and Others Group of countries. But they said an unprecedented deadlock that forced the event to be held in Bonn could have undermined faith in the negotiations and someone needed to broker a deal to avoid that.<\/p>\n

Australian government sources have expressed frustration with the opaque UN decision-making process and its lack of a resolution mechanism. Some reportedly repeatedly backgrounded Australian newspapers on their opposition to the bid, including claiming hosting Cop31 could cost taxpayers more than A$1bn.<\/p>\n

Observers noted Albanese had not attended a year-ending climate conference since becoming prime minister and had urged him to fly to the Amazonian city of Bel\u00e9m<\/a> for Cop30 if he was serious about Australia\u2019s bid.<\/p>\n

The premier of South Australia, Peter Malinauskas, strongly supported Cop31 being held in Adelaide, the state capital, and commissioned a consultants\u2019 report that found the event could have been worth $500m<\/a> to the local economy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Turkey will host the Cop31 climate conference after the Australian government dropped its push to hold the event…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143792,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[273,111,139,69,147],"class_list":{"0":"post-143791","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}