Catherine Abreu is the Director of the International Climate Politics Hub
In a move straight out of the movies, the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Climate Event in September put the two prospective hosts for the 2026 global climate talks, Türkiye and Australia, back-to-back in the speaking order.
Both President Erdogan and Prime Minister Albanese confidently welcomed the world to their countries for COP31. Here at COP30, the drama continues, with the Australian and Turkish Pavilions sitting side-by-side while neither country seems prepared to step back from their bid. Get your popcorn.
Except this isn’t the movies, it’s the UN-led, multilateral process charged with helping us save ourselves from runaway climate change. And, thus far, what has been conspicuously missing from the pseudo-dramatic showdown between these two potential hosts is any meaningful discussion about how either country would aim to use its presidency of the climate talks to accelerate action on climate change, in their own country or globally. The drama, it would seem, has been misplaced.
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Any country wanting to host the annual UN summit on climate change should be making the case for doing so based on their climate credentials – and their climate ambition.
While some past COPs may have made us forget this, the energy and intent of current COP President Brazil, and the conversation Brazil’s COP presidency has generated at home about the country’s climate action, serve as useful reminders of what we should be striving for in the host of the climate talks.
It would be disappointing not to have a solid plan in place for COP31 and risk losing the momentum Brazil will hopefully have generated by the end of COP30.
COP host criteria
So, what should we be looking for in a COP host? First, we need a prospective presidency to be clear about the conversations they envisage mediating in the run-up to and during their summit and how those will help us advance a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy and energy efficiency, within the framework of the Paris Agreement.
We need a COP presidency focused on the question of how they can use their platform to help improve countries’ abilities to respond to the impacts of climate change and address the losses and damages they are experiencing.
We need a presidency fully engaged with using their platform to secure commitments to provide the finance countries need to take climate action and respond to climate impacts, while advancing the need to transform global financial systems so that we are tackling the problem of climate change at its core, rather than deepening it.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we need a host ready to commit their COP to being an effective space for negotiating, deliberation and decision making that is free from the undue influence of actors who are there to slow us down.
In other words, is the potential host ready to commit to a COP led by science and traditional and Indigenous knowledge? Are they prepared to ensure transparent accreditation processes that will expose conflicts of interest? And are they prepared and competent to facilitate an effective COP structure so that parties are given the opportunity to have the conversations they need to have, and to land the outcomes they need to achieve, without the influence of anticlimate lobbyists in their midst? If the answers to all of these questions are not a resounding yes, this is not the Presidency we need.
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Moreover, a potential COP host should be prepared to use their global platform to substantially advance climate action on the domestic level.
In the case of Australia, that should involve being steered by the wider Pacific leadership on just and equitable transitions away from fossil fuels. As the second largest coal exporter in the world and with a domestic energy mix that includes both fossil fuels and booming renewable energy growth, Australia can and should be aiming to credibly lead conversations on export market transformation and power system transitions to ethical renewable energy and improving energy efficiency.
For Türkiye, affirming a direction of travel away from coal dependency is key. So far Türkiye has been opposed to this both domestically and internationally; indeed, it did not sign up to the tripling renewables pledge at COP28, even though that target was aligned with Türkiye’s own renewable targets, because the text referred to “coal phase-down”. Türkiye moving past its opposition and opening up to a dialogue on a just transition away from coal would be a significant victory for the climate.
There are many reasons a country may want to host the UN climate summit. Foremost among those reasons, and at the heart of the UN process that decides COP hosts, should be the drive to lead national and global conversations that make a real difference in tackling the climate crisis.
The post Climate is MIA in Australia and Turkiye’s bids to host COP31 appeared first on Climate Home News.
Climate is MIA in Australia and Türkiye’s bids to host COP31
Climate Change
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Southern right whales—once driven to near-extinction by industrial hunting in the 19th and 20th centuries—have long been regarded as a conservation success. After the International Whaling Commission banned commercial whaling in the 1980s, populations began a slow but steady rebound. New research, however, suggests climate change may be undermining that recovery.
Southern Right Whales Are Having Fewer Calves; Scientists Say a Warming Ocean Is to Blame
Climate Change
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
The Lincolnshire constituency held by Richard Tice, the climate-sceptic deputy leader of the hard-right Reform party, has been pledged at least £55m in government funding for flood defences since 2024.
This investment in Boston and Skegness is the second-largest sum for a single constituency from a £1.4bn flood-defence fund for England, Carbon Brief analysis shows.
Flooding is becoming more likely and more extreme in the UK due to climate change.
Yet, for years, governments have failed to spend enough on flood defences to protect people, properties and infrastructure.
The £1.4bn fund is part of the current Labour government’s wider pledge to invest a “record” £7.9bn over a decade on protecting hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses from flooding.
As MP for one of England’s most flood-prone regions, Tice has called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
He is also one of Reform’s most vocal opponents of climate action and what he calls “net stupid zero”. He denies the scientific consensus on climate change and has claimed, falsely and without evidence, that scientists are “lying”.
Flood defences
Last year, the government said it would invest £2.65bn on flood and coastal erosion risk management (FCERM) schemes in England between April 2024 and March 2026.
This money was intended to protect 66,500 properties from flooding. It is part of a decade-long Labour government plan to spend more than £7.9bn on flood defences.
There has been a consistent shortfall in maintaining England’s flood defences, with the Environment Agency expecting to protect fewer properties by 2027 than it had initially planned.
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) has attributed this to rising costs, backlogs from previous governments and a lack of capacity. It also points to the strain from “more frequent and severe” weather events, such as storms in recent years that have been amplified by climate change.
However, the CCC also said last year that, if the 2024-26 spending programme is delivered, it would be “slightly closer to the track” of the Environment Agency targets out to 2027.
The government has released constituency-level data on which schemes in England it plans to fund, covering £1.4bn of the 2024-26 investment. The other half of the FCERM spending covers additional measures, from repairing existing defences to advising local authorities.
The map below shows the distribution of spending on FCERM schemes in England over the past two years, highlighting the constituency of Richard Tice.
By far the largest sum of money – £85.6m in total – has been committed to a tidal barrier and various other defences in the Somerset constituency of Bridgwater, the seat of Conservative MP Ashley Fox.
Over the first months of 2026, the south-west region has faced significant flooding and Fox has called for more support from the government, citing “climate patterns shifting and rainfall intensifying”.
He has also backed his party’s position that “the 2050 net-zero target is impossible” and called for more fossil-fuel extraction in the North Sea.
Tice’s east-coast constituency of Boston and Skegness, which is highly vulnerable to flooding from both rivers and the sea, is set to receive £55m. Among the supported projects are beach defences from Saltfleet to Gibraltar Point and upgrades to pumping stations.
Overall, Boston and Skegness has the second-largest portion of flood-defence funding, as the chart below shows. Constituencies with Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs occupied the other top positions.
Overall, despite Labour MPs occupying 347 out of England’s 543 constituencies – nearly two-thirds of the total – more than half of the flood-defence funding was distributed to constituencies with non-Labour MPs. This reflects the flood risk in coastal and rural areas that are not traditional Labour strongholds.
Reform funding
While Reform has just eight MPs, representing 1% of the population, its constituencies have been assigned 4% of the flood-defence funding for England.
Nearly all of this money was for Tice’s constituency, although party leader Nigel Farage’s coastal Clacton seat in Kent received £2m.
Reform UK is committed to “scrapping net-zero” and its leadership has expressed firmly climate-sceptic views.
Much has been made of the disconnect between the party’s climate policies and the threat climate change poses to its voters. Various analyses have shown the flood risk in Reform-dominated areas, particularly Lincolnshire.
Tice has rejected climate science, advocated for fossil-fuel production and criticised Environment Agency flood-defence activities. Yet, he has also called for more investment in flood defences, stating that “we cannot afford to ‘surrender the fens’ to the sea”.
This may reflect Tice’s broader approach to climate change. In a 2024 interview with LBC, he said:
“Where you’ve got concerns about sea level defences and sea level rise, guess what? A bit of steel, a bit of cement, some aggregate…and you build some concrete sea level defences. That’s how you deal with rising sea levels.”
While climate adaptation is viewed as vital in a warming world, there are limits on how much societies can adapt and adaptation costs will continue to increase as emissions rise.
The post Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Analysis: Constituency of Reform’s climate-sceptic Richard Tice gets £55m flood funding
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