By Tuvan Gumrukcu
ANTALYA, Turkey, April 20 (Reuters) – This year’s U.N. climate summit will seek to turn past decisions into action, with financing the main focus, Turkey’s Environment and Climate Change Minister Murat Kurum told Reuters, as the country prepares to host and chair COP31 in November.
The minister, Murat Kurum, said financing was the most important task, with nearly $1 trillion needed to help developing countries meet climate change targets, adding that raising public awareness about climate policies was essential at a time when wars and security crises dominate the global agenda.
“Important decisions have been taken in every COP so far. We will follow up these decisions, but what is essential is putting them into practice. The expectation of the world, of humanity from us is to move to practice,” Kurum said in an interview at a diplomacy forum in Antalya at the weekend.
“Let’s take steps to realise the NDCs that countries have put forth – and there are some countries who have not put them forward,” Kurum said, referring to the nationally determined contribution (NDC) of each nation.
He said that while wars were inevitable, Turkey would call on every nation to focus on the “big picture” and see the imminent threats posed by climate change.
The annual COP conference is the main global forum for driving action on climate change. The long-established consensus among the world’s scientists is that climate change is real, mostly caused by humans, and getting worse. Its main cause is greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, which trap heat in the atmosphere.
After a lengthy standoff last year, Turkey and Australia agreed on a format in which Turkey would host the COP31 summit and hold its presidency, while Australia leads the negotiation process. The COP conference will take place in November in the southern Turkish province of Antalya.
PHASING OUT FOSSIL FUELS
The minister – who will also be COP31 President – said Turkey wanted the conference to be “the COP of implementation”, where actions rather than promises take precedence.
“We want all countries to hand in their NDCs by COP31. We are working for this, we are also working for this within the U.N.,” he said, adding that $150 million in financing was needed for developing countries to prepare their NDCs.
One of the most significant perceived shortcomings from last year’s COP30 was the lack of concrete agreement around language to promote the global phasing-out of fossil fuels.
Asked about how the issue would be addressed at COP31, Kurum said Turkey aimed to press countries to implement the decisions taken on this issue at COP30, adding technology to allow such a shift needed to be further developed.
He said Turkey was using both renewable energy and fossil fuels because it needs to meet its needs and be self-sufficient, but added it would move away from this if it finds cheaper energy through new technology.
“We must bring moving away from fossil fuels to the global agenda by providing a transition period. During COP31, we will put into effect those partial decisions taken in COP30.”
(Reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu; Additional reporting by Ezgi Erkoyun in Istanbul; Editing by Daren Butler, William Maclean)
