The Australian PM’s non-attendance at Cop30 would ‘raise questions’ about his seriousness about co-hosting Cop31 in Adelaide
This year’s fortnight-long global climate summit, known as Cop30, officially starts in the Brazilian city of Belém on 10 November. But international leaders are gathering in advance, starting on Thursday.
Albanese has not attended a UN climate conference since becoming PM and has indicated he does not plan to join more than 50 leaders – including Britain’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Palau’s Surangel Whipps Jr – in being hosted by the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula de Silva, to focus on the faltering work to deliver on the goals of the 2015 Paris agreement.
With the hosting rights for the Cop31 summit unresolved, stuck in a standoff between an Australia-Pacific joint bid and a Turkish pitch to hold the conference in its Mediterranean city of Antalya, observers say there is a strong case for Albanese to meet with other leaders who could influence the decision, which must be made this month in Belém.
Jennifer Morgan, Germany’s ex-climate envoy who forged a global reputation in leading the 2022 negotiations over the creation of a “loss and damage” fund, said it would send “a very clear signal to the world that Australia is very serious” if Albanese went to Brazil, and “raise some question marks” with other leaders if he did not. She noted several leaders from the group of countries responsible for deciding who hosts Cop31 – known as Western Europe and Other States – had said they would be attending.
“It is common practice that if a country wishes to host a [climate conference] that its leader attends and continues to make the case. In this case, he would do so with many Pacific leaders who I’m sure are attending,” Morgan told the Guardian. “It would certainly strengthen the Australian-Pacific bid for him to attend.”
Morgan said “if there was ever a moment for a leader to go to a Cop” it was now, when some countries appeared to be working to undermine the multilateral effort on the climate crisis.
“It’s 10 years after Paris. It’s a moment for a shoulder-to-shoulder effort,” she said. “I would think it’s also in Australia’s national interests based on what it’s put forward on its [2035 climate target] and its goals on renewable energy, and the role that it wishes to play in Asia and globally, to be present at the highest level.”
