Environmental issues including climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss have dropped down an international ranking of short-term concerns for high-profile business leaders, academics and politicians.
Each year in August and September, the Global Risks Perception Survey run by the World Economic Forum (WEF) asks more than 1,300 experts – largely from the Global North – what they are most worried about. It is released in the run-up to an annual gathering of leaders in the Swiss ski resort of Davos, which takes place next week.
This year, the number of respondents citing environmental issues as top concerns over the next two years fell, while more warned of economic risks like geoeconomic confrontation, economic downturn, inflation and asset bubbles bursting.
The report on the survey’s results said that “environmental concerns, especially in the short term, are slipping down the ranking of leading risks for the first time in many years”.
After months of announcements on new US tariffs and sanctions under President Donald Trump, “geoeconomic confrontation” shot from third to first on the list of concerns, leapfrogging “extreme weather events”. This year’s survey found respondents generally more worried about the state of the world than last year.
Commenting on the report, climate scientist Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), told Climate Home News “priorities shift but it doesn’t mean that they’re not interconnected”. He said recent trends like a retreat from multilateralism and the rise of misinformation interact with the climate crisis, as do the solutions to these problems.
He noted, for example, that a healthier online environment for public debate and less polarisation helps efforts to tackle climate change. “Aiming to reduce inequality also means providing energy in the cheapest way possible – and that’s with renewables. Governing well in a time of risk means you need to be able to be clear-eyed about what choices are going to bring about the most benefits,” he added.
Looking further ahead, survey respondents still put environmental concerns at the top of their list of longer-term concerns. Over the next ten years, their top concerns were extreme weather followed by biodiversity loss and critical changes to Earth systems.
Report author Saadia Zahidi told a press conference it is “very concerning that if we do lose the focus on [climate change and biodiversity loss] in the short term, we’re not going to be ready to adapt and mitigate 10 years out. So while it does show up in the longer-term rankings higher, it actually is a here-and-now risk.”
Scientists announced this week that the last three years have been the warmest on record and, in 2025, the head of the United Nations accepted that exceeding the goal of limiting global warming to to 1.5C, set in the Paris Agreement, was inevitable.
Despite rising impacts from climate change, a study by the Media and Climate Change Observatory found that media coverage of climate change was far lower in 2025 than previous years, having peaked in 2021-2023.
Trump takes over
The WEF’s annual Davos meeting kicks off on Monday, with political opponents of climate action attending in force. The US government will send what WEF organiser Børge Brende described as the largest US delegation ever, including President Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright.
Brende said he was “pleased to welcome back” Trump after a six-year absence from Davos, adding that there will also be a “very strong delegation” from Saudi Arabia. Argentina’s President Javier Milei, who has flirted with leaving the Paris Agreement, will give a special address.
On the other hand, politicians supportive of climate action including Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva and former US Vice-President Al Gore will speak on panels, as will Rockström and green Australian businessman Andrew Forrest.
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In November, the Financial Times reported that, in order to persuade Trump to attend, WEF organisers gave assurances that “woke” topics like climate change and international development finance would not be too prominent at the forum.
Nonetheless, climate issues remain on the agenda although several panels are framed as questions that cast doubt on the clean energy transition such as “can EVs [electric vehicles] really dominate?” and “unstoppable march of renewables?”.
Last year’s programme featured a “road to COP30” event but there is no COP31-focused event this time. One panel on this year’s agenda will discuss “should we bet on climate moonshots?” such as nuclear fusion, an unproven clean energy technology on which the Trump administration has funded research.
As well as panel events, which are broadcast to the public online, WEF usually organises informal discussions on a range of issues including climate change.
Many of the high-profile participants travel to Davos by private jet, however, drawing accusations of hypocrisy from Greenpeace. On Thursday, it released figures showing that private jet flights to the annual WEF meeting tripled between 2023 and 2025.
“It’s pure hypocrisy that the world’s most powerful and super-rich elite discuss global challenges and progress in Davos, while they literally burn the planet with the emissions of their private jets,” said Greenpeace transport campaigner Herwig Schuster.
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Ahead of Davos, climate drops down global elite’s list of pressing concerns
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.
Membership