China News Service, Beijing, November 6. Title: COP31 Outlook: Antalya’s “Implementation Test”
China News Service reporter Chen Su Wei Yuan
The 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change will be held in Antalya, Türkiye from November 9th to 20th. This is the first year of a new decade for the Paris Agreement. Climate governance is shifting from rule negotiation to action implementation. Turkey positions this conference as an "implemented COP". Whether the commitment can be turned into an implementable trajectory is a key question of this conference.
After ten years of the Paris Agreement, the rules framework has basically taken shape. In 2025, all countries will submit a new round of nationally determined contributions, and the tone of the conference will shift from "setting rules" to "delivering accounts." This conference will kick off the second global stocktake (GST2). Methane emission reduction, climate finance implementation, and adaptation capacity improvement will be the core topics.
But the ledger is not pretty. The "2026 Emissions Gap Report" released by the United Nations Environment Program shows that the key temperature control goal set by the "Paris Agreement" is to control the global average temperature increase in the 21st century to within 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. It is "imminent and inevitable" to be exceeded; if current policies are continued, global warming may reach 2.8°C by the end of the 21st century. To make matters worse, carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion hit another record high in 2025.
United Nations Secretary-General Guterres said that "exceeding the standard does not mean surrender," but the window is indeed narrowing. Coupled with the United States' withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and absence from negotiations, the "action deficit" has become more troublesome than the "rules deficit".
At this conference, Türkiye proposed the "35×35" electrification goal: to increase the proportion of electricity in global terminal energy consumption from about 20% to 35% by 2035. Outside analysts believe that this goal will help boost global climate action, but the road to realization is fraught with difficulties.
Dimitri de Boer, chief representative of the Beijing Representative Office of Clines European Environmental Protection Association, told a reporter from China News Service that Turkey's "35×35" initiative proposed a new goal for the world to improve the level of electrification, but the goal did not specify the source of electricity. If electricity still relies on fossil energy production, there is essentially no difference.
Others worry that shifting the focus to electrification will dilute and replace the more binding core issues.
"Judging from the progress of the negotiations, the framework is complete." Li Zheng, dean of the Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University, said that COP29 established a new collective quantified financial goal (NCQG) to mobilize at least US$300 billion per year by 2035. COP30 reached a political document called "Global Mobilization: Unity and Collaboration to Address the Challenge of Climate Change," which clarified that US$1.3 trillion in climate financing will be mobilized for developing countries every year by 2035. “But the problem is that after the rules and goals are generally in place, the implementation gap becomes the main contradiction.”
Li Zheng believes that although the NCQG has an amount, the funding mechanism, availability, accountability and debt sustainability are not clear, and the credibility of the investment from developed countries itself is also facing doubts; the rise of unilateralism and protectionism has interfered with collective efforts, superimposed on the energy security risks promoted by geopolitical conflicts, and the climate policies of some countries have swayed.
Yang Li, deputy director of the Green Innovation Development Research Institute, said that COP31 emphasizes accelerating the implementation of climate action, and solutions focused on "action" such as electrification, green industry, resilient cities and circular economy will receive wider attention.
China's position has always been clear. Li Gao, Vice Minister of China's Ministry of Ecology and Environment, said that China supports COP31's focus on "implementation" and that the conference should have in-depth discussions on the "old problems" of insufficient emission reduction efforts and financial support in developed countries and the "new challenges" of unilateralism and protectionism that undermine collective efforts.
Statistics show that China's cumulative installed wind power and photovoltaic capacity has exceeded 2 billion kilowatts, and it has established the world's largest carbon market. China has always been a staunch activist.
