The invigorating thing about public speaking is that you never quite know who is in the audience. There’s always a chance, of course, that someone wants to have a bit of a go at you, or maybe there’s an attendee with a particular take on things, who wants to ask one of those ‘questions that is more of a statement’; and then there’s those precious moments when the stars align and a memorable connection is made.
A couple of weeks ago, I’d participated in a panel discussion at an event, and the crowd was beginning to dissipate when a couple of strangers approached me to introduce themselves and say ‘hello’.
It turned out that Helen, Miranda, and I had all been in the same room in April, when each of us was part of the Greenpeace contingent inside Woodside’s 2026 Annual General Meeting in Perth, though we did not meet that day.
AGMs are significant set-piece occasions for companies, at which their corporate leadership wants to project competence and boost investor confidence. But for those of us with other concerns on our minds, an AGM is an opportunity to hold corporate leaders to account.
This year, a significant number of community advocacy groups, including Greenpeace, were present at Woodside’s AGM to challenge the company on its plans to drill for gas around Scott Reef—Australia’s largest freestanding oceanic reef atoll, and host to an incredible array of rare and endangered creatures, including green sea turtles and pygmy blue whales.
My role was to accept a shareholder proxy, suit up, and ask the company’s chair, Richard Goyder, some direct questions about the environmental damage that Woodside’s plans threaten to Scott Reef and the global climate.
Helen and Miranda, though, were present to play a completely different role. ‘We were a bit nervous that day’, Miranda told me. And no wonder, given what they were planning to do.
As new CEO Liz Westcott took the lectern, she was abruptly interrupted by a literally unearthly sound: whale song, playing from a speaker that Greenpeace activists had snuck into the room.
It was an aural haunting of Woodside’s AGM by the ghosts of its business strategy. Westcott opted to try to continue speaking, while security moved among the rows, attempting without success to work out where the sound was coming from.
When the whale track had played through, the relief on the podium felt palpable; but the return to corporate calm was short-lived.
Miranda, Helen, and other small groups of choristers—all evidently talented singers in their own right—began to stand up in small groups to perform a bespoke ‘Save Scott Reef’ variation on an iconic Australian song:
Hands off Scott Reef
Don’t be so Reckless
She don’t like that kind of behaviour…
It is a cliche, but true, to say that bravery comes in many different forms. It demands guts and resolve to stand up in a closed and heavily securitised room, with an unsympathetic audience; and to sing a song of no denying to one of the most powerful corporations in Australia, unaccompanied, from a cold start, with only your voices to fill the cavernous corporate space.
It was a wonderful thing to witness: the moral clarity of the message and the bold cheekiness of the activity; and a profoundly galvanising thing to feel, the indefatigable lifting of the spirit that we experience when we hear human voices rising in harmony and purpose. Miranda, Helen and their mates were brilliant.
Don’t be so Reckless…
As each small group rose in choreographed turn to pick up the song, they were apprehended by security and escorted out, singing to the last, as they were exited from the room.
Already, more than 500,000 people have joined the campaign to stop Woodside from drilling gas at Scott Reef. So when Helen, Miranda and friends stood up to sing, they did so on behalf of more than half a million people.
‘I’d never done anything like that before’, Helen told me, ‘I’d definitely do it again’.
Protest songs are both catalytic and emblematic of dynamic moments of social change. There is beauty, creativity, defiance, camaraderie and love to be found in singing together.
Helen and Miranda, it was great to meet you both. To you and all the other amazing folks who stood up and sang, thank you for your courage, commitment and the power of your voices. Your singing mattered for the half million, for the whales and the other creatures of Scott Reef, and for life in the ocean and on earth itself.
*As anyone of a certain age will probably recognise, the phrase is derived from the Midnight Oil anthem, US Forces.
Q and A
A few people have asked me recently about where the implementation of the national nature law reforms stand? Specifically, It seemed like good news when the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC) reforms were passed last year, but now it appears that they could be going wrong in the implementation. What’s happening?
We welcomed the Australian parliament’s passing of long-awaited nature law reforms just before Christmas last year as a fulfilment of an election promise, but remained clear-eyed that the proof of these reforms would be in how well they were implemented.
At this stage, the first two draft National Environmental Standards (NES) released by Federal Environment Minister Murray Watt’s department fall well short of what is required to actually protect nature. So things are once again in the balance.
The NES are the rules intended to guide decisions on projects that require assessment under the EPBC Act. They should draw a hard line to protect nature, but instead, the proposed standards are full of loopholes that legal experts warn are inimical to achieving the whole point of the Act–the protection of nature.
Glenn Walker who is Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s Head of Nature Program has mapped out the shortcomings of the NES in great detail on our blog. Greenpeace has made is views clear to both the Federal Environment Department and Minister Murray Watt, urging that the NES must be fixed, as have many others.
We are continuing to work closely with other environmental organisations, both to engage closely and to campaign publicly–there is still the opportunity to get this right to achieve the potential of the amended EPBC Act to actually do what it says on the cover–protect the environment.
Delegates will soon gather in the Turkish resort city of Antalya for UN climate negotiations, against a backdrop of war, energy crisis and climate extremes.
At COP31, nations will try to find agreement on various issues, including climate finance for developing countries and a global “just transition” towards a cleaner economy.
This summit is unusual due to its joint presidency, which means that Australia is leading the negotiations while Turkey hosts the conference.
Outside the formal negotiations, Turkey is also pushing its own priorities as part of a wider “action agenda”, including electrification, oceans and “green industrialisation”.
In order to track parties’ positions on key negotiating points and wider issues at COP31, Carbon Brief has analysed around 100 documents and captured them in the interactive table below.
The first column shows the countries and UN negotiating blocs, the second shows the topics up for debate and the third indicates specific issues within those topics.
The final column indicates the positions that the parties have expressed on each topic. These range from “priority” – meaning the party is likely to be pushing the issue – to “oppose”, meaning it is likely to push against it.
This is a “living document” that will be updated over the course of COP31.
Please get in touch if you would like to offer additions by emailing policy@carbonbrief.org.
Brief explanations of the key issues and jargon-filled language that permeate the talks can be found below the interactive table.
Just transition
At COP30 in Brazil in 2025, nations agreed to establish a practical mechanism to help drive a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy.
Key aspects of this “Belém-Antalya mechanism” (BAM) – often referred to as the “just transition mechanism” (JTM) – were agreed during the June climate negotiations this year, but many details are missing and dividing lines remain between parties.
Parties have disagreed about the scope of the mechanism and whether it should be tied to the provision of finance.
Nevertheless, following progress in June within the “just transition work programme” (JTWP), civil society groups highlighted that getting the mechanism up and running is a “key expected outcome” from COP31.
Climate finance
Climate finance is always a highly contested issue at UN climate negotiations.
Developing countries have successfully pushed for a “work programme” on climate finance to feature on the conference agenda.
These parties see this programme as a way to pressure developed countries into providing more funding from their public coffers, specifically under Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement. Some are even proposing a “burden sharing” arrangement for climate-finance provision.
This comes against a backdrop of major donors cutting their aid budgets and the Trump administration in the US pressuring multilateral development banks (MDBs) to drop their climate objectives.
Developed countries, which have traditionally been responsible for providing finance, would prefer to keep a broader focus on issues such as improving access to existing finance and broadening the range of donors. Some developing countries, such as small-island states, also support these goals.
Nations have also been discussing Article 2.1c of the Paris Agreement under the “Veredas dialogue”. This focuses on making all global “financial flows” consistent with climate action.
Countries have different views about what this involves, with developing countries again hoping to keep the focus on developed countries’ responsibilities to financially support them.
Adaptation and mitigation
At negotiations in June, parties were unable to agree on the details of a “global goal on adaptation” (GGA), which is intended to drive climate adaptation worldwide.
Having agreed at COP30 on a list of 59 “indicators” – ways to assess progress towards the GGA – nations now need to refine these before COP32 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is a highly technical process that involves a taskforce working out how to use and track these indicators.
Broadly, developing countries stress the importance of finance to fund adaptation efforts, rather than simply to track progress. They also want reassurances about a pledge made last year to “triple adaptation finance”.
At the June climate negotiations, negotiators also failed to make any progress when discussing the mitigation work programme (MWP) – the only formal agenda item that concerns cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Among other things, parties disagreed on whether the MWP should continue running over the next few years, or simply be brought to a close.
Global stocktake and NDCs
Back in 2023, the first “global stocktake” (GST) of the Paris Agreement set out the state of climate action and what needed to be done to set the world on course.
On mitigation, nations agreed to a package of measures, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, tripling renewable energy and “halting and reversing deforestation” by 2030.
Some of these outcomes remain contentious among certain parties, particularly large, developing countries and those with economies that rely on fossil-fuel exports.
Developing countries have persistently argued that they need more climate finance to implement the global stocktake outcomes.
Parties were meant to update their climate plans under the Paris Agreement, informed by the first global stocktake, by 2025. These plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs), cover the period out to 2035.
So far, only 150 parties – responsible for three-quarters of global emissions – have submitted new NDCs.
Iran, Vietnam, Egypt and Argentina are among those without new NDCs – and the US has withdrawn its climate plan under the Trump administration.
Some parties, such as the EU, have stressed the need for countries to submit their new NDCs ahead of COP31 – and to ensure they are aligned with the 1.5C temperature limit.
COP31 will also see the launch of the second global stocktake, which will conclude in 2028.
Action agenda and other issues
Turkey will be pushing its “action agenda” priorities at COP31, including global targets for electrification, reducing waste and reducing building-sector emissions.
(The Australian “presidency of negotiations” is intending to pursue a “cover text” decision at COP31 that may capture some of these wider targets, such as the electrification goal.)
The action agenda is meant to provide a complementary track to the formal negotiations, where governments and non-state actors can advance specific, real-world solutions.
A new COP31 presidency effort dubbed the “climate implementation bridge” is also meant to complement these ambitions by turning NDC goals into an “investable project portfolio”
Some parties have explicitly signalled their support for various elements beyond the formal negotiations, in the run-up to COP31.
For example, a joint letter signed by 105 parties called for COP31 to “put the ocean at the heart of climate action” by embedding ocean-based climate action in the UNFCCC architecture.
The post Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Interactive: Who wants what at the COP31 climate change summit
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