African negotiators have asked the UN to open a formal space at COP31 for contentious talks on adaptation finance and trade, lining up a potential fight over the agenda when the climate summit opens in Antalya on November 9.
In a letter sent to UN climate chief Simon Stiell last Sunday, Ghana, which is chairing the African Group of Negotiators (AGN) this year, requested three additional agenda items on tripling adaptation finance, trade and climate change, and the financing arrangements of the Green Climate Fund.
Governments agreed at last year’s COP30 on a new target to “at least triple” finance for climate adaptation in developing countries by 2035, following a push led by the least-developed countries which are highly vulnerable to growing climate impacts. But the last-minute deal left out key details, including the baseline year for tripling, a headline amount, who should pay and how it will be delivered.
AGN chair Antwi-Boasiako Amoah wrote in the letter that “a dedicated item is needed”, pointing to worrying trends in adaptation finance. He added that the mid-year climate talks in Bonn had “made clear” that countries could not agree how or where to take the goal forward.
During June’s session, developing countries tried to anchor the target in the negotiations on the Global Goal on Adaptation, which lays out technical indicators to measure and boost global efforts to cope with climate change. But wealthy nations – led primarily by the EU, the UK and Japan – opposed that push, arguing adaptation finance should be discussed elsewhere. Unable to break the deadlock, diplomats left Bonn without an agreement on adaptation.
‘Homeless’ issue
No other developing-country group has officially backed the AGN’s proposal so far. That may change next week, when negotiating blocs hold their pre-COP coordination meetings in Antalya.
Raju Pandit Chhetri, lead climate finance negotiator for the least-developed countries (LDCs), told Climate Home News it would be difficult to secure an agenda item on adaptation finance alone, but it is “a homeless issue” that needs to be discussed somewhere within the formal talks at COP31.
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Developed countries are likely to resist. In their agreed COP31 negotiating position, EU governments reaffirmed the tripling call but framed it within the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), the broader post-2025 finance goal agreed at COP29 in Baku. The EU and its member states are the largest provider of international climate finance to developing countries, but some nations, including Germany and France, have cut their aid budgets in recent years.
The LDCs want the goal to be defined as $120 billion a year by 2030 (five years before the agreed timeline), which would triple a previous target of around $40 billion. That was meant to be reached in 2025 but is likely to have been missed.
Mattias Söderberg, global climate lead for the Danish development NGO DanChurchAid, said tripling adaptation finance is not just “catchy wording”, but something that will save lives and help countries and communities cope with climate change on the ground.
He added that the AGN’s proposal will “for sure” spark a debate and “may lead to an agenda fight”, but it will ensure that the goal will not be forgotten.
GCF’s needs assessment
The second request in Ghana’s letter aims to revive a provision dating back to COP19 in 2013. Countries agreed then that the COP conferences should periodically assess how much money developing countries need to implement the UN climate convention, with the goal of helping inform fundraising by the Green Climate Fund (GCF).
Amoah said the COP has not made that assessment since 2013, so the fund’s replenishments have gone ahead without it. The GCF’s next fundraising round, covering 2028 to 2031, officially began in July. Its board is meeting in South Korea this week to agree rules for donor contributions, and a pledging conference is expected by the end of 2027.
The letter points to “declining” aid and “pressure on multilateral climate funds”. In May, the UK told the GCF it would deliver only half of the £1.62bn it had pledged for the current period, as it spends more on national security.
Trade tensions return
The third African request, for a “Trade and Climate Change Dialogue” item, is likely to be just as contentious. Disputes over what some countries call unilateral trade measures, such as the EU’s carbon border tax, have flared at recent COPs.
To keep this hot issue out of the official negotiations, in Belém last year, the Brazilian presidency set up three trade dialogues to take place at the Bonn mid-year sessions from 2026 to 2028. The first, in June, stayed stuck at “principled debate”, E3G’s Ellie Belton told Climate Home News. There, the African Group and Russia floated a formal negotiating track, which developed countries are reluctant to open.
Tensions set to flare over trade at COP31 as China makes it a priority
The AGN letter argues that the Belém decision already gives sufficient basis for an agenda item. “Respecting previous decisions of the [UNFCCC] governing bodies is an inalienable basis for trust in the process,” it says.
China, which previously asked for an agenda item on trade, signalled last week that it wants COP31 to tackle trade “protectionism” and the free flow of green technology, after US and EU curbs on its cleantech exports.
The UN climate secretariat can add the requested items to a provisional agenda that would need to be formally adopted at the start of the COP. Any government can object to the inclusion of additional issues, and disputed items are often moved into consultations led by the presidency to broker a deal.
The post Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight appeared first on Climate Home News.
Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight
In the thick of the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan in 2024, the UN climate talks were rattled by what can only be described as a major PR disaster. The BBC, Reuters and The Guardian all carried headlines, attributed to leading climate policy experts, that the COPs were “no longer fit for purpose”.
The articles outlined a series of reforms called for in an open letter signed by 22 eminent scientists and politicians, including a former UN secretary-general and previous UN climate chief, with a further 150 lending their support. The headlines shook confidence in the COP process, just as governments were wrestling over a new climate finance goal.
The Club of Rome – which handled the media relations for the letter – hurried to say that its “constructive, supportive ideas” had been “misinterpreted”. Negotiators kept calm(ish) and carried on, in the end landing the finance goal after some high-stakes drama on the final day.
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Early speakers’ list suggests few powerful leaders will attend COP31
Just 77 heads of state or government are scheduled to address the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, a third less than the COP28 peak -
Africa wants adaptation finance on COP31 agenda, raising risk of a fight
The African Group wants dedicated space on tripling adaptation finance, the Green Climate Fund and trade, setting up a possible clash
To my surprise, when I went back this week to read the letter again, I could not find the offending line about the COPs not being fit for purpose. The Club of Rome has yet to respond to my query about its disappearance.
Whatever happened to the wording, that sentiment has been widely shared. COPs have ballooned in size while the importance of their outcomes seems to have diminished since the 2015 Paris Agreement (with the exception of the 2023 COP in Dubai where countries agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems).
The same on the surface
Two years on from those painful headlines in Baku, has anything changed for the better? You might be forgiven for thinking not. Official decisions are still made by consensus rather than the majority voting some have called for to stop blockers.
Tens of thousands of officials, activists and business execs still scurry around the halls to an ever-growing list of side events, roundtables and dialogues, while deals still come down to rows, all-nighters and jargon-filled texts adopted to rounds of applause.
But it would not be true to say that COPs have completely failed to respond to the very real need to translate the words of the Paris Agreement into action in the outside world.
Global warming is projected to be around 1.3C lower this century than it would have been if the world had not committed to tackle the climate crisis under that accord. Developing countries have a valued space at COPs in which their voices have equal weight in decision-making, unlike in many other international fora. And most importantly, perhaps, there has been a subtle shift, tipping the balance away from negotiating towards doing.
Brazil branded last year’s summit in Belém as the “COP of Implementation”, corralling the sprawling Action Agenda into six axes. This was a bid to impose some structure on the mushrooming efforts between governments, UN agencies, cities, businesses and civil society to set targets and spur faster results on their pet issues, from methane emissions to health and adaptation in conflict zones. COP30 alone saw the launch of 120 “plans to accelerate solutions”.
COP30 roadmaps off the cuff
Meanwhile, as the formal negotiations drew to a close, it was clear that consensus decision-making was evolving into something a little more improvised.
With only around half of all countries on board with the idea of a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, COP30 President André Corrêa do Lago announced his team would put one together over the coming year, along with another on how to meet a global goal to halt deforestation by 2030. Those roadmaps will be launched next week, presented and discussed at COP31, though it’s still unclear whether or how they’ll be incorporated into the formal negotiating agenda.
Some leading policy-makers don’t think that matters too much. Speaking to journalists before the Antalya summit, COP30 CEO Ana Toni and Dutch climate minister Stientje van Veldhoven said “coalitions of the willing” can move ahead without needing consensus from the COPs. This, they said, was evident this year at the first global conference on TAFF, co-chaired by van Veldhoven and attended by 60 countries.
“Consensus or no-consensus in the general COP doesn’t make a difference for the choices I have to make in my country to get my country to phase out fossil fuels,” said the Dutch minister. The Netherlands recently became one of the first to publish a national TAFF plan.
COP31 banks on flagship voluntary initiatives
This thinking has permeated the management and expected outcomes of this year’s COP too. Earlier this year, Türkiye, supported by international energy agencies, floated the idea of a voluntary goal to boost electrification to 35% of the world’s final energy consumption by 2035 – and this is now being touted as one of the main results to be expected from Antalya.
Türkiye is also championing a pledge on AI and climate, while co-host Australia is pushing to ease access to climate finance for least developed countries and small island states.
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None of these needs consensus. But with a political cover decision already in the works, as trailed by the COP presidents, they – and perhaps the fossil fuel roadmap – may find a home in the official text if language acceptable to most can be found, giving them them additional weight.
UNFCCC reform process in the shadows
Formal reform is underway too, if quietly. UN climate chief Simon Stiell is leading a review informed by ongoing consultations with a group of 15 well-respected climate policy experts, three of whom signed the open letter in 2024.
Among them is leading Swedish climate and sustainability scientist Johan Rockström who has strong ideas about how to make COPs function better, including a switch to majority voting. He told the same press briefing nothing stands in the way of this, because the rules of procedure for making decisions at COPs have never been formally agreed.
Still, to get away from the default setting of consensus would require agreement on a new system that may be impossible to achieve given the rise in bullying tactics by fossil fuel heavyweights.
Comment: The UN climate process was built for negotiation – now it must support implementation
The deliberations with the high-level policy gurus, as reflected in a summary of June’s session in Bonn, largely echo what’s already happening organically, calling for stronger partnerships and accountability both in and between the Action Agenda and negotiations. It doesn’t mention voting.
A general overview of the reform exercise says that “improving and optimizing the [UN climate] process over the medium to long term… will be critical to fostering trust, enhancing collaboration, and catalyzing increased ambition”.
In the short term, don’t hold your breath for anything concrete on reform at COP31 but watch for signs in what ends up dominating the headlines from Türkiye.
The post Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines appeared first on Climate Home News.
Editor’s Desk: COP reform is happening quietly, behind the headlines
With the COP31 climate summit in Turkey looming, all eyes are on China to see what the country will push for in the negotiations.
At COP30 last year, China helped to secure a “dialogue” on climate-related “unilateral trade measures”, as well as a two-year “work programme” concerning climate finance.
The nation also championed south-south cooperation throughout the conference and co-led a summit on methane, alongside Brazil and the UK.
In a recent press conference, China’s environment vice-minister Li Gao noted the need to “uphold multilateralism” and send a “clear political signal” that the global community is united around climate action.