COP31 opens with leaders under pressure to tackle climate crisis

It's been called the Implementation COP, with over 100,000 people set to attend the climate talks over two weeks. Jointly organised by official host Turkey and Australia, which is leading the negotiations, this year's COP31 has announced an action agenda, ditching new targets for a single priority, turning years of old climate promises into urgent action. The most important is to have a balance across the pillars of the Paris Agreement when it comes to the outcomes. So adaptation, mitigation and finance, they are equally important and the decisions should reflect this balance. A key goal of the summit is to raise the share of global energy demand met by electricity from 20% to 35% by 2035 by replacing fossil fuels with renewables. But COP 31 opens under immense pressure as conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine sends fuel prices soaring and climate change triggers European heatwaves and deadly floods in Nepal. The UN is also reporting that the world is falling behind on climate goals and will breach the Paris Agreement's 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold in the coming years. Meanwhile a boom in AI and increase in data centres adds additional pressures on global electricity demand. Delegates must also grapple with climate finance, a recurrent battleground. Wealthy countries are under pressure to fulfill funding pledges to help developing countries cope with extreme weather and shift away from fossil fuels. Absent from the summit is the US. President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement on his first day back in office in January 2025, sending no US officials to COP 31. Yet US mayors, governors, scientists and NGOs are still attending the talks.