COP31: Time to turn words into action

Arab News · Dr. Majid Rafizadeh · 2026-11-05 13:54 UTC

COP31: Time to turn words into action

With COP31, the 31st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, set to open in Antalya, Turkiye, next week, the international community faces serious challenges. Running through Nov. 20 at the Antalya Expo Center, the summit — hosted by Turkiye under COP President Murat Kurum, with Australia’s Chris Bowen leading the negotiations — must turn dialogue into global action and shift from commitment to implementation.

This should not just be another round of aspirational statements. The science is unambiguous: the window to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels has effectively closed and a further rise is now described as imminent and unavoidable. The task is to make that overshoot as short and shallow as possible while protecting the most vulnerable.

Turkiye secured the hosting rights after a prolonged competition with Australia that was resolved at COP30 in Belem, Brazil, through a pragmatic compromise. Turkiye provides the venue and presidency, while Australia leads the formal negotiations and a pre-COP process was held in the Pacific, including Fiji, with a leaders’ element in Tuvalu, to keep that region’s existential concerns visible.

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