COP31: Who Gets to Set the Climate Agenda?

Rami Abi Ammar

More than 92,000 people have registered to attend COP31 in Antalya this year. The conference promises to accelerate implementation, with its Climate Action Agenda spanning energy, food, water and finance, including the transition away from fossil fuels. However, the 92,000 participants at the climate summit this year arrive from vastly unequal positions. Government delegations enter the negotiations from different positions of historical responsibility, wealth and geopolitical influence. Embedded in many official delegations, fossil fuel, agribusiness and technology corporations seek to protect existing investments and shape the markets emerging in the name of climate action. On the margins of negotiation rooms, civil society organisations and social movements rally behind demands that bring perspectives from communities on livelihoods, access to public services and the social impacts of climate policy.

The climate agenda takes shape within these relations. There is plenty that urgently needs implementing, but the language of delivery can conceal choices that deserve political scrutiny. Decisions about which technologies to finance, which losses to compensate and which obligations to enforce determine how the costs and benefits of transition are distributed. A project presented as progress may expand renewable energy while concentrating control over land; an investment labelled adaptation may protect commercial agriculture while leaving small farmers with less water and greater debt. The promise of implementation therefore opens a political question: whose priorities acquire the authority of a climate solution, and whose rights become negotiable along the way?

This is the field in which ANND’s COP31 position paper and the articles in this newsletter intervene. Together, they connect international negotiations to the decisions shaping access to water, protection at work, agricultural livelihoods and the capacity to withstand heat, drought, destruction and ecocide. From this perspective, participation carries a responsibility to challenge the relations that produce vulnerability and strengthen the power of those who bear its consequences. What, then, does it mean to participate in a COP, and what must that participation make possible beyond its halls?

The Politics of Implementation

The emphasis on implementation gives urgency to the long-standing demand, repeated over 30 years, that commitments must translate into action. Yet implementation has a direction, a distribution and a political economy. ANND’s position paper calls for implementation to carry clear obligations. At COP31, this means demanding a time-bound, equitable phase-out of fossil fuels, backed by public finance, technology transfer and protection for workers and communities. The just transition mechanism must have a defined mandate, resources, a timetable and accountability measures, with affected communities able to shape its decisions. It should give countries and communities the means to act, rather than become another forum for coordination without delivery.

Delivering on these demands also requires safeguards against the interests that obstruct them. Strong conflict-of-interest rules should protect negotiations and national policymaking from polluting industries. Binding corporate obligations must cover supply chains, financing relationships and harm to communities. Governments claiming climate leadership must face scrutiny when their policies continue to support fossil fuel expansion. The credibility of implementation depends on whose conduct it changes and which responsibilities it enforces.

Climate Justice in an Unequal Global Order

ANND’s position paper, No Climate Justice without a Just Global Order, locates these demands within the international economic and political structures that shape countries’ capacity to act. Governments are expected to invest in adaptation and economic transformation while servicing debts that constrain spending on water, health and social protection. When climate support arrives through further lending, the cost of responding to an unequally produced crisis is pushed back onto those already bearing its consequences.

The terms of finance therefore matter alongside its volume. Funding organised around investor returns can direct resources towards commercially attractive projects while neglecting essential services and communities with little purchasing power. Control over technology, patents and supply chains can similarly reproduce dependency, leaving some countries to supply land, labour and minerals while others retain ownership and value.

The contribution from Egypt in this newsletter gives financial justice an immediate test: does support reach workers, farmers and fishers, or leave them carrying new costs? COP31 should establish a credible delivery path for additional public, grant-based finance, with clear responsibilities and annual milestones. Locally accessible funding, debt relief and increased support for adaptation and loss and damage must expand the resources available for rights and services. Measures requiring polluters to contribute should provide additional resources. Private investment cannot substitute for developed countries’ public financing obligations. Ranine Awwad’s article on Lebanon shows why restoring services and confronting their destruction belong within the same agenda. Funding adaptation while leaving war and occupation beyond scrutiny cannot secure lasting protection

For the Arab region, climate justice demands must also confront war, occupation and militarisation. The destruction of water networks, agricultural land, homes and energy infrastructure destroys the material foundations of adaptation. In Palestine, Lebanon and beyond, any serious discussion of resilience must address the forces dismantling people’s capacity to remain on their land and sustain their lives. Corporate power, debt and militarisation reinforce one another, narrowing the resources and political space available to protect economic and social rights. Demands, therefore, must move beyond comprehensive military emissions reporting, extending to accountability for environmental destruction. Accountability must reach the states and institutions responsible for destruction, as well as the arms and financial networks sustaining them.

Accessible reparations, including restoration of damaged land and ecosystems need to be part of the climate justice agenda, alongside the redirection of resources towards public needs.

Who Controls the Transition?

The contributions from Tunisia and Egypt make the demands for a just transition concrete. Insecure agricultural work, exposure to heat and pollution, and the unequal burden of care shape who can withstand economic and environmental change. Policies must protect incomes and occupational health, extend social protection to informal and seasonal workers, and give workers and women’s organisations influence over the transition. Training and support must arrive before livelihoods are lost.

ANND’s position paper links these protections to control over resources: affordable clean energy, safeguards against destructive mining, access to technology and support for local production. Without changes in ownership and access, control over patents, manufacturing and supply chains can reproduce dependency, leaving some countries to supply land, labour and minerals while others retain value. In agriculture, public support for local seeds, biodiversity and agroecology can strengthen small producers’ autonomy and reduce dependence on costly inputs. Communities must be able to influence land and resource decisions, with free, prior and informed consent upheld where Indigenous Peoples’ rights apply.

Testing Adaptation against People’s Needs

Public services provide another test of who benefits from climate action. Writing on Lebanon, Ranine Awad traces households’ growing dependence on purchased alternatives to failing services. Access to electricity, water and protection from heat increasingly depends on income. Her contribution places public infrastructure, housing and accessible public space at the centre of adaptation.

Farah Atiyyat’s discussion of water security in Jordan connects international adaptation support with domestic decisions about investment and allocation. Increasing water supply is an incomplete measure of progress when households struggle to afford it or small farmers cannot sustain production. Together, the Lebanon and Jordan articles show why adaptation must be assessed through the reliability, affordability and reach of services.

Hala Murad provides practical tools for that assessment. Following commitments through decisions, budgets and outcomes, she calls for indicators with baselines, clear data sources and results broken down by location and social group. Assessments of effects on livelihoods, decent work and gender equality should be published before funding decisions are settled. Tracking service quality, continuity and affordability can then reveal whether investment reduces inequality and where corrective action is needed.

Read together, these contributions give the position paper’s demands their social and political substance. They show how international finance, national policy and local inequalities meet in the organisation of climate action, water, work, food and public services.

What Participation Must Make Possible

Meaningful participation begins before priorities and funding decisions are fixed. Communities need information and the freedom to organise, influence proposals and challenge harmful decisions. Independent complaints mechanisms, legal support and effective remedies must enable people to act when services fail, resources are diverted or projects cause harm.

ANND brings its position paper, and this newsletter, to COP31 in support of shared debate and action. Advancing their demands requires alliances across borders and sustained work on budgets, policies and projects within our countries, alongside movements defending land, water and labour. Participation must strengthen that connection: bringing community struggles into negotiations and carrying resources, obligations and avenues for accountability back into them. Its value will be measured in the protection people can secure and the power they gain over decisions shaping their lives.