Antalya: One Climate Summit, Two Presidents

In November the world meets in Antalya for the next UN climate conference, and even the organisation is a compromise. Turkey is the host and provides the conference president. Australia leads the negotiations. A pre-conference is also being held in a Pacific island state, where sea levels are not negotiated but simply rise.

On the agenda: new national climate plans, money for adaptation and compensation for damage. That is the honest version of climate policy in 2026: it is no longer just about how to slow warming, but above all about who pays the bill for the warming that has already happened.

Since Glasgow, one summit after another has tried to "keep 1.5 alive". By now it is in intensive care and receiving a remarkable number of visitors.

For two weeks delegations will wrestle over wording. That is less absurd than it sounds: in climate texts a single word decides whether states should or must do something. The atmosphere, however, is not reading along. It just does the maths.