Who Sets the Agenda? What COP31’s Presidency Dispute Means for the Climate Finance Trust Gap

GDCI Policy Brief · Thematic Pillar: Climate, Environment, and Civilizational Futures · September 2026

Executive Summary: The 31st UN Climate Change Conference convenes in Antalya, Türkiye, from 9–20 November 2026, under a presidency compromise that gave Türkiye the summit’s formal presidency and Australia the presidency of negotiations — a deal reached over the objections of Pacific Island states, who had sought to host the conference themselves as the region most exposed to the crisis it addresses. That exclusion, still unresolved months before the summit opens, is unfolding alongside a widening climate finance gap: developing countries are requesting $1.3 trillion annually and receiving a fraction of that, mostly as loans. GDCI reads the two disputes as one story about who is trusted to set terms in global dialogue.

Key Findings

• Türkiye and Australia settled competing COP31 bids at COP30 with a split arrangement — Türkiye as COP31 President, Australia as President of Negotiations under Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen — that excluded Pacific Island states from the hosting role they had sought.
• As recently as 11 September 2026, Türkiye’s COP31 President, Environment Minister Murat Kurum, stated publicly that “the final decision lies with the presidency of COP31,” unsettling the division of authority the compromise was meant to fix, two months before the summit opens.
• Developing countries are seeking $1.3 trillion a year in climate finance; developed-country contributions were $132.8 billion in 2023 and $136.7 billion in 2024 — roughly a tenth of the ask — and arrive mostly as loans rather than grants.
• The Loss and Damage Fund, created at COP27 to compensate climate-vulnerable states for damage already done, has drawn pledges far short of the $400 billion a year more than 200 organizations say is needed, and lost two of its anchor contributors when the United States withdrew from both the Loss and Damage Fund and the Green Climate Fund.
• Pacific leaders have been explicit about the disappointment: Papua New Guinea’s foreign minister, Justin Tkatchenko, said of the presidency deal, “We are all not happy. And disappointed it’s ended up like this.”

Problem Statement

COP31 was supposed to settle, before it even opened, a question that has trailed UN climate diplomacy for years: who gets to run the room where climate finance is negotiated. Instead, the presidency fight has reproduced, in miniature, the exact asymmetry the finance debate is about. Pacific Island states — Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and their neighbors among the nations most exposed to sea-level rise and extreme weather — campaigned to host the conference in their own region, arguing that direct exposure to the crisis should carry weight in deciding who leads the response to it. The resolution, brokered at COP30, gave the hosting role to Türkiye and the negotiating chair to Australia, with a consolation gesture — a pre-COP meeting held on a Pacific island — standing in for the hosting role the region had wanted. Solomon Islands leader Jeremiah Manele had said before the deal closed that he would be “disappointed” if Australia did not secure the event; the eventual arrangement split the difference in a way that left the region’s own governments watching from outside the room where the split was decided.

Evidence and Analysis

The presidency dispute has not stayed settled. The COP30 compromise divided COP31’s authority cleanly on paper — Türkiye leads the non-negotiated Action Agenda, Australia manages the formal negotiating texts — but on 11 September 2026, Kurum told reporters that Türkiye and Australia “are not co-presidents,” and that while the two governments remain “in consultation,” Türkiye alone holds final authority over the summit’s formal outcomes. Australia’s team responded that the two countries are “working together seamlessly and with one goal,” but the public disagreement over who actually decides, arriving two months before delegates convene, is itself a data point: an arrangement built to project unity to Pacific states already unhappy with being excluded from hosting is now visibly contested by the two governments that struck it.

That contest over process sits on top of a much larger contest over money. The core ask from developing countries — $1.3 trillion a year to fund adaptation, mitigation, and recovery — is not a new figure; it has anchored climate finance negotiations since the $300 billion-by-2024 goal was set at a prior summit and immediately criticized as inadequate. What developed countries have delivered falls well short even of that lower goal: $132.8 billion in 2023 and $136.7 billion in 2024, according to figures cited in current COP31 coverage, and critics — including the Climate Action Network — argue the real number is inflated further by loans counted alongside grants and by what one director called “accounting tricks.” Nepal’s climate-related infrastructure risk alone is estimated at $124 billion; India puts its own transition need at $500 billion by 2030 and $13 trillion by 2070. Against numbers of that scale, a Loss and Damage Fund carrying pledges far below the $400 billion a year that more than 200 organizations have called for — and now missing two of the wealthy states, the United States, that might have anchored it — reads less like a shortfall than a structural mismatch between who is asking and who is deciding how much the ask is worth.

GDCI’s interest here is not adjudicating the correct dollar figure, which is a matter for the negotiators in Antalya, not for this brief. It is naming a pattern this publication has traced across several of its own cycles: a dialogue or negotiating structure whose stated purpose is inclusive deliberation, organized in practice by an arrangement the most affected parties did not choose and are not fully inside. The COP31 presidency dispute is a compact, well-documented instance of that pattern, playing out in public, with named officials on the record, in the run-up to a summit whose central agenda item is whether the finance gap facing exactly those excluded parties will close.

Recommendations

1. COP31 Presidency (Türkiye and Australia): Publish a single, unambiguous decision-making protocol before delegates arrive in Antalya, specifying how “consultation” between the two presidencies resolves disagreements, so the dispute aired publicly in September does not reappear as a procedural crisis inside the negotiating rooms in November.
2. UNFCCC Secretariat: Formalize a standing advisory seat for Pacific Island and other high-vulnerability states in future presidency-selection processes, closing the gap between “most affected by the outcome” and “present when the terms are set” that this cycle’s compromise left open.
3. Developed-country climate finance contributors: Report Loss and Damage Fund and broader climate finance contributions with grants and loans disclosed separately, addressing the “accounting tricks” critique directly rather than leaving it to advocacy groups to estimate the gap.
4. Multilateral development institutions and donor governments: Treat the $1.3 trillion figure as a floor for the COP31 finance agenda rather than a maximalist opening position, given that even the lower $300 billion goal it superseded remains roughly two-thirds unmet.

Sources: Business Standard — “COP31: Can the Antalya summit bridge the global climate finance divide?” (22 September 2026); UNFCCC — “The Road to Antalya”; Climate Change News — “Türkiye says it has ‘final decision’ at COP31 despite Australia running negotiations” (11 September 2026); AsiaNews — “Turkey and Australia reach agreement on COP31, disappointing Pacific islands” (20 November 2025); Fill the Fund — “Loss & Damage Fund: 200+ Orgs Demand US $400B Annual Lifeline.”