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With time running out to secure the UN climate conference for next year, Australian negotiators have stepped up the pressure on rival Türkiye to drop its bid. By Katherine Wilson.
Australia’s fight to host COP31
If all goes to plan on this side of the Pacific, dozens of world leaders, green industries and climate figureheads will gather in Adelaide next year for the biggest diplomatic turnout in Australia’s history.
COP31 – the 31st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – will offer Australia and its Pacific neighbours leadership in “the global shift to net zero”, according to the federal government.
It’s a colossal event, with COP conventions described by the United Nations as the “most important annual climate-related conferences on the planet”. COP31 is expected to inject about $500 million into green-powered South Australia, with tens of thousands of attendees expected to visit its trade shows.
“Australia has an opportunity to transform itself into a renewable energy superpower. Imagine the power of that,” says Kylie Turner, sustainable economies lead at Climateworks Centre, an independent non-profit within Monash University.
But last year, two years after then opposition Labor’s uncontested bid to host COP31, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan foiled the Albanese government’s plan with a surprise announcement. Türkiye, too, was bidding for the event.
This has led to a diplomatic deadlock between two fossil fuel economies or “petrostates” – Türkiye being Europe’s largest coal-fired electricity producer and Australia being the world’s second-largest fossil fuel exporter on an emissions basis and one of the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emitters. Other petrostate regions – United Arab Emirates and Azerbaijan among them – have recently hosted COPs.
While some NGOs say Australia’s bid is an attempt to greenwash the Albanese government’s weak environmental record, supporters say Australia-Pacific hosting will drive a clean energy transition policy.
In his Australian Energy Week speech in June, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen said global clean energy investment has now “exceeded $3 trillion. We want to grow this and Australia’s share in it.”
Australia’s campaign has overwhelming majority support from the UN’s Western European and Other States Group (WEOG) – largely attributed to its COP31 partnership with Pacific nations, which are facing material and existential threats from climate change.
By contrast, no WEOG member has publicly backed Türkiye’s bid.
Bowen has described the contest as “a two-horse race”, but an insider who spoke on condition of anonymity says “there’s a misperception that both the Australian and Turkish bids are neck and neck as they head down the straight. In fact, Türkiye is singlehandedly standing in the way of an opportunity for the Pacific region to [host] what is the most important international forum for many of the world’s most vulnerable countries, including our island neighbours. Clearly the process itself is deficient, but the blunt reality is far more serious and concerning than that.”
Bowen has described the process as “opaque”. By convention, COP contenders with the fewest WEOG member supporters concede to those with the most. But Türkiye is standing firm, and it has been left to the competing countries to adjudicate this race, as there is no formal UN process for deciding.
Diplomacy – not UN votes – is now the only way to resolve the impasse, explains Kylie Turner, who has attended two COPs and will be at this year’s conference in Brazil. “There isn’t another way under UN rules. There has to be bilateral negotiation. We need to understand what Türkiye might want.”
To this question, Bowen’s office responded by citing a few recent speeches, including a Conversation podcast interview with Michelle Grattan last month, in which Bowen said 23 out of the 28 WEOG members “shook my hand and, you know, looked me in the eye and said they’re voting for us … We’ve got the votes. We could have all the votes in the world. If Türkiye is not going to withdraw, that’s still a challenge.”
Bowen flew to the country’s capital, Ankara, to persuade Türkiye to concede, but this and subsequent talks have met resistance. Last year’s COP31 talks in Baku, Azerbaijan, were also frustrated, as were this year’s negotiations in Germany.
Australia’s Pacific neighbours have appealed to Türkiye, and insiders say a resolution seems likely when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese travels to New York for the UN General Assembly in September, which Erdoğan will also attend.
If the issue remains unresolved, COP31 will default to being held in Bonn, Germany.
With a three-month deadline for resolution and 15 months until the event, impatience is mounting. In July, Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which oversees COP summits, urged Australia and Türkiye to break the impasse quickly.
Bowen’s office did not directly respond to questions about Türkiye’s motives in maintaining its bid, but theories vary. “I think their interest is genuine, they believe there is an economic advantage. It’s a huge global event, there were 100,000 people in Dubai [for COP28],” Turner says.
Others believe Türkiye is leveraging its nomination. “By correctly labelling Australia as a petrostate, Türkiye is positioning itself as a preferred location for COP31 while trying to extract from the EU a series of concessions,” says Gavan McFadzean, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s climate and energy program manager, who has represented Climate Action Network Australia at three COPs.
According to Politico, Türkiye “has a track record of extracting more than just diplomatic pain in return for acquiescence”, which includes financial support.
People close to the negotiations say concessions offered to Türkiye include a leading role on key COP31 and “off-ramp” talks, and securing critical minerals capacity-building from Australia. But Türkiye has positioned itself as an environmental leader, and its first lady, Emine Erdoğan, is reportedly a passionate advocate for soil and biodiversity preservation, as well as zero-waste initiatives, which may also be part of negotiations, say insiders.
The Turkish Consulate was unresponsive to questions, but the country argues it is well-positioned to bridge a divide between developing and developed countries, and to show how emerging economies can drive a transition.
Even so, it cannot shore up its COP bid without WEOG support.
“Diplomacy is always tricky and a bit like three-dimensional chess,” says John Grimes, chief executive of the Smart Energy Council. “The best thing we can do is throw everything at it, and the prime minister’s visit to the UN in New York in September demonstrates in part their determination to get it done.”
Grimes believes COP31 will drive clean energy investment, “catalyse our transition to a decarbonised economy and trade balance sheet” and “reap the huge economic benefits that come with that, as well as hosting what will be the largest diplomatic event we have ever hosted by a country mile”.
Insiders also say there are moves to host a “pre-COP31” world leaders’ summit in Sydney – a meeting they say is especially important given a loss of faith in gatherings of the Group of 20 major economies. The G20 is believed to be conflicted and tokenistic on climate resolutions.
In climate research sectors, however, views on Australia winning COP31 are mixed. Australian National University Fenner School of Environment and Society researcher Professor David Lindenmayer, who has led studies into carbon accounting, says COP31’s disproportionate focus on green energy comes at the expense of other urgent policy solutions.
“There’s a lot of hot air going on with these COP talks,” says Lindenmayer. “The best things Australia could do beyond not opening up more gas and fossil fuel would be to make a commitment to protect the country’s forests from logging.”
Home to some of the world’s most carbon-dense forests, Australia is deemed “the only developed-nation deforestation hotspot”, according to WWF analysis.
“What matters is the long-term accumulated stock of carbon in the atmosphere, not [only] the short-term rate of emissions,” he says, adding that modelling reveals about a third of the CO2 emitted now “will still be in the atmosphere after two to 20 millennia”.
“One of the most serious forms of greenhouse gas emissions is land clearing and logging – these have gone up significantly. If we stopped native logging, we’d reduce emissions dramatically,” Lindenmayer says. In Tasmania alone, ceasing native logging would mean “equivalent emissions reductions to taking 1.1 million cars off the road”.
Meanwhile, ACF’s Gavan McFadzean believes it’s “essential that the Asia-Pacific hosts this COP”.
“Pacific nations are amongst the most impacted countries by extreme weather in the world. A Pacific COP brings urgent focus to the existential crisis facing Pacific Island nations, while holding Australia to account for the huge emissions it causes via our coal and gas exports.
“Success at an Australian COP starts a 2035 emissions reduction target of at least 80 per cent in the coming weeks and then a trajectory to rapidly phase out fossil fuel exports.”
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on August 9, 2025 as "The race to COP31".
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