COP climate summits might yet have a useful future – here’s how

The COP31 venue in Antalya, Turkey Orhan Cicek/Anadolu via At a certain point, it becomes impossible to convey the urgency of the climate crisis in words. Calls to “intensify efforts” to cut emissions or countries “expressing alarm” at the pace of climate change start to ring hollow after years of rising emissions. At a certain point, you have to ask, what difference will another carefully worded declaration really make? This is a live question: next week, countries will gather at the COP31 summit in Antalya, Turkey, to progress the global response to climate change. For the seasoned attendee, these gatherings follow a predictable rhythm: some pomp and ceremony at the start when the world leaders are in attendance, followed by a quiet first week of backroom talks, escalating tension and fights over finance in the second week, all rounded off with a late-night showdown as countries argue over the wording of a final agreement. In the context of ever more dire warnings from scientists and increasingly severe real-world climate disasters, this is an event cycle that is wearing thin. To many of those in attendance – and millions more looking on from afar – it is becoming increasingly clear that COP summits are failing to deliver meaningful progress. This is a relatively new problem. For decades, the job of a COP negotiator was to forge some kind of global agreement to address climate change. That was no mean feat, and it took years of hard work and dedication to deliver the Paris Agreement in 2015. After the treaty was struck, climate negotiators then spent a few years busily drawing up the rules that would govern how the agreement would work in practice. But with that work largely completed by 2021, since then, COP summits have been left to drift, plagued -minute disputes over the wording of seemingly uncontentious statements. At last year’s summit, for example, countries couldn’t agree on even mentioning fossil fuels in the final agreement. COP31 will largely follow the same format. Arguments are already brewing over funding, negotiators are flexing their pens to hammer out details of new bureaucratic mechanisms, and hosts Turkey and Australia are limbering up for fresh disputes over which adverbs to deploy in a final agreement. This is your official warning: COP31 will not be the meeting that saves the world from climate peril. But there could be one bright spark at the summit.