Australia to make eleventh-hour bid to seal COP31 deal
Australia will make a last-ditch effort to host the world’s largest climate conference and end years of deadlock.
Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen departed for the United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP30, on Saturday in Belem, Amazon, to represent Australia and sign the agreement on rights to host the 2026 event.
The federal government first announced it would plan to host COP31 in 2022 alongside Australia’s Pacific neighbours.
But in the years since then, Türkiye has doubled its own bid for the event, leading to a stalemate that must be resolved before the 2025 conference ends on Friday.
“This is not a matter of fighting for months; this is decided at conference,” Mr Bowen told reporters before his flight from Sydney Airport.
“Australia has the overwhelming support of the world to host COP31 but the system does not work that way.
“This is not a voting process… which means we have to reach an agreement with Türkiye; that’s difficult.”
He said he would continue talks with his Turkish counterparts next week.
But the proposal has been overshadowed by domestic climate policy after the Liberal party decided on Sunday to drop its net-zero emissions target.
Liberal MP Leon Rebello argued the party’s choice was “driven by what’s right for Australia” despite the majority of Australians believing the government should somehow commit to net zero by 2050, according to the Resolve Political Monitor.
“We don’t support net zero by 2050 and that’s because… we have license to move away from that and forge our own path forward,” he told Sky News on Saturday.
He claimed Labor’s plan had failed to cut emissions and raise energy prices; but experts such as the Australian Energy Market Operator continue to find that wind and solar power, supported by storage and transmission, are the lowest-cost new-build electricity generation technologies.
The opposition’s very high emissions target has allowed Labor to position itself as stronger on climate.
But the Labor government has also made a series of controversial decisions that have drawn the ire of environmental groups, and the United Nations has now started to take notice of these decisions.
Astrid Puentes Riano, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, applied on Friday to intervene in three Federal Court challenges to the controversial expansion of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas project.
The move will allow him to intervene as an amicus curiae, or “friend of the court”, in cases brought against the environment minister by the Australian Conservation Foundation and Friends of Australian Rock Art, meaning he can offer information or expertise without being a party to the case.
According to the foundation, its lawyer told the court he wanted the opportunity to consider Australia’s international legal obligations and how international law should be taken into account when interpreting the country’s main environmental law.
Environment Minister Murray Watt said he was aware of the process but that approving the North West Shelf project by 2070 was “consistent with Australian law and our international obligations”.
The conservation charity says carbon emissions over its lifetime will be 13 times greater than Australia’s total annual emissions.
But Mr Watt insisted the project must reduce its emissions every year and reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
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