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Opinion
COP31: Will Countries Finally Deliver on Their Climate Promises?
In the run-up to the event, two major findings have been released:
- Levels of three key greenhouse gases reached record highs in 2025, and
- The richest 0.1% of humanity generates more carbon than almost half the world population combined.
These shocking insights prompted 146 scientists to urge the United Nations to declare climate change an official "global health emergency" and finally force nations to act.
What Are The Objectives Of COP31?
Against the backdrop of increasingly frequent and extreme weather events, water stress, and food insecurity, this COP must prioritize critical mandates on equitable fossil fuel transitions, post-2020 climate finance, and global urban resilience.
This COP must ensure that the newly submitted nationally determined contributions are put into practice while also demanding the urgent submission of outstanding NDCs from parties that delayed their updates.
It will also enact the Climate Implementation Bridge, an initiative to help developing countries translate their high-level NDC commitments into concrete, investable portfolios that can secure international financing.
Murat Kurum has positioned this COP as a vital transition phase in global climate policy. He describes the 1.5°C goal as "a matter of survival. The survival of cultures, history, memories, your homeland, your homes."
The following areas have been flagged as urgent priorities:
- The Clean Energy Transition & Electrification—Transitioning away from fossil fuels, scaling up renewable energy resources, and building resilient energy grids. One target is to raise the share of global energy demand met by electricity from roughly 20-35% by 2035.
- Climate Finance—Kurum has highlighted a massive global adaptation finance gap of $5.6-7.1 trillion. This is the total cumulative cost developing countries need to implement their NDCs by 2030. Nearly four years after the initial agreement of the Loss & Damage Fund at COP17, the fund has failed to materialize for frontline communities.
- Climate-Resilient Cities—Minimizing cities’ exposure to climate risks such as heatwaves through resilient infrastructure, sustainable housing, and low-carbon urban systems. One target is to slash energy intensity in the global building sector by at least 25% by 2035.
- Oceans & Seas—Strengthening marine and coastal resilience. COP31 will work toward an official Antalya Ocean Declaration to advance ocean-based climate solutions, support adaptation for climate-vulnerable coastal and island states, and address how oceans absorb massive amounts of human-generated carbon dioxide and excess heat.
- Food Security—Create dedicated road maps and collaborations linking sustainable agricultural systems, water availability, and rural livelihoods. Provide climate-resilient agricultural practice training to all young farmers globally by 2035.
- Zero Waste and Methane Reduction—Relieving pressure on natural resources, ecosystems, and the climate by cutting waste and reducing dependence on linear production and consumption models. One target is to reduce the increase in waste generation by 50% by 2035.
- Green Industrialization—Boost the use of circular materials in manufacturing and production to at least 15% by 2035.
- Cross-Convention Cooperation—This is the year of the triple COP, which brings together the three UN Rio Conventions for their Conferences of the Parties to tackle the interconnected crises in climate (UNFCCC COP31), biodiversity (CBD COP17), and land (UNCCD COP17). The plan is to integrate circular economies, sustainable agriculture, food security, biodiversity, and green industrial transformations into international policy.
Will a Shared-Presidency Model Help Or Hinder Progress?
Both Türkiye (proposing Antalya) and Australia (proposing Adelaide, in partnership with Pacific Island nations) submitted bids to host COP31 back in 2022. Without consensus on who would host, the process stalled as both nations refused to withdraw their bids.
At COP30, the two countries agreed to split responsibilities and divide leadership. Theoretically, this reduces the risk of negotiation gridlock, brings two very different perspectives into the mix, and allows both sides to hyperfocus on their responsibilities.
It also comes with its fair share of concerns, if the two presidents misalign on major priorities such as the urgency of fossil fuel phaseouts or the mechanisms of debt-free climate finance, it could lead to bureaucratic fragmentation, diluting accountability, and stalling consensus.
The Role Of Türkiye
Murat Kurum, the Turkish minister of environment, urbanization, and climate change and COP31 president-designate, speaks. (Photo by UNclimatechange / Flickr/ CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sought the COP31 hosting rights to elevate Türkiye's global profile and position the country as a major bridge and mediator between developed and developing nations.
The focus was on making COP31 a "COP of implementation," not on bringing in more pledges.
Türkiye's bid complements its own national initiatives like its 2053 net-zero target, new national climate laws, plans for an emissions trading system, and commitments to increase renewable energy investments.
When Türkiye voluntarily stepped aside in 2021 to let the United Kingdom host COP26 in Glasgow, it felt it had a strong claim and was unwilling to back down.
Türkiye will steer the summit's overall direction and manage event logistics, infrastructure, and the massive green trade fair in Antalya (Growtech), with the Leaders' Summit planned across Antalya and Istanbul.
It is also responsible for the non-negotiated Action Agenda, pushing for strong, measurable implementation and important side deals.
The Role Of Australia
Chris Bowen, the Australian minister for climate change and energy and COP31 president of negotiations, speaks. (Photo by UNclimatechange / Flickr/ CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Australia’s bid for COP31 was a chance to reposition itself as a clean energy superpower, build regional goodwill, and counter rising geopolitical competition from China.
It proposed an unprecedented co-hosting arrangement with Pacific Island nations to amplify the voices of the world's most climate-vulnerable communities, acting as a heavyweight champion for its neighbors.
Their priorities are to address the existential concerns of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), including loss-and-damage funding and rapid divestment from fossil fuels.
"It is like taking a glass of water to a burning house if we do not urgently act to address the root cause of the existential threat facing Tuvalu, Fiji, and all Pacific countries: fossil fuel expansion," said Bowen.
Australia is a shining example of the energy transition in action. By the end of 2025, renewable energy has provided well over half of Australia's electricity needs. Today, 1 in 3 Australian homes generate their own power from rooftop solar panels.
As President of Negotiations, Australia will work with countries to build consensus, draft texts, and lead formal policy negotiations. Australia is also working with the past presidencies to deliver on key initiatives like the Belém Mission to 1.5°C and the Global Implementation Accelerator.
Australia's approach will integrate First Nations knowledge and leadership, and it has selected Sally Higgins as the COP31 presidency youth climate champion.
The State Of The Climate Crisis
Nearly 50 parties have still not filed their updated NDCs. Major nations such as India, Argentina, Egypt, Iran, and Vietnam missed the standard deadlines, signalling an alarming lack of political will to pursue ambitious action under the Paris Agreement.
COP29 in Baku was billed as the "Finance COP," yet developed nations fell far short of what was needed to meet mitigation targets. COP30 in Belém finished without securing binding, high-level pathways to funnel capital to the Global South.
The UN framework has repeatedly and frustratingly failed to mandate an outright phaseout of fossil fuels. Recent host nations with strong economic ties to oil and gas have successfully diluted negotiation language.
In light of this, the climate crisis continues to accelerate:
- In 2024, global greenhouse gas emissions reached a record 57.7 gigatons of carbon dioxide, a 2.3% increase from the previous year.
- Global carbon dioxide emissions in 2025 rose by 1.1% compared with 2024, setting a new all-time annual high.
- August 2026 tied as the joint-warmest month globally (matching July 2023), with global surface air temperatures reaching 1.65°C above preindustrial levels.
- The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) has confirmed that the world is experiencing a historically powerful El Niño event dubbed a "super" El Niño. Record sea-surface temperatures are triggering widespread severe weather extremes, including severe droughts in parts of Africa and South America, disrupted monsoons in Asia, and intense heatwaves globally.
- The first four months of 2026 witnessed a staggering 150 million hectares burned by wildfires globally, roughly 50% above recent historic averages.
- Under current policies, global warming is projected to reach 2.8°C this century. Even if all national climate pledges were met, this figure is still projected to be 2.3-2.5°C.
Youth At COP31
Young people participate in a school climate strike on May 24, 2019. (Photo by Garry Knight)
Children and young people are disproportionately affected by climate change; therefore, their voices are particularly important at major climate and biodiversity conferences.
Today's decisions have long-term consequences for their health, education, well-being, and future opportunities. Intergenerational justice looks at how present generations affect past and future people.
On July 23, 2025, the International Court of Justice issued the advisory opinion, which was unanimously adopted by all 15 judges: "Nations have a legal duty to combat the planetary crisis."
This COP31 recognizes children and young people as important stakeholders and constituencies. Official mechanisms have been established to support youth participation:
- Presidency Youth Climate Champion (PYCC)—Sally Higgins serves as the COP31 youth champion, amplifying youth voices and ensuring inclusion in climate diplomacy alongside international climate envoys.
- EU Youth Policy Dialogue—Held on October 1, 2026 in Brussels, young representatives discussed intergenerational equity, AI energy demands, nature protection, and climate finance ahead of COP31.
- YOUNGO—The official children and youth constituency of the UNFCCC. It brings together over a million young members worldwide and helps train young advocates to participate in international negotiations, coordinate regional chapters, and ensure youth voices are heard inside the official rooms. They will co-organize the Global Conference of Youth (COY) ahead of COP31 to draft the Global Youth Statement and spearhead the official Youth-Led Climate Forum (YLCF) inside the COP venue.
Major youth organisations and umbrella networks driving the youth climate agenda at COP31 include the European Youth Forum, Generation Climate Europe, Youth Environment Europe (YEE), Regional Conference of Youth (RCOY) Networks, World Food Forum Youth Network, and UNICEF Climate Youth Tracks.
COP31: It’s Now Or Never
People in Edinburgh, Scotland participate in a march coinciding with COP27 on November 12, 2022. (Photo by Friends of the Earth Scotland / CC BY 2.0)
For years, global frustration has grown with these climate conferences; observers, climate scientists, and world leaders point to a persistent pattern of failure in climate finance, the fossil fuel transition, and consensus deadlocks.
COP28 and COP29 saw record-breaking attendance from thousands of fossil fuel lobbyists, diluting the voices of civil society and marginalized youth delegates. It is no wonder they were labelled a farce.
Whether the COP31 unprecedented co-hosting arrangement will help or hinder progress remains to be seen.
Both countries are already drawing criticism for expanding their coal and gas supply chains and omitting any mention of a global fossil fuel phaseout from their official pre-summit communications.
Since 2022, Australia has approved a major Hunter Valley coal mine expansion and 37 new fossil fuel projects.
Türkiye has plans to actively expand its domestic coal and gas capacity by 30% by 2035.
Pacific nations have also expressed their concerns about the joint presidency and the weakening of Australian regional solidarity. They worry the spotlight will shift away from sea-level rise and the vulnerability of small island nations.
On a positive note, the new voluntary "Electrification" pledge, which should help counter the stalemate on phasing out fossil fuels, gives us cause for hope. Another encouraging sign is that record funding for the global energy transition and renewable investment in 2025 reached $2.3 trillion.
It is also hoped that new transparency and funding disclosure rules introduced for delegates will limit the number of fossil fuel lobbyists delaying progress.
Drawing attention to the alarming global rise of militarism, COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum publicly argued that wealthy countries need to spend much more on climate action than the 5% of GDP NATO members target for defense, warning that climate change is the ultimate security threat.
Without definitive progress at COP31, climate pledges, and indeed the COP conferences themselves, risk collapsing into broken promises and losing public trust. Influential figures such as Greta Thunberg, Chris Packham, Ban Ki-moon, and Mary Robinson have already declared the summits unfit for purpose.
Quite simply, time has run out for more empty words.
How Corporate Media Downplays Scale of Trump Corruption
So, it’s probably not surprising to hear CNN (10/21/26) report that voters are increasingly “concerned about corruption,” ranking it only after the economy and the cost of living as a top concern. In a Gallup poll (9/2/26), a record-high 89% of respondents said they believe corruption is “widespread throughout the government in this country.”
But what might be surprising is that, according to a recent NBC poll (10/18/26), a majority (56%) say corruption “is equally a problem among elected officials in both parties.” (Among those who find it worse in one party or the other, 25% point to Republicans and 17% point to Democrats.)
Why would a majority of the public believe that Republicans and Democrats are equally corrupt? A FAIR study suggests that media play no small role: The US media system has given more coverage to the most prominent allegations of corruption under Biden than to those under Trump.
‘The most corrupt administration in history’
During his first term, Trump refused to divest from his business interests, raking in millions through them from foreign governments and people with interests before his administration. His solicitation of Ukrainian intervention in the 2020 presidential campaign led to his first impeachment trial.
After the GOP-controlled Senate (with Mitt Romney as the sole Republican exception) voted to acquit him—and after the Supreme Court ruling granting the president impunity for virtually anything done in office—Trump unsurprisingly entered his second term with far greater boldness. He essentially operated a pay-to-play administration that engages in regular shakedowns of major corporations and offers pardons to those with political or financial ties to him.
There have been repeated accusations of insider trading under his administration. Trump made $1.4 billion from the cryptocurrency industry in 2025 alone, including $635 million from his $TRUMP memecoin, which was gobbled up by not only true believers but also those seeking political favors. (While Trump profited from fees on trade activity, investors have lost a total of $3.8 billion because of the memecoin’s unsurprising collapse.) In perhaps the most brazen incident of corruption, Trump accepted a Boeing luxury jet worth an estimated $400 million from the Qatari government to use—after spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars on security upgrades—as his presidential plane.
Craig Holman of Public Citizen told FAIR:
The second Trump administration is far more corrupt than Trump’s first administration, and stands out as the most corrupt administration in history. Trump has made no qualms about the fact that he is going to exploit his position as president for self-enrichment. In fact, he has said that he was a fool in his first term for overlooking the opportunities for self-enrichment, given the president’s exemption from the conflict of interest law (18 USC 208).
The corruption is led by Trump, but it’s been enabled by his party since their first impeachment acquittal. In Trump’s second term, the Republican-controlled Congress has refused to investigate any of the corruption scandals, implement stronger ethical standards, or include safeguards in cryptocurrency regulation to prevent Trump (and other political officials) from profiting off it.
Unequal allegations
During Joe Biden’s election campaigns and presidency, the GOP attempted to paint the former vice president as the pinnacle of corruption. When they took control in 2023, House Republicans launched an oversight committee investigation into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings during his vice presidency. They found that relatives and associates took in a total of $10 million from foreign companies during his tenure, but despite months of investigation, involving interviews and thousands of documents, the committee provided no evidence of Biden’s knowledge or influence. (It did lead to an unsuccessful impeachment inquiry.)
As perhaps the most memorable story in the right’s campaign to make the Biden family known as the “Biden Crime Family,” readers will be familiar with Hunter Biden’s famous laptop, which purportedly contained evidence of corruption on the part of his father. First published by the New York Post (10/14/20) just weeks before the 2020 election, the laptop story was pushed by the right for years and even continues to this day, despite its failure to show any actual evidence of corruption.
So on the one hand we have unsubstantiated stories of Biden family corruption, totaling $10 million in alleged graft, and on the other, we have stories of Trump corruption that total in the billions, some of which will be hard to legally prove Trump’s direct involvement (insider trading) and others in which Trump isn’t even trying to hide his self-enrichment (most of the rest, including the Qatari jet).
If the US had a media ecosystem in which those stories received attention relative to their importance, it wouldn’t even be close: Trump corruption coverage would overwhelm that of Biden.
The laptop and the ‘crime family’
In the distorted media ecosystem we are subjected to, reality is reversed. FAIR searched Media Cloud’s US–National dataset, which indexes 246 online outlets including all major corporate outlets, as well as right-wing sources like Daily Caller and left-wing sources like the Intercept, to compare attention to the two prominent Biden stories and two of the most prominent Trump stories.
When the New York Post (10/14/20) “broke” the Hunter Biden laptop story, it prompted a huge spike of attention that has never fully gone away. Coverage increased in spring of 2022, when outlets like the New York Times (3/16/22) and Washington Post (3/30/22) published pieces that helped revive it; coverage became particularly intense the next year, which saw the GOP inquiry and the Justice Department criminal investigation.
FAIR’s search found a total of 12,161 stories that mentioned “Hunter Biden” and “laptop” from the Post story’s publication through Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 race (10/14/20-7/21/24). Right-wing outlets led the way, but MediaCloud showed even centrist outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today and Newsweek in the top 20 outlets in terms of volume of coverage.
Coverage of the GOP investigation into Biden’s alleged “crime family,” which began in January 2023 and was led by House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R–Ky.), drew similarly high averages and peaks of coverage, and also largely petered out after Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race (1/1/23–7/21/24). In that year and a half, MediaCloud recorded 4,887 stories mentioning “Comer” and “Biden” and “family.”
Not all of these stories necessarily accused Biden of corruption; some centrist reports did work to debunk the false right-wing claims. But those big centrist outlets published enough prominent stories with murky headlines like “Biden Faces Conflict of Interest Questions That Are Being Promoted by Trump and Allies” (New York Times, 5/1/19), or explaining that the Hunter Biden case throws a “new wrench” in “the 2024 election” because “Democrats will have a harder time highlighting Trump’s indictments,” to muddy the narrative and legitimize the GOP accusations (see, e.g., CJR, 10/29/19; Press Watch, 8/14/23).
The Qatari jet and insider trading
Compare the quantity of these Biden corruption stories to coverage of the Qatari jet, a story that broke on May 11, 2025, and continued as Trump poured taxpayer dollars into its security upgrades. In the nearly year and a half from the story launch through the end of October 2026, the media produced 3,364 stories on the jet. That means that in approximately the same amount of time, media covered the investigation into Biden family corruption almost 1.5 times more than the Qatari jet. (Note that like the Biden stories, FAIR did not filter out jet stories that did not accuse Trump of corruption.)
Accusations of insider trading in Trump’s second term began in April 2025, when large call options were placed on the market shortly before Trump announced a 90-day pause on tariffs, sending the market soaring. They continued as more such suspicious and lucrative trades happened just before major Trump announcements on Venezuela and Iran, including within Trump’s personal holdings.
Coverage of Trump and insider trading from the first accusations (4/10/25) until the end of October 2026—a month longer than the Qatari jet coverage—has totaled 2,614 stories. The Biden family inquiry, at 4,887, got 1.9 times that amount.
Hunter Biden’s laptop, which dominated news headlines for longer, overwhelmed the Trump stories by far more. It got 4.7 times the coverage of insider trading under Trump and 3.6 times the coverage of Trump’s Qatari jet.
Even measuring them in terms of percentage of all news stories during their respective time periods, the Biden stories got far more coverage, with the family corruption story and the laptop story each averaging .10% of all content, while the Qatar jet averaged .06% and insider trading averaged .04%.
‘So vast as to be a new phenomenon’
This isn’t to say there’s no coverage of Trump’s corruption that attempts to put it into proper perspective. The New York Times editorial board (1/20/26) ran a lengthy editorial in January that tried to put a dollar amount to Trump’s self-enrichment just in the first year of his second term: $1,408,500,000.
The New Yorker (8/11/25), looking a bit more broadly and including his first term, came up with a conservative total of $4 billion.
Times columnist Jamelle Bouie (4/22/26) wrote:
To say that President Trump is corrupt is to somehow understate the size, scope and magnitude of his corruption.
It is as if you were to describe a modern thermonuclear device as a “bomb.” That is true enough, but it is not quite the truth. It does not capture the nature of the thing in full.
So it goes for Trump’s corruption, which is so vast as to be a new phenomenon in American politics.
Yet, just as media factchecking falters under the sheer number of Trump’s lies, these isolated efforts at contextualization fall increasingly short as Trump’s corruption balloons to nearly unimaginable proportions. That’s especially true as most right-wing media outlets’ interest in corruption would appear to apply only to Democrats.
One of the most important jobs of any media outlet in a democracy is to hold those in power accountable. Democracy doesn’t work if the public doesn’t know or understand what’s happening in their government. As polling shows, people clearly care a great deal about government corruption, but if they have little sense of its mechanics, scale or worst perpetrators, they can’t easily address it. With the midterm elections suggesting a mandate for rooting it out, there’s no more critical time for journalists to step up and shine the line—brightly and consistently—on what our elected and unelected officials are doing to us.
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