Papua New Guinea ‘not happy’ as Australia walks away from bid to host Cop31 | Cop31
Papua New Guinea has expressed frustration after Australia backed out of co-hosting next year’s UN climate talks with its Pacific island neighbors.
“Not all of us are happy. And disappointed that it ended like this,” Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko told Agence France-Presse after Australia ceded its hosting rights to Turkey.
Australia was pushing to host Cop31 next year alongside South Pacific countries, increasingly threatened by rising seas and climate-induced disasters.
But Australia ended its vaunted bid after Turkey, the other potential host, refused to back down. This would have been the first time the region hosted the first UN climate summit.
Turkey will host next year’s United Nations climate summit while Australia will lead negotiations for the conference between governments, as part of a compromise taking shape during negotiations in Brazil, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday.
Minister Tkatchenko on Thursday criticized the entire COP summit process, calling it a waste of time. “What has Cop achieved over the years. Nothing,” Papua New Guinea’s top diplomat said.
“It’s just a talk fest that doesn’t hold big polluters accountable.”
Pacific island leaders have long criticized COP summits for marginalizing their voices or offering limited practical solutions as they grapple with the growing costs of climate change.
They hoped that co-facilitation tasks could change this and raise awareness. But winning the COP hosting would also have drawn scrutiny of Australia’s green record. The country has long profited from fossil fuel exports and views climate action as a political and economic liability.
The former prime minister of Tuvalu – which could become uninhabitable this century if the planet’s heat emissions are not curbed – said the decision showed Australia’s “non-commitment to climate justice”.
Tuvalu, a small country of sparsely populated atolls and reef islands, is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world due to rising sea levels.
“Pacific countries should seriously rethink their relations with Australia,” Bikenibeu Paeniu told AFP.
He added that it was not enough for the Pacific region to host a pre-COP event while Turkey would host the summit.
“What a failure but the Pacific will continue its fight whatever happens.”
Australia began walking back its candidacy earlier this week as leaders met in the Brazilian port city of Belém. Albanese had promised that, if Australia lost, he would still look for ways to keep the fate of the Pacific on the agenda.
Australia had presented its bid as a “Pacific Cop”, delivered in partnership with low-lying island nations and emphasizing their exposure to climate change and sea level rise.
The annual conferences are the leading global forum for promoting climate action.
About 320,000 people in the Pacific were displaced by disasters between 2008 and 2017, according to the International Organization for Migration. NASA predicts that sea levels could rise by up to 15 cm over the next 30 years.
With Agence France-Presse
