COP31 and the limits of climate diplomacy

When delegates arrive in Antalya on November 9, they will enter a world quite unlike the one that produced the Paris Agreement. As wars, tariffs and fractured alliances crowd the agenda, COP31 will likely protect the Paris framework without advancing it significantly. The conference runs from November 9 to 20, with a leaders’ summit scheduled for November 11 and 12. The political climate outside the conference halls is stormy. UN climate chief Simon Stiell has described these as extraordinary times, marked by a “new world disorder”.

Under these circumstances, what can such a meeting realistically deliver? The likeliest outcome is a modest, incremental package that keeps multilateralism alive, disappoints the most ambitious countries and leaves the hardest questions to be settled elsewhere.