COP31 Dispatch

What Congress Needs to Know from Antalya

Welcome! Today is Friday, November 6. COP31 begins on Monday.

Welcome to the first issue of EESI’s COP31 Dispatch. The two-week UN climate conference kicks off on Monday, November 9, bringing together delegates and other stakeholders from around the world to advance global climate action. And on November 11 and 12, national leaders will gather for the COP31 World Leaders’ Summit.

Track the happenings with us! Join EESI on November 10, 19, and 24 at 10:00 a.m. EST (6:00 p.m. TRT) for our Rapid Readout briefing series. And keep an eye out for this newsletter in your inbox—we have editions planned for November 12, November 20, and November 23. We’ll bring you notes on key happenings in and around COP31, with a specific focus on what Congress needs to know about the proceedings.

P.S.: If you remember loving this newsletter in past years, share it with your colleagues and friends who want to follow developments at COP31. If you were forwarded this newsletter, you can sign up to get all future issues here.

We will be tracking key announcements and U.S. officials in attendance at COP31—check back for updates.

You can find all EESI’s COP31 resources here. Getting lost in the COP lingo? Check out EESI's glossary of terms and other helpful guides in our Resources section! Looking for more information? Reach out to us at [email protected].

Key Takeaways for Congress

The COP30 Presidency published long-awaited roadmaps on transitioning away from fossil fuels and reversing deforestation. (Negotiations)
Countries were due to submit updated nationally determined contributions in February 2025. As of today, 155 countries have submitted a new one. (Around the World)
RSVP for EESI’s Updates from Antalya Rapid Readout briefing series, and join us next week for our first installment!

Negotiations

COP31 President of Negotiations Chris Bowen speaking at a pre-COP keynote session about the ocean-climate nexus on October 8, 2026. | Credit: Australia-Pacific Partnership for COP31 via Flickr.

COP31: The 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) begins in Antalya, Türkiye, on November 9 and is scheduled to conclude on November 20 (although it is very common for the negotiations to run long). The UNFCCC itself has a host of useful resources to keep up with the official negotiations on its website, and provisional agendas are available now.
- EESI Briefing: What’s on the Table for the Negotiations?

Divide and Conquer: COP31 will have a dual presidency—a decision that followed an unprecedented dispute at COP30 between Türkiye and Australia over their hosting bids. This year, Türkiye will host the conference and preside over the implementation agenda, or Action Agenda, led by President-Designate Murat Kurum, Turkish minister of environment, urbanization and climate change. Meanwhile, Australia’s Chris Bowen, minister for climate change and energy, will serve as the president of negotiations. As part of the split-duties compromise, Australia was granted leadership over the pre-COP meetings, which were held last month in Fiji and Tuvalu to showcase the importance of uplifting voices from the Pacific in addressing climate change.

Letters from Antalya: Early last month, COP31 Presidents Kurum and Bowen published the fourth in a series of letters to the parties in the lead-up to COP31. The letter encouraged parties to submit their nationally determined contributions (NDCs), biennial transparency reports (BTRs), and national adaptation plans (NAPs) ahead of COP31, emphasizing them as “critical to driving ambition, accountability and delivery.” The presidencies also identified opportunities for advancing negotiation items, reemphasized electrification as a key priority for climate action at COP31, and outlined expectations for the Pacific Pre-COP.
- EESI Article: “What's on the Menu for the UN Climate Summit? The Turkish Presidency Sets a Place for Electrification and Waste Management”

Bonn Voyage: While most observers tune into international climate talks for a few weeks (i.e., COP-vember), the UNFCCC secretariat, based in Bonn, Germany, works in partnership with country representatives year-round to advance a range of work programs and standing committee efforts. The latest mid-year UNFCCC talks picked up dialogues that had been left unfinished after COP30 in Brazil, such as climate finance, adaptation indicators, and trade issues like the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism.
- EESI Article: “Key Takeaways from the 2026 Bonn Climate Conference”

Nepal Has Entered the Chat: Last week, Nepal was approved to receive $20 million from the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, a climate finance mechanism established at COP27 to support countries hit by climate-related disasters. In August, glaciers collapsed in the Nepali and Tibetan Himalayas, triggering devastating floods that killed more than 1,500 people, with an additional 5,600 dead or missing as of late October. The amount falls far short of the $7.5 billion needed for physical damage, recovery, and reconstruction costs. Nepal, together with Bhutan, also submitted a formal request to the Australian Presidency and UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell to add an item, “1.5°C Warming in Mountains,” to the negotiation agenda. Requested outcomes from this negotiation item include the establishment of a UNFCCC Work Programme on Mountain Ecosystems “to bridge gaps in observation, climate finance, and global adaptation tracking,” and the integration of mountain-focused indicators into the Global Goal on Adaptation and New Collective Quantified Goal on Climate Finance.
- EESI Briefing: Congress and International Climate Finance

For additional updates on the negotiations, see the Earth Negotiations Bulletin’s comprehensive daily reports and quick highlights posted every day.
- EESI Briefing: What’s on the Table for the Negotiations?

Congress at COP31

COP31 lanyards, ready to be donned by attendees from around the world. | Credit: UN Climate Change - Kiara Worth via Flickr.

House Delegation: A delegation of 19 Democratic members of the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC) will be attending COP31 from November 14 to 16. They will meet with policymakers and parliamentarians from around the world “to strengthen partnerships and explore opportunities for renewed U.S. engagement on climate, energy, and economic policy.”

Senate Delegation: The Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is planning to lead a delegation of senior staff to Antalya on November 9 and 10 to observe the negotiations and meet with stakeholders. The staff work for senators who serve on EPW as well as the Committees on Appropriations; Commerce, Science, and Transportation; and Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

U.S. Updates

Early arrivals walking outside the COP31 venue. | Credit: UN Climate Change - Kiara Worth via Flickr.

The Elephant Not in the Room: Since the close of COP30, the U.S. has announced its intention to withdraw from the UNFCCC, as well as the IPCC and 64 other international organizations. This move distinguishes the U.S. as the only country to leave the framework since it was adopted in 1992. UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell reaffirmed that “the doors remain open for the U.S. to reenter in the future.” The U.S. departure from the Paris Agreement—the country’s second—went into effect on January 27, 2026.
- EESI Topic Page: Climate Diplomacy

Around the World

The Climate Watch NDC Tracker monitors national climate commitments and their potential emission cuts. | Credit: Climate Watch.

Fossil Fuel Roadmap: Early this week, the COP30 Presidency unveiled a long-awaited roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF). A key component of the roadmap is the Belém Readiness Approach, a tool that measures countries’ exposure to fossil fuels and their capacity to manage the energy transition, based on that country’s energy demand, energy supply, and economic dependence on fossil fuels. This assessment, which can be tailored to each country’s unique needs and capacities, will help national leaders identify strengths, opportunities, and vulnerabilities. The TAFF roadmap also made calls for accelerated collective action on an energy transition—a TAFF Mutirão—including through future COPs and global stocktakes (GSTs). Since the roadmap’s publication, Colombia, France, the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK have prepared national TAFF plans, with additional countries expected to make similar announcements over the course of COP31.
- EESI Fact Sheet: Proposals to Reduce Fossil Fuel Subsidies

Context-Setting: In April 2026, representatives from 57 countries gathered in Santa Marta, Colombia, for the first International Conference on Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels. Co-hosted by Colombia and the Netherlands, this conference was born from a promise made by the COP30 Presidency following a failure to include a fossil fuel transition roadmap in the formal negotiation agenda. Countries in attendance worked with a panel of experts to begin developing energy transition roadmaps. Next year’s conference will be held in Tuvalu and co-hosted by Ireland.

Deforestation Roadmap: The COP30 Presidency also published a roadmap for halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation. The plan highlights conservation, sustainable forest management, reforestation, and combating deforestation and degradation as key pathways for advancing this goal, and, like the TAFF roadmap, it can be tailored to countries’ unique characteristics and challenges. The roadmap also estimates that $300 billion will be needed annually by 2030 to meet forest-related climate goals.

Checking in on NDCs: Last week, the UNFCCC secretariat released its annual synthesis report on countries’ NDCs. The report commended that, since the conclusion of the first GST, “climate action is being broadened, including through more comprehensive approaches, and more integrated into and deeply embedded across economies and societies.” At the same time, it warned that projected emission reductions continue to be “substantially off track from the reductions required by the science to keep the goal of limiting temperature rise to 1.5°C this century within reach and to keep temporary overshoot as short and shallow as possible.” As of the publication of this newsletter, 155 countries have submitted a new NDC, representing 76% of global emissions. Notable recent submissions include those from Albania, Chad, the Gambia, Grenada, Madagascar, Niger, Oman, Palestine, and the Philippines.

Missing the Mark: In September, UNEP published Limiting Overshoot: Navigating exceedance of 1.5°C and pathways towards return. The report affirms that the world will surpass the Paris Agreement’s Article 2 goal of limiting warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) above average pre-industrial temperatures, and that, under existing conditions, global warming will instead reach 2.6°C (4.7°F) by 2100. The authors emphasize that this “overshoot” will happen in the next few years; that every fraction of a degree of warming matters, and that countries should invest in mitigation as much and as quickly as possible; and that curbing warming now necessitates net-negative—not net-zero—emissions, which will require increased investment in carbon dioxide removal technologies.
- EESI Briefing: Exploring the Policy Landscape of Carbon Dioxide Removal

Mind the Gap: A month following its Overshoot report, UNEP published its annual Emissions Gap Report, designed to highlight the difference between climate commitments made and actual progress achieved. The 2026 report, titled The Point of Return, works off of the Overshoot report’s urgent calls for emission cuts, calling the exceedance of 1.5°C (2.7°F) in warming “unavoidable.” UNEP authors also found that temperature projections have only increased since the prior year’s report and that global greenhouse gas emissions in 2025 were similar to those in 2024, but that it is still possible to close the emissions gap.

AI Finds Its COP Niche: Last week, the Turkish Presidency launched the Antalya Artificial Intelligence Pledge. The pledge declares a “shared ambition to make AI part of the climate solution” and outlines voluntary commitments for signatories, such as requiring data centers to be powered by clean energy and improving monitoring and reporting on the environmental impacts of AI. It also sets a goal of reviewing progress on AI commitments next year at COP32. The COP31 president-designate will formally announce the pledge next week in Antalya, and invite countries, subnational governments, international organizations, businesses, investors, financial institutions, research institutions, and civil society to sign on. In a speech to the UN General Assembly in September, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Simon Stiell criticized AI, citing that it increases greenhouse gas emissions, household energy costs, disinformation, and wealth inequality.
- EESI Briefing: Artificial Intelligence: Implications for Energy and the Environment

Biodiversity COP: The COP17 biodiversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia, concluded last week with agreement on all major negotiation texts. These talks marked the halfway point to the 2030 deadlines of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and resulted in the first global review of the framework’s nature targets—similar to the GST process under the Paris Agreement. UN Secretary-General António Guterres launched the State of Biodiversity Action report ahead of COP17 to help inform the global review. The report detailed widespread engagement with the framework, but warned that engagement has not translated to ambition, implementation, or financing. Countries are currently falling short on 22 out of 23 targets to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030.
- EESI Podcast: Polling Shows the Bipartisan Nature of Natural Climate Solutions

IPCC Scheduling Conflict: Last month, the 65th session of the IPCC failed to produce a schedule for its seventh assessment report on the state of climate change knowledge—a setback that could end up undermining the second GST, which will start at COP31. Countries gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, only to suspend talks after a week of heated disagreement regarding the assessment cycle’s timeline and budget. The IPCC has indicated that it intends to reconvene as soon as possible, but it is unclear if that will happen before the end of 2026.

Girl Math: According to the secretariat’s latest gender composition report, female representation on constituted bodies (decision-making and technical bodies) under the UNFCCC currently averages 44%—up from 40% in 2025—with 7 out of 17 of those bodies achieving gender balance. In keeping with the expectations laid out in the Belém gender action plan, the report also includes gender composition data on party delegates who received funding through the trust fund for participation in the UNFCCC process.
- EESI Podcast: Engendering Durable Climate Solutions Through a Gender-Responsive Lens at COP31

Resources

EESI Resources

Briefing: What's on the Table for the Negotiations? (November 5)
Rapid Readout series:
- Updates from Antalya Part 1 (November 10)
- Updates from Antalya Part 2 (November 19)
- Updates from Antalya Part 3 (November 24)
Climate Change Solutions: Bi-weekly newsletter covering climate, energy, and environmental issues
COP31 Announcement Tracker: Key Announcements from the 2026 UN Climate Summit
- Also, check out this article with updates on past COP announcements, or this article outlining Türkiye's priority issues
U.S. Leaders at COP31: Updates on Members of Congress and other U.S. Officials at the 2026 UN Climate Summit
EESI's United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Glossary of Terms

Tracking the Negotiations

Carbon Brief: Reporting and analysis on the UN climate talks, with in-depth tracking of country positions in the negotiations
COP31 Resource Hub: World Resources Institute's extensive set of resources on the climate negotiations
Earth Negotiations Bulletin: A play-by-play of the negotiations, plus expert analysis from the International Institute for Sustainable Development
ECO Newsletter: The climate advocate’s perspective from Climate Action Network International
C2ES Newsletter: Daily key takeaways from COP31 experts observing the negotiations
Nature Updates: Nature4Climate brings daily updates on all the nature-based solutions happenings at COP to your inbox

Background and Logistics

Türkiye COP31 presidency website: Priorities, details, and logistics for the negotiations from this year’s host country
UNFCCC COP31 website: Conference details and all updates on documents produced during the negotiations
Congressional Research Service: Reports related to the UNFCCC

Questions about COP31?

Reach out to us with your questions. We will get back to you or include the information in an upcoming newsletter.

Thanks for reading!

This newsletter covering COP31 will include editions on November 6, November 12, November 20, and November 23.
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Staff contributors: Daniel Bresette, Alison Davis, Parthav Easwar, Amaury Laporte, Nicole Pouy, and Hannah Wilson-Black

About EESI

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) is an independent 501(c)(3) nonprofit advancing science-based solutions for climate change, energy, and environmental challenges to achieve a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world. Founded on a bipartisan basis by members of Congress, EESI has been informing policymakers about the benefits of energy efficiency, renewable energy, and environmental conservation since 1984.

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