The second Africa Climate Summit wrapped up in Ethiopia with a bold assertion of the continent’s ability to chart a path to green growth with homegrown resources, but climate campaigners expressed disappointment that leaders had not swung behind the COP28 pledge to transition away from fossil fuels.
While a copy of the final declaration from the three-day summit in Addis Ababa had yet to be released a day after it ended, Ethiopian President Taye Atske Selassie told the closing ceremony on Wednesday that the summit had re-positioned Africa “not as victims of a crisis it never created but as a global centre for climate solutions, renewable energy and green growth”.
Selassie said it is an injustice that 600 million Africans live without electricity access, adding that the continent is no longer waiting for charity but will use the abundant sun it has and the critical minerals beneath its soils to drive its own progress.
According to a statement from the summit organisers, the leaders’ declaration calls for “strengthened and sustained support” to scale up African-led climate initiatives such as the 8,000-km Great Green Wall across the Sahel and the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative.
It also noted that the Africa Climate Innovation Compact (ACIC) and the African Climate Facility (ACF) had been set up to to mobilise $50 billion annually in catalytic finance to deliver “1,000 solutions” for climate challenges in energy, agriculture, water, transport and resilience by 2030.
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Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed described the new compact as a “bold, continent-wide partnership uniting our universities, research institutions, startups, rural communities and innovators”.
The announcement came after African financial institutions on Monday backed a green industrialisation initiative for the continent with $100 billion from a range of development and commercial banks to support renewable energy projects and new green industry sectors.
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Backing for “transitional energy sources” draws fire
Despite these major green growth programmes, civil society groups criticised the summit declaration for recognising “the role of transitional energy sources in ensuring a just transition that safeguards the energy security of developing countries”. On the other hand, it did not mention the COP28 promise to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems.
Activists said the wording leaves room for the use of fossil gas in Africa’s transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy.
“Fossil gas is a false solution that cannot drive development agenda across the African continent,” said Dean Bhebhe, a senior advisor at think-tank Power Shift Africa. A path grounded in gas is not “just” because Africa “risks further trapping itself into a cycle of debt, wants, needs and fears in the African continent”, he added.
The Nairobi declaration from the first Africa Climate Summit in 2023 recognised the need to phase down unabated coal power and phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, but it is “disappointing” to see that those were not featured in the Addis decision while messaging on transitional fuel was sneaked in, Bhebhe added.
Ethiopia’s preparedness puts it ahead of Nigeria in bid to host COP32, campaigners say
Nafi Quarshie, Africa director at the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI), said that despite the sufferings of oil and gas communities in parts of Africa and the realities of the transition, including pressure on local economies and livelihoods, “the declaration made no reference to these impacts”.
“African governments must now use COP30 to ensure that they move toward a just, orderly and equitable transition that responds to the needs of the communities behind every oil field,” she added.
International finance sought
In addition to the climate finance announced by African funders, the international community still has an obligation to provide support, said Richard Muyungi, chair of the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) at the UN climate talks.
The climate negotiator added that Africa’s demand “is not charity but our just rights under the [UN Climate] Convention and the Paris Agreement: adequate, accessible, and grant-based finance, alongside technology transfer and debt relief”.
Few pledges were made at the summit by donors, apart from Denmark announcing $79 million for supporting agricultural transformation and Italy reaffirming a commitment of $4.2 billion to the Italian Climate Fund, of which around 70% will be allocated to Africa.
Ahead of November’s COP30 climate summit, the Addis declaration highlighted an urgent need for new, innovative climate finance mechanisms adapted to Africa’s sustainable development priorities, including blended finance mechanisms, debt-for-climate project swaps and strategic public-private partnerships.
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Carlos Lopes, special envoy of the Brazilian COP30 presidency to Africa, said Africa had shown commitment by coming up with initiatives and also strengthening its continental institutions, “but true progress requires developed countries to lead with predictable, accessible, and just climate finance”.
African leaders asked for international support to implement Africa’s key energy access and transition initiatives including Mission 300 to provide 300 million people with electricity by 2030, clean cooking programmes and efforts to scale up renewables to meet a goal of 300 gigawatts of capacity by 2030.
“Climate finance is the critical enabler: without it, our people cannot thrive and our economies cannot grow,” said Dion George, South Africa’s minister of forestry, fisheries and the environment and head of the country delegation at the Addis summit. “With it, Africa can drive a just transition, create jobs, and play a central role in the global effort to address the climate crisis.”
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Addis summit trumpets African climate solutions, while quietly backing gas
In the shadow of Ankara’s new international football stadium, a group of visiting journalists – including Climate Home News – perched on tiny chairs watched over by mannequins dressed in old mobile phones, newspapers and bottle tops.
As they sipped Turkish tea in a room meant to educate visitors – mostly schoolchildren – about recycling, they were addressed by Ekrem Yıldırım, lead on zero waste at Türkiye’s environment ministry.
After Yıldırım spoke of Türkiye’s plans to pursue “zero waste”, one journalist asked why the sugar cubes for the tea were individually wrapped in plastic and why water had been served in single-use plastic pots.
Yıldırım accepted that this kind of packaging is a problem and glass or porcelain is preferable. He added that legislation to ban single-use packaging has been introduced to parliament, but is not yet finalised.
The situation symbolised what Turkish experts and environmental campaigners flag as a contradiction between the “zero waste” image that the government – represented by First Lady Emine Erdoğan – presents to the world and the reality of rising Turkish waste generation, significant climate-wrecking methane emissions from landfills and a politically influential industry producing plastics from oil and gas.
International campaign lacks domestic punch
Türkiye’s Zero Waste initiative – which is a vague plan to reduce waste generation and increase recycling, rather than a specific goal to reach zero waste by any specific date – was launched in 2017.
It came at a time when the Turkish government was under fire for its coal mines, its refusal to ratify the Paris Agreement and its brutal response to protests against plans to turn Gezi Park in Istanbul into a barracks and shopping mall.
Ümit Şahin, climate lead at Sabancı University’s Istanbul Policy Center, said the Turkish government saw then, and still sees, the initiative as “a way to build its international reputation on environmental issues”.
“Recycling gives the government something visible to point to,” he said. “It can promote the campaign without taking on powerful fossil fuel interests or changing its development priorities in mining and energy.”
The campaign has been led by Emine Erdoğan, the wife of Türkiye’s long-time president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In 2022, she convinced countries at the UN General Assembly to create an annual International Day of Zero Waste on March 30.
COP31 President Murat Kurum has picked up on the theme, saying that zero waste is “one of the main pillars” of Türkiye’s COP31 presidency. In September, he reminisced at a press briefing in the northern city of Trabzon about old-fashioned Turkish rural life where food waste would be given to animals, ripped clothes would be mended, and new attire was only for religious festivals.
President Erdoğan told leaders at September’s UN General Assembly in New York that an “incredible desire for consumption” was fuelling a “culture of waste”. “We cannot speak of justice in a world where tonnes of food are thrown into the garbage on one side while hundreds of millions of people collect food from garbage containers on the other,” he railed.
Sedat Gündoğdu, a marine biologist and environmental researcher at Türkiye’s Çukurova University, told Climate Home News that zero waste is a worthy concept. But when it comes to putting words into action at home, he said, the government has failed. Official statistics show the amount of waste each person in Türkiye generates has remained broadly unchanged since 2010 and the total annual amount has increased by 15%.
Single-use plastics ban
To help fix this, an European Union-style ban on single-use plastics – like plastic cutlery, cups and stirrers – was reported by state media in March to be working its way through parliament and expected to come into effect on September 1.
But PAGEV, a Turkish plastics industry trade association, argued that such “restrictive” policies had failed in the EU and would damage the Turkish economy and take away jobs.
Despite COP31 shining an international spotlight on the Turkish waste sector, the ban has yet to be approved by President Erdoğan. Gündoğdu and Greenpeace Türkiye campaigner Berk Butan fear that, if it is approved, it will be watered down so that Turkish companies can make single-use plastics in Türkiye even if they can no longer sell them in the country.
The latter restriction, Gündoğdu argued, would be “meaningless” because it cannot be enforced. Similar measures in Germany and Italy have failed, he said, because manufacturers just relabelled single-use products like plastic straws as multiple-use straws.
To close these loopholes, he said, strict definitions and design criteria are needed, which the Turkish legislation does not have. Butan added that single-use plastics could still be made in Türkiye, and then exported, used and dumped abroad, causing the same environmental damage somewhere else.
Türkiye’s other flagship waste prevention measure is a tax on plastic bags, which led to an immediate drop in usage when introduced in 2019. But, despite rampant inflation, the tax has risen from 0.25TL in 2019 to just 1TL ($0.02), meaning it’s several times less in real terms than in 2019.
“You can’t even buy chewing gum with one lira,” said Gündoğdu. “If you see one lira on the ground, you will not take it. So that’s why it’s meaningless.” Butan added that the government did not invest in creating behavioural changes among the public, such as encouraging them to shop with reusable textile tote bags. “They just put in the tax and they didn’t do the rest,” he said.
Landfills tidied up but still leaking methane
While the amount of waste generated keeps rising, there has been progress in dealing with the waste so that it is at least out of sight. Official statistics suggest more and more of it is being collected and, while the vast majority is still sent to landfill rather than recycled, those landfills are now covered and more advanced than they used to be.
On the outskirts of Ankara, waste management company ITC gave Climate Home News a presentation showing one such transformation. A before image shows what the nearby Mamak landfill looked like in 2006 – a huge open pile of garbage known in Türkiye as a “wild landfill”.
Another image shows what the site looks like now with the rubbish covered up with soil. ITC says that Ankara’s garbage is brought to them on trucks, and sorted into recyclables and biodegradable waste, which is then turned into compost or burned for energy. Waste heat is used to grow blueberries, tomatoes and lavender or to warm shoppers in a nearby branch of the Swedish furniture giant Ikea.
But despite this progress, satellite observations from Carbon Mapper shows the site is still leaking methane – a particularly potent greenhouse gas – into the atmosphere. Exactly how much is unclear from Carbon Mapper’s limited observations but the nearby Sincan landfill leaks about 1,200 kilogrammes of methane an hour into the atmosphere. Climate Home News analysis suggests this does similar damage to the climate as 73,000 petrol cars. ITC did not respond to a request for comment.
In October, a Guardian investigation showed these methane leaks were happening at landfills across Türkiye and are some of the worst in the world. Researchers from the University of California (UCLA) said they were “mind-boggingly large”. Aside from the climate damage, local residents near one Istanbul landfill report a smell so bad they told the Guardian they have to sleep with their windows closed even on hot summer nights.
Waste imports from Europe
Dealing with its own growing waste is difficult enough, but Türkiye also imports mountains of plastic from its European neighbours too. Ever since China restricted waste imports, the European Union has exported more plastic waste to Türkiye than to any other nation by far.
Despite European Commission concerns about how well Türkiye deals with the waste, the trade is expected to grow as an EU ban on exports to non-OECD countries – a category that does not include Türkiye – comes into force on November 21.
The export of waste to Türkiye has seen European countries accused of waste imperialism. Butan and Gündoğdu said Türkiye should ban waste imports. But COP31 President and Turkish environment minister Kurum pushed back on this during a press conference in Trabzon in September.
“You called it waste imperialism,” he said through a translator, but “nobody is forcing anyone” to import waste. He added that handling the waste creates jobs in Türkiye and that it doesn’t matter to the environment where the waste is recycled as long as it is.
But most of Türkiye’s municipal waste is currently not recycled. Turkish official Yıldırım said that the country’s recovery rate is currently around 30%. The most recent statistics available from the EU suggest Türkiye in 2020 had a recycling rate of 12%. The EU country average in 2024 was about 50%.
At the zero waste centre in Ankara, Yıldırım said Türkiye is improving its recycling rate and wants to do even more. The aim, he said, is to reach a rate of 70% by an unspecified date, up there with global frontrunners like Germany.
To achieve that, he said Türkiye is raising awareness of the importance of recycling including through cartoons for children and initiatives for football supporters to collect and redistribute unwanted toys.
As he spoke to journalists, a portrait of the ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’ made from buttons, a sultan made from old plastic straws and a horse and wolf made from metal cogs and screws looked on. “The world is something that has been entrusted to us, and waste is something you steal from the future,” said Yıldırım.
Climate Home News’ travel and accommodation for the trip on which much of this article was reported was funded by the Turkish government.
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https://www.climatechangenews.com/2026/11/11/turkiye-pushes-zero-waste-at-cop31-but-is-it-delivering-at-home/
More than 92,000 people have registered to attend the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, potentially making it the largest COP in history.
Carbon Brief analysis of the provisional lists of delegates, published by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), reveals that more than 14,000 delegates have been registered as “host country guests”.
For comparison, the provisional list for COP30 in Belém, Brazil, last year included only around 1,000 delegates in this category.
As with COP30, Donald Trump’s US government has not sent a delegation. Other no-shows include Israel and Myanmar.
It was reported ahead of the summit that Taliban officials from Afghanistan had been registered for the event as observers; however, there are no delegates from observer states in the provisional lists.
With more than 3,000 “virtual” delegates signed up to attend the summit online, the total number of people registered for the event surpasses 95,000.
Further analysis of the participant lists will be added to this article in due course.
Party delegates
With 92,934 participants registered, COP31 is provisionally the largest COP in history – topping COP28 in Dubai, which was attended by more than 80,000 people.
This total is based on the delegates that have registered to be at the summit in person. The UNFCCC releases the final figures – based on participants collecting a physical badge at the venue – after the summit has ended.
The chart below shows how the provisional figures for COP31 compare to the final totals in previous COPs – going back to COP1 in Berlin in 1995.
The participant lists provided by the UNFCCC are divided between the different types of groups and organisations attending the summit. The largest group at COP31 is for delegates representing parties. These are nation-states, plus the European Union, that have ratified the convention and play a full part in negotiations.
This group adds up to 18,812 delegates – the second largest after COP28.