Jurema Werneck, Ruhat Sena Akşener and Samantha Klintworth are directors for Amnesty International in Brazil, Türkiye and Australia, respectively.
The climate crisis is also a human rights crisis – claiming lives and turning life upside down for countless communities across the world.
But while those profiting from fossil fuel expansion retain privileged access and influence over global climate negotiations, the people facing its harshest consequences, such as Indigenous peoples or those living in climate-vulnerable communities, remain largely shut out of the decision-making.
As directors of Amnesty International in Brazil, Türkiye and Australia, countries with a leading role in COP30 and COP31, we have seen how effective climate action depends on people being able to speak, organise, protest and participate.
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Australia says COP31 co-presidency will work on a cover decision
Chris Bowen said the text could acknowledge the inevitable overshoot of 1.5C, while questions remain over the inclusion of the electrification goal
Last year in Belém, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered every national delegation except Brazil’s, exposing the imbalance of power within climate negotiations. COP31 should confront corporate capture and expand public participation. Instead, serious concerns have been raised over whether civil society will be able to speak freely and safely in Türkiye.
Rights curbs worsen climate breakdown
The human rights needed to confront the climate crisis and demand justice are being eroded.
Authoritarian practices are supercharging climate breakdown by restricting protest, silencing defenders and shielding fossil fuel interests from scrutiny. Attacks on women, LGBTI+ people and members of other marginalised communities divide societies, weaken collective action and divert public attention while fossil fuel expansion continues.
That is why the assault on civic space in Türkiye, the host of COP31, should alarm every government preparing to attend the summit.
In September, Turkish authorities launched a nationwide operation targeting LGBTI+ organisations, activists and human rights defenders. Homes, venues and offices were raided, people were arrested and imprisoned, and social media accounts belonging to activists, journalists and human rights groups were restricted, including that of Amnesty International Türkiye.
This is part of a decade-long crackdown that has weakened judicial independence, ignored international judgements and restricted peaceful assembly, association and expression. Whoever is targeted, the effect is the same: dissent is silenced and fear spreads.
For COP31 to succeed, Türkiye must end its human rights crackdown.
Worrying signals from Türkiye
Against this backdrop, the agreement between Türkiye and the UN on hosting COP31 is alarming.
Article 11.11 requires participants to respect Türkiye’s laws and regulations and refrain from interfering in its “internal affairs”. Article 11.12 reintroduces language on waiving immunity that was omitted from Brazil’s COP30 agreement.
Turkish authorities are already invoking vague notions of “public morality” and “harm to the family” to investigate people and restrict expression. The agreement could therefore have a chilling effect on activists, defenders and journalists.
COP31 attendees told not to interfere in Türkiye’s “internal affairs”
Could criticism of Türkiye’s fossil fuel policies, its treatment of environmental defenders or its crackdown on LGBTI+ organisations be characterised as interference in “internal affairs”? Nobody attending a UN climate conference should have to ask.
Türkiye and the UN should publicly guarantee that participants can speak, organise, report and protest peacefully without discrimination, intimidation, surveillance, detention or reprisals. Governments ought to challenge the agreement’s flaws before arriving in Antalya.
Progress, not perfection, at Brazil’s COP
COP31 must build on Brazil’s approach. Its COP hosting agreement committed to an inclusive and non-discriminatory conference, while its presidency adopted a more open and participatory tone. COP30 saw record participation by Indigenous peoples, but access did not guarantee influence: many key decisions continued to be shaped behind closed doors.
Commitments made in Belém ultimately depend on domestic political choices, and Brazil’s October election results point to a legislature that may be less willing to uphold them. This could put the rights of Indigenous peoples, Quilombola and traditional communities at greater risk.
When protections at home weaken, international spaces become even more vital for affected populations to speak out, and hold decision-makers accountable. COP31 must guarantee freedom of expression and peaceful assembly outside the “Blue Zone” (the UN-protected area) and grant civil society greater access to negotiations.
Comment: Coal mines and hypocrisy must not be Australia’s COP31 legacy
As documented by Amnesty International, communities resisting fossil fuel expansion and building fairer alternatives are facing harassment, surveillance, criminalisation, disinformation, violence and restrictions on peaceful protest. They include: First Nations people in Australia challenging offshore oil and gas exploration, artisanal fishers in Brazil’s Guanabara Bay fighting for environmental justice, and activists defending Akbelen Forest in Türkiye from coal mining expansion.
These communities are rights-holders, knowledge-bearers and political actors protecting territories and forging effective climate responses. Governments must protect them and ensure they have a meaningful say.
Confronting fossil fuel power
To defend human rights, governments must use COP31 to advance three urgent priorities.
First, they must end fossil fuel expansion and accelerate a full, fast, fair, funded and human rights-compliant transition away from fossil fuels. States most responsible must go further and faster, ending fossil fuel subsidies and redirecting public resources towards rights-respecting renewable energy.
Second, they must ensure the transition protects rights and leaves no one behind, including by making the new Just Transition Mechanism operational, funded and accountable.
And third, they must scale up public, grant-based climate finance for mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage, without pushing lower-income countries further into debt.
COP31 will not deliver these outcomes without the knowledge and expertise of frontline communities.
Brazil must defend the participatory progress made at COP30. Türkiye must reverse its crackdown and protect civic space. Australia, as president of negotiations for COP31, should secure an ambitious, human rights-centred outcome while confronting restrictions on peaceful climate protest at home.
The climate crisis cannot be solved behind closed doors. The doors must remain open, and people must have the power to shape what happens inside.
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The UK has beaten its target to provide £11.6bn of climate aid to developing countries by 2026 – but only through “questionable accounting”.
As part of its obligations under the Paris Agreement, the UK pledged to give at least £11.6bn in overseas “climate finance” between 2021 and 2026.
Now, Carbon Brief analysis reveals that around £2.1bn of the funds the UK counted towards this goal did not come from new spending.
Instead, the government relabelled existing funding for development banks, private-sector investment and aid for Afghanistan, Sudan and other war-torn nations as “climate finance”.
Without these changes, the UK would have fallen nearly £1bn short of its target.
Carbon Brief’s analysis is based on numerous FOI requests and reveals the otherwise-unpublished details of the UK’s climate-finance spending.
Experts and MPs say the use of “questionable” accounting shows the UK is “cutting corners” to hit its climate goals, while making unprecedented cuts to its foreign aid budget.
‘Moving the goalposts’
The UK and other developed countries are obliged under UN climate treaties to provide “new and additional” climate finance to help developing countries tackle climate change.
They also have specific targets to “mobilise” $100bn of climate finance per year through to 2025 and “at least” $300bn by 2035.
As the UK’s contribution to international climate finance, in 2019 the Conservative government pledged to provide £11.6bn between the financial years 2021-22 and 2025-26. This amounted to “doubling” its previous five-year target.
Since then, successive governments have slashed the amount of money going towards foreign aid, citing economic strain and a need for more defence spending. This has placed great pressure on the £11.6bn target, which comes from the UK aid budget.
In order to retain the target while cutting aid, the Conservative government decided in 2023 to loosen the criteria for what it defined as “climate” spending.
This enabled the UK to remain committed to the £11.6bn goal, without spending more on new climate projects, by simply relabelling existing funds. The current Labour government has opted to maintain this approach, while pledging to cut aid spending even further.
The move has been strongly criticised by campaigners, MPs and even the UK’s official aid watchdog, who have described it as “creative accounting” and “moving the goalposts”.
‘£1bn shortfall’
The UK government has announced that it met the £11.6bn target, but has not released the full details of how it did so – or even the total amount provided by 2025-26.
FOI data obtained by Carbon Brief over the course of several months reveals that, in fact, total climate finance over the past five years reached £12.8bn – with a record £4bn in the past year alone.
However, Carbon Brief analysis of government data also shows that around £2.1bn – nearly a fifth of the total – comes from the government’s accounting changes.
Without these changes, as the chart below shows, cumulative UK climate finance would only have reached around £10.7bn by 2026, leaving a shortfall of £924m.
This final figure of £2.1bn is higher than forecast by the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI), which estimated in 2024 that the total amount of “reclassified” climate finance would reach £1.7bn.
The government has stressed that its accounting changes are “consistent” with “internationally agreed ways of calculating ICF”, used by other major donors.
(Experts have noted that, traditionally, the UK was viewed as taking a more rigorous approach to climate-finance accounting, which is notoriously unregulated and opaque.)
A recent International Development Committee (IDC) report noted that developed countries have committed to providing “new and additional” climate finance to developing countries, which is generally interpreted as extra funds on top of existing aid.
Evidence gathered by the IDC concluded that, alongside aid cuts, the UK’s accounting changes have “eroded” the “additionality and credibility” of its climate finance.
Responding to Carbon Brief’s findings, IDC chair Sarah Champion said the data “shines a new light” on the committee’s findings:
“The picture is not getting any better. If questionable accounting has been used to get around a £1bn shortfall on ICF spend between 2021-22 and 2025-26, this only underlines my concerns that the government has been cutting corners to maintain headline climate-spending commitments, rather than working to deliver genuine climate and nature outcomes.”
These accounting changes remain relevant as the UK begins its next phase of international climate finance, while cutting the aid budget further.
The government has pledged £6bn of foreign aid for climate projects over the next three years. This makes the UK one of the only major donor countries to set out a new climate-finance target for the period after 2025, despite a global pledge to scale up support.
Nevertheless, the new UK goal amounts to a halving from £4bn in the financial year 2025-26 to £2bn a year, on average. Previous Carbon Brief analysis also shows that the continued use of “questionable accounting” is likely to make up around a third of the new target.
Responding to Carbon Brief’s analysis, a UK government spokesperson says:
“We are proud to have both hit, and exceeded, our third international climate-finance target – and will continue to work hard on protecting climate and nature.
“Climate change and nature loss pose a real and significant threat to global security and prosperity. That is why the UK is leading action on climate and nature, and prioritising climate finance in its aid budget.”
Accounting changes
The UK’s accounting changes break down into three major components, which are behind most of its upward revision in climate-finance spending.
The first is counting a share of “core” funding for multilateral development banks (MDBs) as climate finance.
This refers to un-earmarked contributions that governments provide to support these banks in their work, which includes providing loans and grants to developing countries.
Counting this spending as “climate finance” adds £1.1bn to the total of £12.8bn, split mainly between the World Bank and the African Development Bank.
As the chart below shows, this is by far the largest chunk of extra climate finance resulting from the UK’s accounting changes.
This revision has been justified on the grounds that the World Bank and other banks have clear targets for funding climate-relevant projects, using their core funding.
However, MDBs have also faced criticism for their lack of transparency around climate finance and their reliance on loans, rather than grants. (In contrast, nearly all of the UK’s climate finance so far has been grant-based.)
Moreover, the US has been pressuring MDBs to drop their climate plans altogether. Indeed, the Trump administration has already forced the World Bank to abandon its overall target to put 45% of its funds towards climate finance.
Jon Sward, environment project manager at the Bretton Woods Project NGO, tells Carbon Brief:
“One thing removing the overall [World Bank] target definitely does is it adds…a lack of predictability of the flows going forward.”
The second-largest UK accounting change – contributing nearly £600m – comes from automatically counting 30% of humanitarian aid as climate finance, if it is going to one of the countries judged most vulnerable to climate change.
This includes some of the most war-torn and low-income nations in the world, such as Afghanistan, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Crucially, this means projects are counted even if they have no discernible link to climate change, such as helping “conflict-affected” people in Yemen and orphans in Zimbabwe.
The Center for Global Development (CGD) has described this revision as “arbitrary”, given every aid project is already screened for any climate-relevant components.
The third significant portion comes from counting more of the government’s private-sector investments via British International Investment (BII) as climate finance. BII is a publicly owned, for-profit company that invests in developing-country businesses and is partially funded with injections of UK aid money.
The UK government decided to start calculating the climate share of its BII spending based on real-world BII investments, rather than a default, fixed share of 30%.
Data obtained by Carbon Brief via FOI suggests that £133m of extra BII funding was labelled as climate finance over the first four years of the £11.6bn target.
However, government records of BII climate finance have been inconsistent, making it difficult to estimate the total impact of accounting changes. Therefore, Carbon Brief has used an earlier internal government forecast that estimated this change would add a total of £266m over the five-year target period.
BII has increasingly turned its attention to investing in clean power in recent years,