Antalya COP31 : The Stakes of the Dual Presidency and the Funding and Geopolitical Predicament

Introduction

As the 31st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP31) approaches, scheduled to take place in Antalya, Türkiye, from 9 to 20 November 2026, questions are once again being raised about the ability of international climate action to move from pledges to implementation, particularly as the summit is being framed as an “Implementation COP”.

The conference is of particular significance because of its institutional arrangements, under which leadership responsibilities are shared between two countries. Türkiye will host the conference, with Environment Minister Murat Kurum serving as its President, while Australia, represented by Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen, will preside over the negotiations. As part of the preparations for the conference and the definition of its priorities, Fiji hosted the pre-conference ministerial meetings (Pre-COP) from 5 to 8 October 2026, alongside an event dedicated to leaders in Tuvalu on 5 and 6 October. These meetings sought to bring the priorities of small island states to the forefront, particularly adaptation finance and efforts to strengthen resilience to sea-level rise.

The conference is taking place against an international backdrop in which reaching tangible climate agreements is becoming increasingly difficult. In September 2026, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), citing a report published by The Guardian, confirmed that exceeding the 1.5°C threshold had become “inevitable” and that global warming would reach at least 1.8°C, even under the most optimistic scenarios, while current national policies would lead to warming of no less than 2.3°C.

This situation is further compounded by the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the UNFCCC, announced in January 2026, followed by the formal submission of the withdrawal notification to the United Nations in February of the same year. The withdrawal is due to take effect on 27 February 2027. COP31 will therefore take place while the United States remains legally a Party to the Convention, although its withdrawal decision raises questions about the future of its political engagement and financial contributions to international climate action.

The picture is further complicated by the pressures that the US-Israeli war on Iran, together with the associated disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, may place on energy and food markets.

Against this backdrop, this paper examines the institutional arrangements governing the Antalya summit and the wider international context in which it is unfolding. It addresses three central questions: Which negotiating issues—from climate finance and fossil fuels to adaptation and a just transition—will determine the “Implementation COP’s” ability to formulate commitments that are measurable and subject to accountability? Does the dual-presidency arrangement, bringing together a host country and a country that ranks among the world’s major fossil fuel exporters, have the authority and credibility needed to bridge the gap between pledges and implementation? And how will this arrangement affect countries of the Global South, particularly in North Africa and the Southern Mediterranean?

COP31: Key Issues at Stake

COP31 negotiations will revolve around a number of key issues that will shape the course of the discussions and determine the conference’s outcomes. The most significant include the following:

First, Türkiye’s Action Agenda: a framework for accelerating implementation

Türkiye is seeking to position COP31 as both an “Implementation COP” and a “COP of the Future”, as stated in joint letter issued by the two COP Presidents on 20 May 2026. In this context, the Turkish Presidency launched its Climate Action Agenda during the June 2026 Bonn meetings, setting measurable targets for 2035.

Among the headline targets are increasing electricity’s share of final energy demand from around 20% today to 35%; halving the growth in global waste; reducing energy consumption intensity in the buildings sector by at least 25%; and raising the rate of circular material use to at least 15%.

The Presidency has also launched the Climate Implementation Bridge (BRIDGE), an initiative designed to help countries translate their nationally determined contributions into investment-ready project portfolios.

On 22 September 2026, Turkish Environment Minister Murat Kurum presented the agenda in New York, stressing that its implementation could reduce global emissions by between 8.5 and 10 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2035.

This emphasis on implementation comes as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) warns that breaching the 1.5°C threshold could result in a 14% decline in global food production by 2050. The costs of climate inaction, however, extend well beyond food security. Global economic losses attributable to climate change are estimated at approximately $38 trillion annually by 2050, with a substantial share stemming from declining agricultural productivity, reduced labour productivity and damage to infrastructure.

Second, Climate Finance: A Test of Trust Between the Global North and Global South

Climate finance is likely to remain the most contentious issue at Antalya. Developing countries are pressing for the implementation of the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), set at $300 billion annually, and the Baku-to-Belém Roadmap, which aims to mobilise $1.3 trillion a year by 2035. Developed countries, meanwhile, are pushing for greater emphasis on private finance and a broader contributor base.

These disagreements take on added significance in light of the direct damage inflicted on infrastructure and agricultural productivity, which drives up adaptation costs and places mounting pressure on public finances, particularly in developing countries.

Third, Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels: An Unresolved Negotiating Issue

At COP30, the Brazilian Presidency failed to secure formal agreement on a global roadmap for transitioning away from fossil fuels, owing to opposition from oil-producing countries, despite support for the proposal from around 80 countries.

The momentum behind this initiative carried over to the conference held in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April 2026, attended by 57 countries representing one-third of the global economy, including Türkiye and Australia. The conference concluded with the launch of three voluntary workstreams focusing on the development of national roadmaps, reform of the financial system, and trade heavily dependent on fossil fuels.

Fourth, Supporting Island States’ Priorities and Financing for Loss and Damage

The two COP Presidencies have pledged to convene a dedicated session on the financing needs of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), which will also serve as a platform for announcing pledges to the Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF).

COP31 is also expected to take stock of the first funding cycle of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, which allocated $250 million for its initial interventions through the end of 2026, with grants ranging from $5 million to $20 million per application, half of which is earmarked for small island developing states and least developed countries.

The modest turnout of world leaders in Tuvalu—just 14 in total, only two of them from outside the Pacific region—also highlights the limits of symbolic solidarity when it comes to securing tangible financial commitments.

Fifth, Taking the Belém–Antalya Mechanism for a Just Transition Forward

The just transition is one of the most socially sensitive issues on the COP31 agenda. At COP30 in Belém, Parties agreed to develop a mechanism for a just transition, rather than establish one outright. Now known as the Belém–Antalya Mechanism, it is expected to take shape at COP31, where Parties are due to decide on the arrangements for putting it into operation.

Yet procedural wrangling over the scope of the review of the Just Transition Work Programme took up much of the negotiating time at the June 2026 Bonn session (SB64), leaving little room for substantive discussion of the mechanism itself. According to Jonas Kölbel of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the session ended with an informal note intended to inform further discussions, rather than serve as a negotiating text. No agreed draft decision emerged.

As Başar Baysal of the SETA Foundation explains, the divide centres on two competing visions. One, backed by the European Union, the United Kingdom, Japan and Norway, favours a light-touch coordination platform that builds on existing institutions and facilitates knowledge-sharing. The other, championed by the African Group, calls for a body that would help developing countries access finance and technology and strengthen their institutional capacities through grants and financial instruments that do not add to their debt burdens.

On 22 October 2026, the European Parliament called for the mechanism to be operationalised without delay and for its activities to be supported by financing that does not compound debt burdens.

The social stakes are reflected in the economic toll of the transition on workers. According to an OECD estimate, workers made redundant on a large scale in energy-intensive industries lose around 58% of their income in the first year following job displacement, compared with 52% among workers in other sectors.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), through the work of researcher Bert De Wel, is calling for workers and trade unions to have a guaranteed voice in the mechanism’s governance. It also advocates a central role for the International Labour Organization (ILO) in implementing its just transition guidelines and safeguarding fundamental labour rights.

According to an analysis published by the SETA Foundation, the success of the Antalya summit will likely hinge on how clearly the mechanism’s functions are defined, how it relates to the existing dialogue process, and whether a clear timeline is established.

For Anabella Rosemberg of Climate Action Network (CAN), as reported by Climate Change News, an ambitious outcome would be to establish the mechanism, define its core functions and set up a transitional committee to prepare it for operation by COP32 in Ethiopia. At the same time, civil society organisations are warning against the risk of the mechanism becoming little more than a talking shop.

Challenges and Constraints

Despite the ambition underpinning Türkiye’s Action Agenda, COP31 faces a number of challenges that could undermine its ability to translate that ambition into tangible outcomes. Among the most significant are the following:

First, the Disconnect Between Türkiye’s and Australia’s Energy Policies and Their Calls for a Clean Energy Transition

With the transition away from fossil fuels increasingly sidelined in the formal negotiations, a striking contradiction has emerged between the two COP Presidencies’ climate rhetoric and their respective energy policies.

In June 2026, while Murat Kurum was speaking of making clean electricity “the backbone of economies”, the Turkish government announced plans to expand the Cenal coal-fired power plant by adding a new unit with a capacity of approximately 1,050 MW. This would bring the plant’s total installed capacity to 2,370 MW. This expansion is part of a broader trend. Türkiye is Europe’s largest coal-fired electricity producer and has signalled that it could increase its coal- and gas-fired power generation capacity by around 30% by 2035.

Australia, meanwhile, which is presiding over the negotiations, remains one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquefied natural gas (LNG). The value of its exports of these two commodities is expected to exceed A$140 billion this year. Just days before the preparatory meetings in Fiji, a regulatory authority in New South Wales approved the largest coal mine expansion in the state’s history: the Hunter Valley Operations project. If it also secures federal approval, the project could result in 809 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. Bill Hare, Chief Executive of Climate Analytics, has pointed out that Australia’s Labor government has approved 37 fossil fuel projects for export since 2022.

More striking still, not one of the three messages the COP31 Presidencies sent to Parties outlining the conference’s purpose and expectations mentioned fossil fuels. This omission is symptomatic of a deeper contradiction. The situation is rather like a firefighter delivering a lecture on fire prevention while pouring fuel into the next room. Even the Action Agenda’s flagship target—to raise electricity’s share of final energy demand to 35% by 2035—makes no reference to the sources from which that electricity should be generated. Germanwatch has warned that, without clear safeguards, the target could provide cover for expanding gas- and coal-fired power generation.

The contradiction extends beyond the sources of electricity generation to the digital infrastructure whose energy requirements are growing rapidly. On 21 September 2026, the Turkish COP31 Presidency announced the Antalya AI Pledge and the AI for Clean Technologies initiative. The move is intended to address the sharp rise in electricity consumption by data centres, while calling on technology companies to disclose their energy use and power their operations with clean energy.

The initiative takes on added significance in light of International Energy Agency (IEA) projections, which forecast that global data-centre electricity consumption will rise from approximately 415 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 2024 to nearly 945 TWh by 2030. Coal and gas are expected to account for more than 40% of the additional electricity needed to power these facilities. The environmental costs of this expansion, however, go beyond emissions from electricity generation: they also include the water required for cooling and the resulting pressure on local resources. The real test of the pledge, therefore, lies not simply in promoting the use of clean energy, but in whether it can turn voluntary disclosure into measurable, enforceable standards that account for the energy and water footprints of computing infrastructure.

Second, Unclear Division of Authority Within the Dual Presidency

The dual-presidency arrangement was presented as a compromise that resolved the hosting dispute at Belém. It is unprecedented in the history of UN climate conferences, as it divides the authority to preside over a COP between two countries.

Under the Partnership Modalities Document, the Turkish COP President appoints an Australian representative to serve as President of Negotiations, delegating to that representative exclusive authority over the conduct of the negotiations. Both parties, however, are required to consult one another, and consultations must continue in the event of disagreement until a mutually acceptable resolution is reached.

Under this arrangement, Canberra is responsible for appointing ministerial facilitators and preparing draft negotiating texts, while Ankara retains responsibility for hosting the conference and setting its Action Agenda. Yet this clear division of responsibilities on paper has done little to settle a fundamental question: who has the final say?

In March 2026, Kurum stated that “Australia cannot make a decision that Türkiye does not agree with”. In September, he reiterated that the two countries were “not co-presidents” and that final authority rested with the COP Presidency. Canberra, for its part, continues to insist that it has exclusive authority over the negotiations.

The arrangement is all the more sensitive because the position of President of Negotiations is not provided for under the Rules of Procedure. The President of the Conference, meanwhile, is responsible for formally announcing the adoption of decisions and determining whether consensus has been reached. This means that any divergence between the two Presidencies could come to a head at the most critical moment: when decisions are put forward for adoption. The Bonn meetings exposed this structural weakness at an early stage. Germanwatch noted a strong Turkish presence, contrasted with Australia’s limited public role, and urged the two Presidencies to agree on a common, coherent vision as soon as possible. At the close of the Pre-COP meetings in Fiji, however, the two ministers maintained an appearance of unity. The underlying uncertainty, therefore, remains largely implicit rather than openly acknowledged.

The implications of this ambiguity extend beyond procedural matters to the interests of countries in the Global South. Those who draft negotiating texts and appoint facilitators effectively determine how much room is given to contentious issues such as Article 9.1 and adaptation finance, both of which are priorities for the G77 and China. In consensus-based negotiations, where objections from even a small number of Parties can block the adoption of key decisions, any disagreement between the two Presidencies risks giving further advantage to those best placed to exert influence behind the scenes. Smaller delegations, with more limited resources, are likely to be at a disadvantage. A legal analysis warns that having to engage with two leaders rather than one adds to the diplomatic and administrative burden on these delegations. At the same time, the arrangement offers small island developing states greater opportunities to participate and make their voices heard, as reflected in the preparatory meetings in Fiji and Tuvalu.

The dual presidency thus has a twofold impact on the Global South: it creates opportunities for stronger representation, while also carrying the risk of conflicting decision-making.

Third, Stalled Negotiations Carried Over from Bonn and Growing Disputes over Scientific Language

The Antalya summit will not be starting from scratch. It will inherit a negotiating process that has already run into serious difficulties. The Bonn meetings (SB64) ended in what the United Nations itself described as a “deadlock”, with three agenda items referred to COP31 under Article 16 without any agreed text having been reached.

Among these was the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA), which the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) described as “totally unacceptable”, as well as the Mitigation Work Programme (MWP),  the only formal forum dedicated to emissions reductions.

The disagreements also extended to attempts to challenge the scientific assessments of climate risks. An adviser to the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group spoke of “coordinated attacks” by “fossil fuel interests” within the negotiating rooms. Saudi Arabia objected to wording expressing concern over the El Niño phenomenon, while India proposed deleting the reference to “irreversible changes”. India, Saudi Arabia and China also pushed for the release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s next major assessment report to be postponed until 2029.

Fourth, The Climate Finance Gap: Between Headline Pledges, Their Conditions and Actual Disbursements

The Bonn meetings of the subsidiary bodies (SB64) exposed a further erosion of trust among Parties, amid the United States’ withdrawal from its international climate finance commitments and Germany’s decision to cut its international climate finance spending by more than one-fifth, from €6.1 billion in 2024 to €4.75 billion in 2025. The latter figure falls short of Germany’s own annual target of at least €6 billion, fuelling concerns that other industrialised countries may follow suit. Against this backdrop, developed countries continue to point to OECD figures showing that climate finance reached a record $136.7 billion in 2024. Yet the same report reveals that low-income countries received just $9.6 billion, less than the amount they received at the previous peak in 2022. The share allocated to adaptation also fell to just one-quarter of total climate finance, down from one-third in 2020.

A Eurodad analysis further highlights the extent to which this financing relies on debt: loans accounted for 67% of public climate finance in 2024, while 90% of multilateral climate finance was provided in the form of loans, of which only one-quarter was concessional. Even the least developed countries received more than half of their allocated climate finance as loans.

The prospects for a meaningful increase in adaptation finance appear no more encouraging. Negotiations on tripling adaptation finance—a goal agreed at COP30 in Belém—have so far offered little indication of progress. Canada, Japan, the United Kingdom and the European Union opposed references to adaptation finance in the draft texts on the Global Goal on Adaptation. Commenting on this position, Teresa Anderson of ActionAid observed that “rich countries want to quietly forget they ever said anything at all”.

Meanwhile, the G77 and China are calling for a dedicated negotiating space for Article 9.1 of the Paris Agreement, which requires developed countries to provide public climate finance. Yet this item was absent from the first draft of the Antalya agenda. This led Saurabh Rajhans of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) in India to predict that “there will be drama, whether we like it or not”.

The pledges made to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) amount to just $822 million, compared with estimated annual costs in developing countries of between $447 billion and $894 billion by 2030. Nor does the announcement of funding commitments guarantee that the money will actually reach those who need it. Of the more than $16 billion pledged by donors to Pacific countries since the Paris Agreement, over $5 billion remains undisbursed.

Fifth, The US-Israeli War on Iran and Its Repercussions for North Africa and the Southern Mediterranean

Around a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz. As shipping through the strait was disrupted, the price of Brent crude surged above $100 a barrel, signalling potentially direct repercussions for food and fertiliser prices in developing economies already burdened by debt.

The crisis, however, did not leave everyone worse off. According to Global Witness, the five major oil companies—BP, Shell, TotalEnergies, ExxonMobil and Chevron—reaped $48 billion in profits in the second quarter of 2026 alone. That amounts to $535 million a day, or approximately $6,000 every second. Chevron’s profits more than quadrupled compared with the same period last year. Meanwhile, the government of the Marshall Islands was forced to declare a 90-day state of emergency and close its offices at 3 p.m. each day to conserve energy.

Although the shock has already triggered a surge in investment in clean energy, the International Energy Agency expects spending on fossil fuel supply to return to just over $1 trillion in 2026, with investment in gas and coal also set to grow, driven by energy security concerns.

Against this backdrop, the repercussions of the US-Israeli war on Iran for North Africa appear to be primarily economic rather than security-related, operating through two main channels: disruptions to fertiliser supplies and rising energy prices. According to Intissar Faqir, a researcher at the Middle East Institute, the overall impact is negative for importing countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco.

Egypt raised fuel prices by around 17% within a week of the outbreak of the war. After approximately a month, its monthly energy bill had more than doubled, rising from $1.2 billion to $2.5 billion. The government subsequently decided to increase household electricity tariffs by an average of 12%, while the subsidy gap remains close to EGP 100 billion a year. The 2026/2027 budget allocates EGP 104.2 billion to electricity subsidies, a 39% increase, according to Enterprise.  As for wheat, imports have not been affected along the routes running through the Caspian and Black Seas. The risks instead lie in higher insurance costs, price volatility, currency pressures and the loss of Suez Canal revenues, which have also been affected by disruptions in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Fertiliser supplies, however, present a more immediate challenge. Egypt raised the price of gas supplied to its fertiliser plants by 21%, bringing it to $8.50 per million British thermal units (MMBtu). One farmer in Fayoum reports that the price of a bag of fertiliser jumped from EGP 800 to EGP 1,200 within days. Yet Egypt is also a fertiliser-exporting country. Its exports of nitrogen fertilisers rose by 39.7% to $1.4 billion in the first half of 2026, before export prices fell by around 39%, from $900 per tonne in April to $550. The government is reportedly scrapping the 10% export levy, pointing to an erosion of the gains the sector had made from increased exports.

Tunisia, meanwhile, is facing a different kind of financial strain. Its budget deficit has widened under the pressure of unforeseen fuel costs, according to researcher Intissar Faqir. Every additional dollar in the price of a barrel of oil costs the state budget TND 164 million (approximately $54 million), according to Finance Ministry figures reported by Independent Arabia. Despite the Prime Minister’s Office decision on 23 May to accelerate the build-up of fertiliser stocks for the 2026–2027 season, by 16 September only around 30,000 tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertiliser had been stockpiled, out of an annual target of 220,000 tonnes—just 14%.

This disruption to supply chains has wider regional implications, as explained by researcher Mohamed alKhansa in Sifr magazine. According to his analysis, around one-third of global seaborne fertiliser supplies pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Disruptions to these flows have driven a 29.3% monthly surge in urea prices, placing eight developing countries that rank among the leading importers via the strait in an unequal race to secure supplies, one in which wealthier countries are better placed to outbid them. The disruption also threatens to exacerbate acute food insecurity among more than 31.1 million people in neighbouring African hunger hotspots, foremost among them Sudan, which imports more than half of its fertiliser from the Gulf.

Libya and Algeria, by contrast, stand to benefit more from higher oil prices than from increased export volumes. Libya’s oil production reached its highest level in 12 years in 2025, averaging around 1.37 million barrels per day. However, political fragmentation limits the country’s ability to reap the full benefits of the price surge. Algeria, meanwhile, produces close to one million barrels per day, with limited scope for increasing output. Its 2026 budget projects a deficit of approximately $40 billion (12.4% of GDP), despite having been drawn up before the war.

The third shock stems from the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which entered its definitive phase on 1 January 2026. The mechanism is particularly significant for North African economies given their reliance on the European market for exports. The European Union receives 81.4% of Tunisia’s exports, 70.5% of Morocco’s and 26.5% of Egypt’s, while between half and two-thirds of Algeria’s exports go to Europe, according to Rawand Ben Brahim. In this context, Egyptian urea, the most widely imported fertiliser in Europe, is expected to incur an additional cost of around €40 per tonne at current carbon prices. This would amount to €400,000 for a shipment of 10,000 tonnes. The Economic Research Forum estimates that Egypt’s exports of goods covered by the mechanism totalled approximately €4.6 billion in 2022, accounting for nearly 10% of the country’s exports.

The picture is further complicated by the European Union’s proposal to extend the mechanism to 180 finished products from 2028 onwards. The proposal remains under negotiation, while adequate support programmes for Mediterranean partner countries are still lacking. Nor should it be overlooked that Türkiye, the host country, is among the largest exporters of CBAM-covered goods to the European Union and has begun establishing its own carbon pricing system.

In addition, the Arab Group had prepared a position paper for the consultations among heads of delegation, which began on 14 October 2026. As environmental journalist and writer Habib Maalouf explains in an article published by the Arab NGO Network for Development, the paper emphasises the priority of formal negotiations over Presidency-led voluntary initiatives, without rejecting the Climate Action Agenda itself. It also stresses the need to uphold climate finance commitments under Article 9.5 of the Paris Agreement, strengthen the Adaptation Fund, and oppose unilateral climate-related trade measures, although it does not explicitly name the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

Maalouf cautions that this collective position may not fully reflect the divergent national interests within the group. Fuel-exporting countries may attach greater importance to response measures and the right to development, while others place greater emphasis on adaptation finance, water, food security, and loss and damage. This is consistent with researcher Elsie Milan’s findings in her paper published by the Arab Reform Initiative in the context of COP30: Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Tunisia supported reforming concessional finance, whereas the high-income Gulf states opposed binding financial obligations.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the Antalya COP31 conference will put international climate action to a test that goes beyond the formulation of pledges to examine the political and economic will underpinning them. The conference, which has adopted the banner of implementation, is taking place at a time of mounting climate risks, declining trust between the Global North and the Global South over climate finance, and a diminishing US role in the institutional architecture of international climate action.

Of the issues on the agenda, climate finance and the further development of the Belém–Antalya Mechanism for a Just Transition appear to be the most decisive in shaping the conference’s outcomes. Both are intrinsically linked to the Global Goal on Adaptation, the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, and the need to protect workers and vulnerable communities from bearing the costs of the green transition. They are also the arenas in which the longstanding gap between announced figures and actual disbursements is most clearly exposed.

The dual presidency shared by Türkiye and Australia reveals not one but two contradictions. The first is material and environmental: the two countries leading the conference advocate a transition to clean energy while continuing to expand coal and gas production and exports under pressure from economic interests. The war on Iran and the disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz have further sharpened this dilemma, bringing security of supply back to the forefront of policy calculations. The second contradiction is institutional and procedural. The power-sharing arrangement has failed to clarify who has the “final say” at the critical moment when decisions are put forward for adoption. This administrative uncertainty is not borne by the two Presidencies themselves, but by smaller delegations from countries in the Global South, particularly in Africa and Asia, which lack the staffing capacity to navigate between two centres of leadership. This, in turn, opens the door to behind-the-scenes deals that favour major donors and major polluters.

As for North African and Southern Mediterranean countries, the Antalya summit represents a direct existential test rather than a distant international conference. The region is grappling with the repercussions of a severe energy and food shock, which has exacerbated debt pressures in Egypt and Tunisia and strained both countries’ ability to absorb further crises through their public budgets. Its industries are also facing an uneven tariff barrier imposed by the European Union’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), while the windfall gains accruing to Algeria and Libya from their gas resources offer only temporary relief and cannot compensate for the absence of structural transformation.

From the region’s perspective, therefore, the success of the Antalya summit should not be measured by the number of voluntary initiatives launched by the Presidencies, but by the extent to which the pledge of “implementation” translates into concessional public finance that does not add to debt burdens, in line with Article 9.5; safeguards for food and fertiliser supply chains; and an effective, operational just transition mechanism that protects the livelihoods of small-scale farmers and workers.

It is consequently difficult to predict what the Antalya summit will deliver. Only if the Presidencies succeed in forging a coherent vision and translating targets into commitments subject to legal and financial accountability will they be able to consolidate the implementation agenda and give the conference genuine substance. Failure to do so—whether because of competing claims to institutional authority, a widening financing gap between North and South, or the dominance of geoeconomic interests and fossil fuel calculations—will leave the conference’s decisions governed by the same exclusionary logic that has stripped previous summits of their substance. “Implementation” in Antalya would then become little more than a negotiating slogan, recycled at every successive COP.