ANTALYA, Turkey: The COP31 climate talks kicked off on Monday (Nov 9) with an early fight over money as the UN’s chief urged world leaders to “get serious” about tackling the crisis after a year of devastating weather extremes.
Antonio Guterres made his plea as thousands of participants descended on a sprawling expo centre in the Turkish Mediterranean city of Antalya for the UN’s annual two-week climate conference.
The summit comes after a year of punishing heatwaves in Europe, major wildfires in Indonesia and catastrophic floods in Nepal, with an exceptionally strong El Nino weather phenomenon fuelling more climate chaos.
“We have entered a new age of climate extremes,” Guterres said in a statement.
The UN secretary-general urged leaders to “get serious by cutting emissions faster, accelerating a just transition from fossil fuels and delivering the finance and protection vulnerable countries need”.
The COP31 opening ceremony opened an hour-and-a-half late without explanation.
Negotiators had been locked in discussions late on Sunday over demands by developing nations to include items on climate finance in the official agenda.
“This has already been a difficult start for COP31,” said Jasper Inventor, head of Greenpeace’s COP31 delegation.
Under UN climate agreements, developed countries, which are historically responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions, have provided financial support to help developing nations adapt to climate impacts and transition to cleaner energy. But poorer countries say the sums remain insufficient.
Inventor said developed countries took a “hard line” over whether to include a platform, agreed at COP30 in Brazil last year, aimed at discussing how wealthy nations should provide funds to developing nations.
The “climate finance work programme” was ultimately included in the agenda.
African countries had also pushed for the agenda to include the tripling of adaptation finance, which aims to help poorer nations pay for measures such as building sea walls or planting drought-resistant crops.
But that point was not made a standalone agenda item.
A senior European Union official warned last week that there would be “no political will” for extra funding pledges at COP31.
Observers expect few major breakthroughs at COP31 as countries grapple with an oil price shock and geopolitical tensions fuelled by the US war with Iran and Russia’s conflict in Ukraine.
The long-term climate outlook is bleak: the United Nations warned in September that global temperatures were on course to exceed 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, breaching the most ambitious threshold set by the Paris Agreement.
