Sustainable Investing

COP31

COP31 will be the 31st meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to be held in Antalya, Türkiye, from 9-20 November 2026. It provides a major opportunity for world leaders to discuss their global warming mitigation attempts, set targets, and debate issues such as funding renewable energy. ¹

Murat Kurum, Türkiye’s Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, has been appointed as COP President for the duration of the conference. Chris Bowen, Australia’s Minister for Climate Change and Energy, will be vice president after Australia had unsuccessfully applied to host the conference. World leaders are expected to attend the main summit from 11-12 November. There will be a pre-COP meeting in Fiji from 5-8 October.

Focus on waste

While the agenda is still being formulated, a significant focus is expected to be on waste, which has been a major sustainability issue in Türkiye in recent years. Samed Ağırbaş, Chairman of the Zero Waste Foundation and the COP31’s designated Climate Change High-Level Champion, and Emine Erdoğan, wife of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Honorary President of the Zero Waste Foundation, will play prominent roles.

“Türkiye is highly exposed to climate risks and globally recognized for its leadership in zero waste and the circular economy, while actively developing systemic solutions that place sustainable development at the core,” COP31’s website says.² “Through the Zero Waste initiative, Türkiye has emerged as a global model, demonstrating how national policy, international advocacy, and societal transformation can converge into a truly transformative sustainability movement.”

Prior COPs

An annual event, COP31 follows a year on from COP30, held in Belem, Brazil. That meeting proved controversial, as attempts to set out a legally binding roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels were blocked by oil-producing nations. However, there was an agreement on tripling climate adaptation finance by 2035, albeit without identifying who would pay for it, following calls by emerging markets that developed countries which had caused the most historical emissions should foot the bill.

The series of conferences began with COP1 in Berlin in 1995 to kick-start attempts to combat climate change through global emission reduction agreements, culminating in the Kyoto Protocol at COP3 in the Japanese city in 1997. Further annual meetings gradually added agreements that led to the creation of emissions trading platforms (COP7), the Green Climate Fund (COP16) and the Doha Climate Gateway extending the Kyoto Protocol (COP18).

The most significant and enduring meeting was COP21 at which the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015. The Agreement seeks to limit global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by 2100 and ideally to limit temperature rises to 1.5 degrees. It was signed by all 196 nation members of the UNFCCC and remains the global benchmark for tackling climate change.