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Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen will travel to the COP30 climate summit in Brazil to press Australia’s case to host next year’s event, amid a standoff with Türkiye.
Australia and Türkiye have both bid to host COP31, and with neither side backing down, the summit risks defaulting to Bonn, Germany — where the United Nations climate agency is based — if the dispute cannot be resolved.
Bowen, who is also the energy minister, left Sydney on Saturday morning for Belém to lead the Australian delegation at COP30.
He said he would push for Australia’s COP31 bid, which is backed by Pacific island nations and would give Australia a chance to showcase its clean energy industry.
“It’s not a matter of fighting on for months afterwards — it gets decided at this conference,” he told reporters before his flight from Sydney Airport.
“While Australia enjoys broad international backing to host COP31, the process involves more than just global support.”
“It’s not a ballot process … that means we need to reach an agreement with Türkiye, that’s difficult.”
In a statement before he left, Bowen said global investment in clean energy projects would exceed US$2 trillion ($3.057 trillion) in 2025 and Australia’s climate change targets “were a big green light to local and international investors that we want to be part of this global shift”.
“As the National Climate Risk Assessment showed us, our nation has a lot at stake when it comes to climate change, but every effort we make now will help avert the worst impacts,” he said.
“Our goal is to co-host COP31 alongside Pacific nations, marking a historic occasion to bring global attention to the Pacific region and collaborate on tackling this critical challenge.”
Hosting the summit gives nations a leadership position, enabling them to steer the conference’s direction, spotlight pressing national climate concerns, and significantly influence negotiation processes.
The Conference of the Parties, or COP, is the annual gathering of countries that have signed the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Host countries take on a presidential role, allowing them to set the summit’s agenda, highlight domestic climate issues and play a key role in brokering negotiations.
Australia made its bid to host COP31 in Adelaide with the support of the Pacific Islands Forum, a bloc of 18 countries among the most vulnerable to climate change.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese wrote to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in an attempt to resolve the dispute, but Türkiye has refused to concede and withdraw its bid to host in Antalya.
Türkiye has previously argued its Mediterranean location would help reduce emissions from flights bringing delegates to the conference, and has pointed out its smaller oil and gas industry compared to Australia.
In July, the UN urged Australia and Türkiye to resolve the hosting standoff, calling the delay unhelpful and unnecessary. It had set a deadline of June for the group to reach consensus.
