Core 2 ends with the hardest part of the unit: how the world responds, and who decides. Most of that is invisible until a summit makes it visible. This one is making it visible in an unusually literal way, by splitting the job across three places.
What was announced
Murat Kurum, Turkey’s Minister of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change and the president of COP31, presented the summit’s action agenda at a United Nations event in New York on Monday 22 September 2026. He described it as built on dialogue, consensus and action
, and framed the whole summit around implementation rather than new pledges: turning commitments countries have already made into projects with measurable results.
Two headline numbers came with it. Electricity is to reach 35 percent of energy consumption by 2035, and the projected increase in municipal waste is to be cut by half. The agenda runs across ten themes.
| The ten themes | What it touches in this course |
|---|---|
| Clean energy and electrification | Core 2 mitigation, Core 3 energy in the nexus. |
| Zero waste and methane reduction | Core 3 waste and consumption. Methane is the short lived gas with the fastest payoff. |
| Climate resilient cities | Adaptation, and where most of the exposed population now lives. |
| Green industrialisation | Development versus emissions, the oldest argument in the room. |
| Youth and education | The theme you are inside. |
| Food security | Core 3 nexus thinking made concrete. |
| Oceans | Sea level, marine heat, coastal margins. |
| Health systems | Heat, disease range, and who can afford treatment. |
| Biodiversity and land use synergies | Forests, carbon and food competing for the same ground. |
| Implementing national climate plans | The NDCs. Everything above depends on this one. |
The presidency that is not one country
Turkey and Australia both bid to host COP31 and neither would withdraw. The deal they reached in November 2025 split the role, and this is where a geographer should pay attention, because power got distributed across space rather than handed to one place.
| Who | Role | When and where |
|---|---|---|
| Turkey | Hosts COP31 and holds the presidency, including the action agenda announced this week. | Antalya, 9 to 20 November 2026. World Leaders’ Summit on 11 and 12 November, on days three and four rather than at the start. |
| Australia | President of Negotiations, with what its own government calls exclusive authorityover the negotiating process, from the end of COP30 to the end of COP31. | Throughout, led by Chris Bowen. |
| Fiji | Hosts the pre-COP ministerial meeting. | 5 to 8 October 2026. |
| Tuvalu | Hosts a leaders’ event, so that heads of government see a low lying atoll state before they negotiate about one. | 5 to 8 October 2026, with Australian support. |
Tuvalu has a case study record on this site already. A nine metre high point and a rate of sea level rise above the global average is an argument that a conference room in Antalya cannot reproduce. Putting leaders there first is a deliberate use of place as persuasion.
Action agenda or negotiated text: the distinction that decides everything
This is the part students get wrong, so learn it now. A COP produces two different kinds of output and they are not equally binding.
Consensus, or nothing
Agreed by all parties to the UNFCCC. One objecting country can strip a line out. This is why the Belém text has no fossil fuel roadmap in it. Slow, weak, and the only thing that formally binds anyone.
Voluntary, and faster
The host’s own programme of initiatives, pledges and coalitions. It moves quickly because nobody has to agree. It also commits nobody who does not want to be committed.
Kurum’s ten themes and two targets sit in the second column. That is not a criticism, it is a category. When you evaluate COP31 afterwards, evaluate the two tracks separately or your answer will be muddled.
What COP31 inherits
COP30 closed in Belém on 22 November 2025 with the Mutirão decision and seventeen decisions alongside it. Several of those land on Turkey and Australia’s desk in November.
“COP31 will focus on implementation” is a presidency’s stated intention in September. Whether it did is a question you can only answer after 20 November. If you write about this before the summit, write about the design and the incentives, not the outcome.
Where it connects in this course
The responding strand in full: mitigation targets, adaptation finance, and the bargaining that decides both.
Electrification, waste, food and methane are consumption questions before they are climate ones.
One presidency, three locations, and a veto that any single party can use. Ask where decisions are actually made.
The syllabus asks for pessimistic and optimistic futures. Here they are, being argued over with dates attached.
Tuvalu and the Maldives on this site are exactly the states the pre-COP is designed to make visible.
Separating an announcement from an agreement, and an intention from an outcome. Half of Paper 2 evaluation is this.
For Monday
- Turkey holds the presidency, Australia holds the negotiations, and the Pacific hosts the run up. Explain what each party gains from that arrangement, and who takes the blame if COP31 fails.
- Leaders will visit Tuvalu before they negotiate in Antalya. Explain how place can function as an argument, then say what its limits are as a negotiating tactic.
- The action agenda and the negotiated text are different kinds of output. Using the fossil fuel roadmap as your example, explain why the faster track is also the weaker one.
- Adaptation finance is to triple by 2035, not 2030. Explain who benefits from the later date and who pays for it, in concrete terms.
- “Electricity to reach 35 percent of energy consumption by 2035” is a target with no named enforcer. What would you need to see by November 2027 to say it was working?
- The World Leaders’ Summit sits on days three and four rather than at the start. Suggest two reasons a presidency might sequence it that way.
- Compare this with the Colorado River story on this site. One is global and consensus based, the other national and imposed from above. Which produced a firmer outcome, and what does that tell you about how environmental decisions get made?
Sources
- ReutersTurkey’s COP31 president lays out the summit’s agenda at the UN — 22 September 2026. The ten themes, the two targets, and the implementation framing.
- Australian Government, DCCEEWCOP31 Australia and the Pacific — The dates, the division of roles, and the pre-COP arrangements, from one of the two presidency partners. Read it as a party to the deal, not a neutral observer.
- Australian GovernmentAustralia and Türkiye issue a joint letter to parties — The two presidencies setting out shared priorities in their own words.
- ReutersFiji and Tuvalu to host pre-COP31 climate meetings — 26 February 2026, carried by a wire subscriber. The Pacific Islands Forum announcement and the background to the split hosting deal.
- Carbon BriefCOP30: key outcomes agreed at the UN climate talks in Belém — The most detailed account of what was and was not agreed, including the fossil fuel roadmap failure.
- World Resources InstituteCOP30: outcomes, disappointments and what is next — Explains which COP30 bodies report at COP31, which is what makes Antalya consequential.
- UN NewsBelém COP30 delivers a climate finance boost — 22 November 2025. The finance and adaptation figures COP31 inherits.
Current as of 22 September 2026. Pre-COP runs 5 to 8 October and COP31 itself runs 9 to 20 November, so this page describes intentions only. Expect the agenda to change, and check what actually happened before citing any of it in an exam answer.