From Baku to Belém to Antalya: the road to COP31 and climate diplomacy under strain
· 16 min read
The road from Baku to Belém to Antalya tells a larger story than the succession of three COPs. It reflects the changing nature of global climate diplomacy itself: from negotiating ambition, to financing that ambition, to the much harder task of turning commitments into implementation.
Climate diplomacy is entering a more demanding phase. For years, the central challenge of the annual United Nations climate conferences was to secure agreement on the scale of ambition: emissions targets, temperature goals, finance commitments and the language that would guide the global transition. Those remain essential. But the defining question is increasingly whether governments can translate agreements into the infrastructure, investment and institutional changes needed to deliver them.
The path from Baku to Belém to Antalya captures this shift. COP29 in Baku placed climate finance at the centre of negotiations. COP30 in Belém brought renewed urgency to implementation, forests and the real-world consequences of the climate crisis. COP31, taking place in Antalya, Türkiye, must connect these priorities to action. There have been growing concerns as to whether the COP process remains capable of delivering progress at the speed demanded by the climate crisis. The answer, so far, is uncomfortable. Multilateralism is still alive, but it is struggling to move at the speed of climate change.
This is not simply a question of diplomatic language. It is an economic and political test. Governments must expand clean energy while maintaining reliable and affordable power, mobilise capital at scale, protect communities against climate impacts and manage the distributional consequences of industrial transformation. They must do so amid geopolitical rivalry, fiscal constraints and divergent views about who should pay.
The risk is that climate diplomacy becomes increasingly sophisticated at describing the destination while remaining inadequate at building the route towards it. Antalya offers an opportunity to close that gap.
COP29 in Baku made clear that climate ambition depends on finance. Developing economies need resources to invest in renewable power, modernise grids, adapt infrastructure, protect ecosystems and respond to climate-related loss and damage. Yet the distance between the scale of investment required and the finance that reaches projects remains substantial.
The challenge is not resolved by announcing a headline figure. Climate finance must be accessible, predictable and appropriate to the needs of the countries receiving it. Highly indebted states cannot be expected to finance resilience through ever more expensive borrowing. Small island states and least developed countries often face the greatest climate risks while having the least institutional capacity to navigate complex funding procedures.
Nor can public finance alone fund the global transition. Private investment will be indispensable, but it does not flow automatically towards the places where climate needs are greatest. Investors require credible policy frameworks, bankable projects, transparent regulation and a reasonable allocation of risk. Public and concessional finance can help make projects viable, particularly where commercial returns are uncertain or benefits accrue over decades.
This is where the implementation agenda must become more concrete. Instead of treating finance as a single negotiation outcome, governments should focus on the systems that turn commitments into capital deployed: project preparation facilities, guarantees, blended-finance structures, local financial institutions and pipelines of investable projects. Success should be measured not only by how much money is pledged, but by how much is mobilised, on what terms, for whom and with what results.
Belém’s COP30 legacy should therefore be assessed by whether implementation becomes the organising principle of climate cooperation. Antalya can advance that shift by linking international commitments to credible investment pathways and by making delivery a shared responsibility across governments, financial institutions and businesses.
One of the most consequential opportunities is the electrification of the global economy. Transport, buildings and parts of industry can increasingly move from direct fossil-fuel use to electricity, provided that power systems become cleaner, more resilient and more affordable.
The COP31 process has highlighted a goal of raising electricity’s share of global final energy consumption to 35% by 2035. The ambition matters because electrification can reduce dependence on fossil fuels, improve energy efficiency and strengthen energy security, particularly when supported by renewable generation, storage and modernised grids. The Taku Pakasoa Declaration, adopted at the Pacific Pre-COP in October 2026, also welcomed this direction and emphasised the importance of investment in storage and grid transformation.
But electrification is not simply a matter of installing more generation capacity. It requires transmission infrastructure, flexible grids, storage, skilled workers, regulatory reform and investment in the systems that connect energy supply to demand. In many markets, grid constraints and long development timelines are becoming as important as the cost of renewable technologies themselves.
Energy security has also become a more immediate political concern. Governments facing volatile fuel prices and geopolitical uncertainty are reassessing their exposure to imported fossil fuels. Clean energy can strengthen resilience, but only if countries build systems capable of delivering reliable power at the right time and place. The transition must be designed around both decarbonisation and the practical needs of households, industry and public services.
For investors, this creates opportunities across renewable generation, grid infrastructure, storage, efficiency, electrified transport and industrial technology. For policymakers, it requires stable rules and coordinated planning. For COP31, the test is whether the ambition of electrification can be matched by the practical conditions that make it possible.
Artificial intelligence adds a further complication to the energy transition. AI can help optimise electricity grids, improve climate modelling, manage industrial processes and make infrastructure more efficient. Yet the rapid expansion of data centres and computing capacity also creates new demand for electricity, water and energy-intensive infrastructure.
This tension is becoming a climate-governance issue in its own right. Türkiye’s COP31 Presidency has brought AI into the discussion, including through an announced voluntary political commitment, the Antalya Pledge on AI, developed with the United Nations. The initiative is intended to encourage the use of AI in support of climate goals and establish a process for tracking collective progress on electrification. Türkiye’s Environment Minister, Murat Kurum, has also called for greater transparency around AI companies’ energy use and for their operations to be powered by clean energy.
The principle is sound: the digital economy cannot be treated as separate from the physical infrastructure that sustains it. As AI adoption accelerates, governments and companies need better information about data-centre energy demand, the carbon intensity of electricity, water use and the extent to which new computing capacity is supported by additional clean power.
The distinction between a voluntary pledge and enforceable policy matters, however. A political commitment can establish common expectations and encourage cooperation, but it cannot substitute for transparent reporting, credible standards or investment in grids and clean generation. Nor should the climate impact of AI be judged only by its direct electricity consumption. Its wider effects, such as whether it helps reduce emissions in other sectors or accelerates resource-intensive consumption, also deserve scrutiny.
Antalya has an opportunity to frame AI not as an automatic climate solution or an inevitable climate burden, but as a technology whose contribution depends on how it is deployed. The measure of progress will be whether transparency and cooperation lead to cleaner power, better energy management and demonstrable emissions reductions.
COP31’s structure creates another opportunity to connect diplomacy with implementation. Alongside the formal UNFCCC Negotiating Agenda, which is where governments negotiate and adopt decisions under the climate process, the Action Agenda is designed to mobilise activity by businesses, cities, investors, financial institutions, universities and civil society.
The two agendas serve different purposes. Formal negotiations provide the intergovernmental framework: shared decisions, political commitments and rules that countries agree through the UN climate process. The Action Agenda can help translate those decisions into projects, partnerships, investment and practical initiatives. COP31’s thematic priorities include clean energy, green industrialisation, climate-resilient cities, youth and education, oceans and the Climate Implementation Bridge.
This distinction is important because implementation requires actors who do not sit at the negotiating table. Governments can establish targets and policy frameworks, but businesses build technologies and infrastructure; financial institutions allocate capital; cities shape transport, buildings and land use; and universities develop knowledge and skills.
Yet the Action Agenda must not become a substitute for difficult political decisions. Voluntary partnerships can generate momentum, but they cannot resolve disagreements over finance, fossil fuels or the responsibilities of different countries. Announcements are not outcomes, and the number of initiatives launched is not a reliable measure of their impact.
The credibility test should be whether initiatives attract additional finance, deliver measurable emissions reductions or resilience benefits, reach underserved communities and report progress transparently. Antalya should connect the two agendas without confusing their roles: negotiations must establish the political conditions for action, while the Action Agenda should demonstrate what that action can achieve.
The Pacific provides one of the clearest tests of whether the global system can translate commitments into outcomes. Island communities are confronting sea-level rise, coastal erosion, ocean warming and increasingly severe climate impacts, despite having contributed relatively little to cumulative global emissions.
The Taku Pakasoa Declaration, adopted at the Pacific Pre-COP in October 2026, calls for faster emissions reductions, protection of the 1.5°C goal, improved access to climate finance and stronger action on ocean protection. It also stresses the importance of grant-based and concessional finance for small island developing states and least developed countries, alongside support for the Pacific Resilience Facility.
The key issue is not only the amount of finance announced, but the time and effort required to access it. Communities facing urgent adaptation needs cannot wait years for complicated applications, approvals and disbursements. Funding architecture must reflect the realities of countries with small administrations, limited borrowing capacity and immediate infrastructure needs.
Adaptation finance is particularly vulnerable to being treated as secondary to mitigation. Clean-energy investment can often be linked to revenue-generating assets, while adaptation projects such as coastal protection, early-warning systems, climate-resilient schools and public-health infrastructure may produce benefits that are difficult to monetise. That makes public and concessional funding essential.
The Australia-Türkiye COP31 arrangement has a particular responsibility here. Australia’s role in leading negotiations, combined with Türkiye’s hosting and presidency, creates an opportunity to connect the Pacific’s experience to the wider global agenda. The Pacific must not be visible only during the preparatory meetings; its priorities need to shape the decisions and finance outcomes reached in Antalya.
The test is whether the voices of vulnerable countries influence the allocation of resources, the design of adaptation programmes and the implementation of commitments, not merely the language of final declarations.
COP31’s division of responsibilities between Türkiye as host and president of the conference and Australia as leader of negotiations is unusual. It creates a form of distributed diplomacy, with the potential to combine Türkiye’s convening role and regional relationships with Australia’s engagement in the Pacific and its role in steering negotiations.
That arrangement may broaden participation and bring different perspectives into the process. It also creates coordination challenges. The presidency must sustain trust among negotiating blocs, manage competing priorities and help countries find agreement, while ensuring that the wider programme of initiatives reinforces rather than distracts from the formal negotiations.
This is happening at a time when multilateral cooperation is under strain. Countries disagree not only about the pace of the energy transition but also about historical responsibility, the distribution of costs, development priorities and the role of fossil fuels in their economies. Climate diplomacy cannot escape these geopolitical realities; it must find ways to work through them.
A recent dispute within the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) illustrates the difficulty. A meeting in Addis Ababa in October 2026 ended without agreement on the timetable for the next comprehensive climate assessment, raising concerns about whether the report will be available in time to inform future global climate discussions. Some countries emphasised the need for more time and resources to enable broader participation by scientists from less-resourced countries; others warned that delay could weaken the policy relevance of the science.
The disagreement reflects a genuine challenge: scientific legitimacy depends on inclusive participation, but climate policy also depends on timely access to the best available evidence. Equity and urgency should not be framed as opposing objectives. International institutions need the resources and processes to deliver both.
The wider lesson for Antalya is that multilateralism cannot be measured solely by whether every disagreement disappears. It must be judged by whether countries can manage disagreement without losing the ability to act.
Climate policy is increasingly intertwined with industrial strategy. Governments are competing to attract investment in clean technologies, batteries, renewable energy, electric vehicles, critical minerals and advanced manufacturing. The transition is creating new industries and jobs, but it is also raising difficult questions about subsidies, trade, supply-chain dependencies and access to technology.
For emerging economies, green industrialisation could offer a route to economic diversification and higher-value employment. But the opportunity will not be shared equally. Countries with cheaper capital, established manufacturing bases and deeper technology ecosystems are better positioned to capture investment. Others risk remaining suppliers of raw materials or importing finished technologies without developing local capabilities.
COP31 can help by making industrial transition a question of cooperation as well as competition. Investment frameworks, skills development, technology partnerships and stronger local supply chains can help more countries participate in the emerging clean economy. Education and workforce development are particularly important: new infrastructure will require technicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, planners and public officials with the capabilities to build and operate it.
Climate diplomacy should also recognise that economic competitiveness can support climate action when it makes cleaner technologies cheaper and more widely available. But competition becomes counterproductive when it fragments markets, restricts access or encourages governments to protect domestic industries at the expense of broader progress.
The objective should not be to eliminate industrial competition. It should be to ensure that it accelerates innovation and deployment while widening participation in the benefits.
Climate diplomacy will increasingly depend on the ability of governments to work with technology companies, entrepreneurs, researchers and investors to develop and deploy the solutions needed to deliver the energy transition. ClimateTech is advancing innovation across renewable energy, battery storage, grid optimisation, industrial decarbonisation, sustainable agriculture and climate resilience. Yet technological progress alone is insufficient: solutions must be adapted to local contexts, supported by appropriate infrastructure and regulation, and made accessible across different economies. This is where “Techplomacy”, the intersection of technology, international relations and diplomacy, can play a transformative role in climate action. By facilitating cross-border partnerships, sharing expertise, enabling technology transfer and aligning public and private sector priorities, Techplomacy can help countries move beyond negotiating shared ambitions towards building the capabilities required to achieve them. Climate cooperation should therefore encompass not only emissions targets and finance commitments, but also the exchange of knowledge, the development of skills and the creation of international ecosystems in which climate innovations can flourish.
For Türkiye and Australia, COP31 offers an opportunity to put Techplomacy into practice by connecting governments, universities, ClimateTech companies, international organisations and local communities around shared priorities. Collaboration could accelerate the deployment of renewable energy, strengthen electricity grids, improve water and agricultural resilience, and expand access to technologies suited to emerging economies. AI adds another dimension, offering opportunities to improve climate modelling, optimise energy systems and monitor environmental change, while requiring responsible management of its energy and resource demands. Through the COP31 Action Agenda, the two presidencies could encourage practical partnerships that combine technological expertise, policy innovation and investment, ensuring that countries with different levels of development can participate in and benefit from the global transition. COP31 can help establish Techplomacy as a practical instrument of climate diplomacy, demonstrating how international cooperation on technology can turn shared climate ambitions into tangible environmental progress and more inclusive economic development.
The success of Antalya should not be judged by the length of its final communiqué or the number of announcements made during the conference. Those can signal political momentum, but they are not the same as delivery.
A more meaningful assessment would ask five questions. Firstly, did COP31 strengthen the connection between climate-finance commitments and capital reaching projects, particularly in countries with limited access to affordable funding? Secondly, did it advance practical delivery on electrification through investment in grids, storage, clean generation and efficiency? Thirdly, did it improve the accessibility and effectiveness of adaptation finance for vulnerable communities? Fourthly, did initiatives under the Action Agenda demonstrate measurable results and additional impact? Finally, did countries preserve the credibility of climate science and international cooperation despite political disagreements?
These questions require follow-through after the summit. Governments must implement national commitments; financial institutions must report on the capital deployed; companies must disclose relevant impacts; and international bodies must track progress in ways that make gaps visible and encourage correction. A COP is just one moment in a longer process. Its true value lies in whether it changes what happens afterwards.
The road from Baku through Belém to Antalya is not a linear progression. Each summit operates within different political and economic constraints, and no single conference can resolve the climate crisis. But the sequence does reveal a growing expectation: climate diplomacy must increasingly demonstrate that agreements can be translated into real-world change.
Looking ahead to Ethiopia’s expected hosting of COP32 in 2027 in Addis Ababa, the question of implementation will remain inseparable from development, resilience and access to finance. The transition must work for countries seeking to expand energy access and improve living standards, as well as for those already investing heavily in decarbonisation.
Azerbaijan’s COP29 presidency demonstrated that a hydrocarbon-producing state can play a consequential role in advancing the global climate agenda, even as its own economy remains heavily dependent on oil and gas. COP29 served as a catalyst for Azerbaijan’s renewable-energy ambitions, attracting investment into solar and wind power, and positioning itself as a future exporter of green energy. This experience illustrates how a country can begin leveraging the diplomatic momentum of a climate summit to diversify its energy mix and economy, while recognising that the transition from fossil-fuel dependence remains a long-term challenge. Brazil’s COP30 presidency in Belém presented a different but equally complex paradox: a country seeking to position itself as a global environmental leader while confronting the destruction of the Amazon, including through deforestation and the expansion of extractive industries.
For Türkiye and Australia, COP31 offers a similar opportunity to shape a lasting legacy despite their own fossil-fuel dependencies. Türkiye remains reliant on coal and imported hydrocarbons, while Australia is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquefied natural gas. Yet these contradictions need not define their presidencies; rather, they can provide the impetus for more credible climate leadership. By prioritising implementation over rhetoric, mobilising climate finance, accelerating clean-energy investment, harnessing AI and digital technologies to improve energy efficiency and climate resilience, and building practical partnerships between developed and developing economies, Türkiye and Australia could demonstrate that meaningful climate diplomacy does not require a country to have resolved every domestic contradiction before it can lead internationally. The true legacy of COP31 will be whether two countries whose economies remain intertwined with fossil fuels can use their shared presidency to help accelerate the transition beyond them.
COP31 in Antalya arrives at a moment when climate action increasingly intersects with AI, energy security, industrial competitiveness, adaptation and the future of multilateral cooperation. These are not separate conversations. They are different dimensions of the same challenge: how to build a more resilient and prosperous global economy within environmental limits.
The most important outcome of COP31 would be to narrow the distance between what the world has promised and what people experience. That means finance that arrives, grids that work, clean technologies that scale, communities that are better protected and institutions that can sustain cooperation even when consensus is difficult.
The era of ambition is not over. Without ambition, implementation has no direction. However, ambition alone is no longer enough. COP31 in Antalya must show that climate diplomacy can move beyond the agreement itself and begin to deliver at the speed the crisis demands. The road from Baku to Belém to Antalya to Addis Ababa may ultimately tell us whether climate diplomacy can evolve from a system designed primarily to negotiate commitments into one capable of delivering them.
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