Avoiding the ‘F word’: Australia and Turkey dance around fossil fuels at COP31 summit

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The two nations are co-hosting this year’s UN climate summit, where electrification and emissions are hot topics.

One phrase has been glaringly absent from this year’s COP31 climate summit.

Fossil fuels are not mentioned in the COP31 priority areas. Key speeches from the leaders of Australia and Turkey (Türkiye), co-hosts of the conference, have largely failed to address the emissions-shaped elephant in the room.

That’s despite mounting pressure from environmental groups, Pacific nations and COP30 host nation Brazil to abandon coal, oil and gas and slash global emissions.

So why does this matter? And what does it mean for climate action worldwide?

In their opening speeches, neither Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan nor Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese mentioned fossil fuels.

At the official commencement of COP31, the Australian president of negotiations and environment minister, Chris Bowen, twice uttered the words fossil fuels. Neither reference was tied to specific goals for a global fossil fuel phase out or weaning Australia, one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and gas, off them. In his opening remarks, Turkey’s environment minister Murat Kurum didn’t mention them at all.

This reluctance to spotlight fossil fuels is also reflected in the priority areas, or main aims, of COP31 that were agreed by the co-host nations.

The headline goal is the “35-by-35” target to produce 35% of the world’s energy from electricity, increasingly using renewables, by 2035. Other priorities include halving the growth of global waste and cutting energy consumption in the building sector.

Yet, nowhere in sight is a plan or timeline to eliminate fossil fuels.

مطلع المقال، مقتطف من The Conversation AU. لقراءة المقال كاملًا، افتحه على موقع الناشر.