COP31: Australia and Türkiye urged not to ignore calls for fossil fuel phaseout

Detailed summary

Failure to acknowledge growing calls for a fossil fuel phaseout – particularly by Australia and Türkiye – will damage COP credibility, summit hears.

A failure to acknowledge growing calls for a phaseout of fossil fuels – particularly by Australia and Türkiye – would damage the credibility of the COP process, Colombia’s former environment minister said.

Irene Velez was the architect of the first meeting to phase out fossil fuels in April this year, an international bloc outside the COP process that was first announced at COP30 in Belém, Brazil in 2025 to rapturous applause.

Australia was a signatory to the declaration but Australia’s climate and energy minister Chris Bowen did not appear at the initial signing of the agreement, and did not attend the conference in Santa Marta, Colombia earlier this year.

The creation of this grouping outside the COP-process prompted Brazil to develop and champion its own plan for phasing out fossil fuels, with the country now asking Australia and Türkiye to carry forward the work during COP31.

Asked about whether Türkiye and Australia would champion the Brazilian request and incorporate it into the COP process going forward, Turkish environment minister Murat Kurum said “the decision lies on the shoulder’s of the parties” to the process.

“We’ve presented our determined stance but it will be the parties who decide,” he said.

Velez, whose left-wing government was defeated at a recent election by a Trump-aligned hard right government, spoke on the sidelines of the COP process on Friday, local time, where she said the push to phase out fossil fuels was necessary despite contradictions in any one country.

“I believe that there are contradictions in the countries, and we shouldn’t deny those contradictions,” Velez said.

“Colombia is a coal-producing and exploiting nation, and we, for example, when we decided not to expand a coal production, we did so under the pressure of the coal industry, and that was part of our internal discussion.”

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