BELÉM, Brazil — Turkey will host next year’s U.N. climate conference after Australia’s bid imploded.
Turkey and Australia had faced off for more than a year over the talks’ location, an impasse that extended almost until the final day of the current climate summit in Belém, Brazil. If no resolution had emerged, next year’s summit would have defaulted to Germany, which has said it wouldn’t have time to plan the event properly.
While Turkey will provide the venue for the 2026 talks, Australia will hold the presidency — and therefore the diplomacy, said Chris Bowen, Australia’s minister for climate change and energy. That means that “I would have all the powers of the COP presidency,” he said.
A Turkish official, who did not give his name, said the final deal would be announced on Thursday. Turkey had proposed hosting the talks in the Mediterranean city of Antalya.
It is a highly unusual arrangement for the annual climate conference, which normally has a single host and presidency. But it’s not unprecedented: In 2017, Germany hosted a Fijian-led conference.
“Obviously it would be great if Australia could have it all. But we can’t have it all,” Bowen said. “It’s also a significant concession for Turkey.”
He added that before the summit, separate talks will occur in the Pacific where money would be raised to help that region cope with climate change.
German State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth, whose country chairs the Western Europe and Others Group from which the host of next year’s talks is due to be selected based on the rotating system of the U.N., put a positive spin on the discussions.
“There was a positive spirit,” he said. “It’s something extraordinary that two countries from very different sides of the planet but being in one group reached an agreement.”
But others were more candid. “It’s an ugly solution,” said a European diplomat who was granted anonymity to discuss the confidential discussions. “Turkey just wants to showboat and don’t care about content really, and Aussies do but they don’t control the event and logistics.”
The new host country’s climate track record is mixed.
Turkey aims to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions in 2053, a date chosen more for its symbolism — 600 years after the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople — than science. This year, it presented a new climate target that will see its emissions increase by around 16 percent until 2035. The country overtook Poland last year as Europe’s top coal user, and harbors ambitions of stepping up gas exploration to become a regional transit hub.
Australia had secured the backing of the U.K. and some European countries, as well as the Pacific region, with which it planned to co-host the summit.
But during a series of long meetings on Wednesday, Australia failed to persuade Turkey to back down.
Australia had been favored to host the talks in the city of Adelaide. But on Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese blinked, saying his country would not block Turkey as host country if Ankara were to prevail. His office later clarified the statement to indicate he meant that he expected Turkey to do the same if Australia won the competition.
But by then, news stories had circulated around the world that Australia had backed down.