A coalition of small island states, African countries, the European Union and other G20 nations is leading a push at COP31 in Antalya for a process that can deliver stronger ocean mandates in a key review of climate policies in 2028.
The group of countries is seeking to anchor the sprawling ocean agenda — which ranges from decarbonising transport and energy, adaptation of tourism and fisheries, and loss and damage — into the formal UN negotiations.
This year’s COP31 offers them a prime opportunity, experts say, as the Turkish and Australian co-presidency has signaled its intention to put oceans high in the summit’s agenda.
The ocean is the world’s largest carbon sink and it has absorbed 93% of excess heat in the atmosphere. An extreme El Niño event this year has led to record-breaking temperatures of over 30℃ in some parts of the Pacific, placing coastal communities and fisheries at risk.
While some initiatives have emerged to strengthen the ocean’s role in national climate plans, at formal UN negotiations it has been sidelined to a voluntary dialogue with no negotiated agreements.
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Strong backing for ocean outcome in Antalya
A key battleground is whether to kickstart a process at COP31 that would seek a strong reference to oceans in the next global stocktake of climate policies in 2028.
Speaking on behalf of the AOSIS group of 39 island states, Carlos Varela, Cabo Verde’s environment minister, asked for a “multi-year plan” that would “connect the outcomes of the dialogue with the Paris Agreement ambition cycle, including the second Global Stocktake.”
Indonesia, Niue on behalf of Pacific island states, the European Union, Indonesia and and Ghana on behalf of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) all explicitly supported a multi-year roadmap aligned with the Paris Agreement, and Brazil stated that they “saw value” in this idea. No country in the room spoke against it.
Marine Lecerf, head of International Policy at the Ocean & Climate Platform, told Climate Home she could “see this land in the cover decision”, this year’s main negotiated agreement.
She said a proposal for an ocean roadmap linked to the next global stocktake is the one that “received the most consensus”, but that, if the cover decision becomes a “Christmas list”, there is a risk that the presidency decides to leave it out.
However, Lecerf said this is a more promising year, and explained that some heads of delegations have already told the COP31 presidency that the ocean is a priority for them, and both Türkiye and Australia seem on board.
Sea weed is grown or farmed in the shallow waters of the Indian Ocean, off Wasini Island, Kenya, with plants tied to ropes in the water. (Photo: Anthony Onyango / Climate Visuals)
Strengthening ‘blue’ climate plans
Another initiative mentioned as part of the ocean dialogue is for countries to “enhance climate ambition through ocean-based priorities in NDCs”, which is currently not a mandate they must follow.
France and Brazil have led a voluntary initiative called the Blue NDC Challenge seeking to incentivise more countries to include ‘blue plans’ in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs). Seventeen countries have joined the initiative so far.
In the push to make NDCs more blue, “some countries are arguing that it is too prescriptive to include a specific sector or specific type of ecosystem,” Lecerf said. “It’s a minority, but it’s something we’ve been hearing.”
90% of island and coastal nations include at least one ocean action in their latest round of NDCs, up from 73% in the previous round, which shows movement in the right direction, said Jonathan Baines, ocean programme manager at the World Resources Institute (WRI).
But these are very focused on climate impacts to coastal communities and on managing protected areas, but only 12% of commitments were related to offshore energy, shipping and aquatic food systems, the WRI analysis shows.
Still, this was a rise from the previous round, and “a very welcome broadening of those mitigation efforts, with maritime transport emerging alongside marine conservation as a major priority for cutting emissions,” he explained.
Other proposals mentioned at the UN event included focusing on ramping up blue finance, as well as steering the Green Climate Fund (GCF) towards and increased focus on ocean projects.
No country has made pledges to phase out offshore oil and gas, which Colombia’s former environment minister Irene Vélez Torres pointed as a key omission.
“COP31 can’t have a credible ocean agenda while ignoring what is being drilled and mined beneath the waves,” she told Climate Home News.
Offshore extraction dominates fossil fuel growth, with 85% of new discoveries and 71% of new projects found at sea. “COP31 should make the ocean a frontline of the transition away from fossil fuels, not a new frontier for their expansion,” said Vélez.
Mona Ainu’u, minister for Natural Resources from the Pacific island of Niue, told Climate Home News that the increased fossil fuel production and scarce climate finance is devastating for small island states like hers.
A November report by Zero Carbon Analytics found that barely 2% of the nearly $550 bn needed for the blue economy is reaching the ocean.
“I left my home four days ago to be here,” Ainu’u said. “El Niño did a really bad job this year, and everything is just dying.”
Speaking on behalf of Pacific island states at the event, she explained that access to finance is lacking for “large ocean states” that want to implement solutions.
“We can’t just be waiting because all this talk and it’s all positive and it’s all good and it’s all nice and theory-like”, said Ainu’u. “But eventually, when we leave COP, we wait for years to receive any support.”
More than a dozen countries, including Germany, South Korea, Pakistan and several small island states, have publicly backed the Turkish COP31 presidency’s flagship electrification pledge.
The voluntary pledge aims to raise electricity’s share of global final energy consumption to 35% by 2035, from 23% currently, but does not specify how that electricity should be generated.
The COP31 presidency is not expected to publish a full list of backers until next week, as it continues to rally support. But at least 14 countries have publicly endorsed the pledge, according to a Climate Home News analysis of speeches and official statements.
Alongside COP31 co-host Australia and COP32 host Ethiopia, they include Germany, Norway, Finland, South Korea, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Eswatini, Togo and Liechtenstein, as well as the small island states of Palau, Seychelles and the Solomon Islands.
The European Union is widely expected to join the pledge this week, although member states still need to formally approve the decision, Politico reported. On Wednesday, President Ursula von der Leyen supported the pledge in her personal capacity and encouraged others to do the same.
Major economies still on the fence
Other major economies have welcomed COP31’s focus on electrification while stopping short of endorsing the pledge.
British Prime Minister Andy Burham said on Thursday that he was proud to support the summit’s focus on electrification. He said it matters for energy security, for creating good jobs in clean energy and manufacturing, and for lowering people’s bills.
Many countries are already working on parts of their transition, such as phasing out coal or ending fossil fuel subsidies, with more expected to follow soon
Brazil’s environment minister João Paulo Capobianco ssaid on Thursday that electrification was “an important front” in climate action, but warned it should not be pursued “for the sake of it”. It should instead serve as a means of improving efficiency and cutting emissions. He said Brazil would work with the Turkish proposal and suggest adjustments to allow “specific solutions” that reduce emissions, without giving details.
Saudi Arabia was more openly sceptical. Energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told the leaders’ summit that emissions reduction is “what unites us”, “not necessarily the track to achieving it”. “The expansion of electrification does not necessarily mean cutting emissions, so long as we do not consider the sources of its production,” he said, adding that countries’ choices must be respected.
Clean power strings attached
Many of the nations formally backing the initiative have attached some strings to their support. At a high-level roundtable on Wednesday, the low-lying Pacific island nation of Palau said it would sign on to the pledge. But it added that electrification “must not become a substitute or a distraction” from the chief goal of transitioning away from fossil fuels.
Seychelles also endorsed the pledge but added that it must be connected with cleaner electricity. “Electrifying more activities while continuing to burn fossil fuels will not deliver the full economic or climate benefits,” the country’s representative told the roundtable.
COP31 co-president Murat Kurum and Chris Bowen from Turkiye and Australia. (Photo: COP31/Flickr)
COP31 co-president Murat Kurum and Chris Bowen from Turkiye and Australia. (Photo: COP31/Flickr)
Australia’s climate and energy minister Chris Bowen, whose country is co-leading the pledge with Türkiye, has defended its design. “Electrification is almost always a good thing,” he told the Outrage and Optimism podcast recently. He argued that switching to an electric car cuts emissions by 60% even on a coal-fired grid, and by 90% when powered by solar.
Doug Arent, senior fellow at the WRI Polsky Center for the Global Energy Transition, said the most important thing “is that there is significant support for the concept of electrification”. He expects more countries to “recognise their pathway to be behind the 35 by 35” in the coming years.
Calls for finance
Other developing countries backing the pledge have underlined the critical importance of access to finance. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif showed off his country’s people-led boom in rooftop solar and growing rollout of electric vehicles. But he added that “momentum without finance cannot be sustained,” and said the burden of new technologies cannot fall on countries already in debt.
Zimbabwe backed the pledge but warned of the high capital costs and financial bottlenecks facing developing countries. Its representative proposed a global electrification investment facility that would provide first-loss guarantees for projects under Mission 300, an initiative to connect 300 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa to electricity by 2030.
The Solomon Islands, another supporter of the pledge, asked for a dedicated finance access window for small island nations and least developed countries (LDCs).
Tuesday saw the launch of a global finance coalition backed by COP31 host Türkiye and COP32 host Ethiopia aimed at supporting clean electrification in developing countries.
Closing the roundtable, Türkiye’s energy minister Alparslan Bayraktar, who chaired the session, claimed the 35×35 pledge had found broad support worldwide. He called for a “smart” energy transition that draws on all available technologies, including carbon capture, use and storage.
ANTALYA,Türkiye, Thursday 12 November 2026 — In response to Prime Minister Albanese’s COP31 Leaders’ Summit address, Shiva Gounden, Head of Pacific at Greenpeace Australia Pacific, speaking from Antalya said:
“Prime Minister Albanese’s COP31 address was full of nice rhetoric, but once again failed to confront or even mention the root cause of the climate crisis — fossil fuels.
“In Antalya, UN climate chief Guterres told leaders to “tell the truth”. The truth is Australia can not credibly talk about its clean energy transition while continuing to expand the industry it needs to leave behind. Australia must reckon with reality; its damning track record of 38 coal and gas approvals since it took office in 2022.
“We meet in Antalya amidst a global energy shock and dire projections of 1.5°C overshoot. Overshoot means something in the Pacific — it means irreversible harm, lives and cultures lost forever, entire nations at stake. We must face the fierce urgency of now.
“Never before has the need to end the fossil fuel chokehold been so abundantly clear, as our Pacific communities again suffer the consequences of a global economy hooked on coal, oil and gas. The Pacific needs credible roadmaps and clear timelines to unhook from fossil fuels — Australia can’t keep saying implementation and not reflect it with credible action.”
ENDS
COP31 images and video availableherein Greenpeace Media Library
Media contact: Kate O’Callaghan in Antalya (GMT+3) on +61 406 231 892 (Whatsapp/Signal)
A second set of world leaders give their speeches on Thursday before heading out of town and leaving their negotiators to it. After around 40 leaders spoke on Wednesday, today there will be just 25 or so including the UK’s Andy Burnham, Venezuela’s Delcy Rodriguez and Bangladesh’s Tarique Rahman.
But Brazil’s President Lula is still there and is expected to keep grabbing headlines, along with California’s Governor – and maybe next US president – Gavin Newsom – and Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg who has lost none of her star power, if the crowd around her in the press centre was anything to go by.
We’ll bring you highlights through the day on issues ranging from finance to methane, and update you on a pledging event for the Pacific Resilience Facility, which the climate-vulnerable region is relying on to keep small island nations as safe as possible in the face of intensifying storms, drought and sea level rise.
The media throngs around Greta Thunberg and fellow activists in the COP31 press centre (Photo: Matteo Civillini)
