The Australian government’s bid to host a major global climate conference inAdelaidenext year wasn’t supposed to go like this.
A two-weekmeeting of diplomats at the UN climate headquartersin Bonn, Germany, failed to resolve what has become a long-running issue: whether the summit known as Cop31 would be held in Australia or Turkey, the only other nation vying for the rights.
At a final plenary session on Friday morning Australian time, delegates from several European countries – Germany, France, Norway and Switzerland – sounded slightly frustrated as they backed the event being hosted by Australia in partnership with Pacific island countries. The UK, Iceland and New Zealand voiced their support earlier in the conference.
No countries in the group of 29 nations that will decide the 2026 venue – known as Western Europe and Others – have backed Turkey’s bid. But under the UN’s consensus decision-making process the issue cannot be resolved while the Turkish government, led by presidentRecep Tayyip Erdoğan, remains in the race.
The delayed decision has potential ramifications for the organisation of an event that the climate change minister, Chris Bowen, has said would be the largest ever hosted in Australia. For two sleepless weeks in November, it would draw tens of thousands of people from nearly 200 countries – and the world’s attention – to the host city. It is a major political and logistical exercise.
The annual Cops – short for Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – are the major event on the climate diplomacy calendar. If the Adelaide bid is successful, Bowen has said the focus of the negotiations between government officials should be on implementation: how to turn new national pledges for 2035 that are due to be submitted this year into concrete, rapid – and belated – global action.
The diplomatic negotiations would run alongside a massive trade fair for green industries. Out on the streets, activists would call for Australia and other fossil fuel nations to do much, much more to back up their climate rhetoric.
There had been expectations since before last year’s Cop29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan,that Turkey would eventually bow to the inevitable and withdraw. But there was no sign in Bonn of that eventuality.
Instead,Turkeylaunched a renewed pitch to win the rights, holding a reception to lobby delegates with a presentation on why Cop31 should be held in the southern resort city of Antalya. It argued that, compared with its rival, it was geographically central – and not a major coal and gas exporter.
Observers at the talks said countries did not appear to be swayed. Turkey’s case has weakened since Baku after Erdoğan’s main political rival was arrested in March, prompting widespread anti-government protests and clashes with police. And itsrecord on climate action is not strong.
Its resistance to pressure to exit the race means countries missed a deadline set in Azerbaijan that a decision should be made no later than the Bonn mid-year meeting so that the successful host had time to prepare.
It has widely been assumed Turkey would be open to dropping out if the terms were right. It has argued that it should be removed from the list of “annex 1” developed countries that since the 1990s have been expected to act first in combating the climate emergency. But there has been little appetite from other countries to allow this change.
The Bonn meeting agreed the stand-off needs to be resolved as soon as possible. At the latest, it will have to happen by the Cop30 conference in Belém, a Brazilian city on the Amazon River, in November. The new host will then assume the Cop presidency, a global leadership role that lasts through the year.
Observers in Australia are increasingly calling on the government to step up its campaign to get the issue resolved. The chief executive of the SmartEnergyCouncil, John Grimes, is among those urging Anthony Albanese to get more involved. Albanese has not attended a Cop since becoming PM.
“It is time for the government to flick the switch if we are to get this done,” Grimes says. That requires a whole-of-government effort led by the prime minister, for whom the Cop will be a legacy defining opportunity, particularly in the eyes of his Pacific counterparts.
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“This cannot wait for a decision at the Cop in Belém. This is too important, the diplomacy too intricate, and the timeline now too tight, for there to be anything less than a full-throated Australian diplomatic effort to secure the bid by the time the prime minister goes to the United Nations (general assembly in New York) in September.”
While relatively little discussed in political debate, Labor has been declaring its hope of hosting a “Pacific Cop” since late 2021, before it was elected the following year.
It has faced accusations of hypocrisy and alleged greenwashing for arguing it should lead a major climate event while it continues to back fossil fuel expansions and extensions, including a recent decision to allowWoodside Energy’s North West Shelf gas plantto run until 2070.
But leaders from the Pacific, green industries and climate groups have largely expressed a hope thatCop31would spur government and business to accelerate action at home and abroad.
Supporters include Palau’s president Surangel Whipps Jr, whotold the Guardiana successful bid would be a sign Australia was investing in its “Pacific brothers and sisters” and “ensuring that we have a healthy planet”.
The South Australian premier, Peter Malinauskas,has become an enthusiastic advocate, including commissioning an analysis that suggested it could attract 30,000 people and could be worth $500m to the state – more than the combined benefit of all its existing major events.
Bowen makes similar arguments. Speaking at an energy conference in Melbourne last week, he said the government was “actively campaigning” for the conference to “attract global investment”, “supercharge our transformation into a renewable energy superpower” and “put the Pacific front and centre on the world stage”.
He said it had been “working hard” with its international partners and Turkey to resolve the bid.
On the latest evidence, it may have to step it up a bit.