By Jennifer A. Dlouhy Climate negotiators from almost 200 countries will spend the next two weeks at an annual United Nations summit under a dark cloud of waning ambition to tackle rapidly rising global temperatures.

The negotiating agenda at COP31, starting Monday in the resort city of Antalya, Turkey, is narrower than at any other major climate conference in the decade since the breakthrough Paris Agreement. Yet two of the factors weighing on the proceedings — the conflict-fueled energy crisis and an AI backlash — offer potential to spur new action.

Some 60,000 diplomats, officials and advocates – alongside modest contingents of world leaders and business chiefs – are expected to participate in talks aimed at advancing emissions reductions, increasing flows of climate finance and boosting efforts to adapt to higher temperatures. A signature push by the Turkish organizers aims to increase worldwide rates of electrification, an effort to curb greenhouse gas pollution by replacing fossil fuels in transportation, industry and heating.

It’s a diplomatic undertaking incommensurate with the bleak backdrop. The UN warned last month that the world can no longer keep global warming below 1.5C, a key threshold staked out by the Paris Agreement. A series of climate-fueled extreme weather events this year has underscored the risks that come with rising temperatures — including tens of thousands of deaths from lethal heat waves and wildfires across Europe and a devastating glacier collapse in Nepal.

Yet the wars in Iran and Ukraine that have strained international alliances and at times diverted funding from climate aid to defense spending have also revealed the financial toll of countries’ deep reliance on fossil fuels. The pain from rising oil and gas prices has provided a catalyst to shift toward cleaner energy globally.

A Bloomberg index reflecting futures prices for oil and gas jumped about 67% in the 12 months to Friday, illustrating the hike in fuel costs since negotiators gathered a year ago for COP30 in Belém, Brazil.

“This year’s energy crisis has shocked us out of our complacency,” said Murat Kurum, Turkey’s environment, urbanization and climate change minister, who will act as president of COP31. “Everyone now understands that energy that you must import is energy that you do not control.”Laurence Tubiana, chief executive officer of the European Climate Foundation and one of the architects of the Paris Agreement, sees a potential pendulum swing at the Antalya talks after a series of meager outcomes at recent COP negotiations beset by US President Donald Trump’s loud disengagement from climate diplomacy.

The world had fewer options to counter past oil shocks, Tubiana told reporters last week. But now, emissions-free energy technologies provide a “solution to escape from that volatility and have more solar and more energy security.”This 31st session of the “conference of the parties” to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has a smaller negotiating mandate — and less of an opening for the kind of blockbuster promises that have characterized recent sessions such as in Dubai in 2023, when nations pledged to transition away from fossil fuels.

Fewer major world leaders are set to join the talks, reflecting limited expectations. Alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, attendees are expected to include UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Finland’s President Alexander Stubb.

China’s Vice President Han Zheng, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol are among other dignitaries slated to participate. A large delegation of US congressional representatives, state governors and city mayors also is heading to Antalya.

The delegation aims to emphasize that even though Trump has withdrawn the country from the Paris Agreement and rolled back federal environmental regulations, the US continues work to decarbonize in corporate boardrooms, cities and states.

Rising public scrutiny of the energy and environmental impacts of breakneck data center developments – a factor which offered a boost to some Democratic candidates in last week’s US midterm elections – is also providing a fresh impetus to green activism.

Even more than last year’s summit in Brazil, the focus is on delivering on existing promises, rather than setting ambitious new goals. It’s “a bit of a roll-up-your-sleeves-and-get-it-done COP,” said David Waskow, director of the World Resources Institute’s International Climate Initiative. “It’s not as flashy — but it is about getting the job done.”For instance, negotiators will plot ways to translate into action a series of commitments from a global stocktake of progress that culminated at Dubai’s COP28 — including the goal to transition away from fossil fuels — and lay the groundwork for the next assessment which will unfold through 2028.

And after countries agreed on indicators for measuring progress toward an international target on climate adaptation, COP31 will aim to determine how to oversee that work and put it into practice. Diplomats will also work on a mechanism that aims to better protect workers and communities being impacted by the energy transition.

Outside of formal negotiations that drive toward often hard-fought consensus agreements, nations also will be asked to back voluntary pledges, including a plan for AI firms to disclose environmental impact data, and for data centers to be powered by clean electricity.

A flagship target for the summit is to garner support for an initiative to increase electricity’s share of global final energy consumption from just over 20% today to 35% by 2035. The proposal is rooted in the premise that countries can pare greenhouse gas pollution by displacing liquid transportation fuels and using more emission-free renewables as a source of heat and power.

Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen — who will lead negotiations under a compromise deal that divided duties between Ankara and Canberra — has said the summit’s presidency will aim to include the electrification target in a so-called political cover decision.

An agreed final text that’s reached by consensus “sends a signal to the rest of the world,” Sue Biniaz, a former US deputy special envoy for climate, told reporters. “If things can be agreed by the entire world, given all the divergent interests, it’s particularly impactful,” Biniaz said.

Delivering on the electrification target will hold challenges. Some nations are already pushing for more exacting commitments, including a specification that the goal should be achieved primarily using emissions-free electricity.

Climate finance is set to be a major tension point, a recurring theme at the climate talks, as developing nations frustrated by unfulfilled commitments look for help growing their economies without the unchecked fossil fuel use that powered the rise of the US and Europe. Meanwhile, some rich nations counter that developing countries aren’t taking sufficient action now to curtail emissions.

At COP talks two years ago, nations agreed to provide $300 billion in finance annually by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead. And there’s an ambition to mobilize more finance, scaling it up to $1.3 trillion each year by 2035, from all public and private sources.

Yet it’s not clear whether that amount will be delivered on time — or if the goal remains feasible. Developing nations insist that doing so is essential for cleaner growth.

“We have the technologies. The price of renewables has come down significantly,” said Ilana Seid, a representative from Palau who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States, a group of climate-vulnerable nations. “Unlocking acceleration really has to do a lot with finance.”The European Union, the largest global provider of climate finance, has already confirmed the bloc won’t offer fresh commitments. “Any conversation on new fresh money is dead in the water,” EU climate chief Wopke Hoekstra said in an interview last month.

The entire future of the UN’s COP process to coordinate climate action also is receiving more concerted scrutiny. A roundtable convened by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell has been assessing whether the mechanism should be overhauled, including recommendations to shift away from a consensus-driven approach that means every commitment must have broad buy-in — and sometimes produces a lowest-common-denominator effect that diminishes collective ambition.

Still, even currently halting progress is keeping the world moving in the right direction, according to Dutch Climate Minister Stientje van Veldhoven.

During a recent trek up Kilimanjaro, Van Veldhoven recalled being daunted by the vast stretch in front of her — but then looking down and recognizing how much progress she’d already made. COPs can feel the same way, according to the minister. “It’s slow,” she said. “But it works. And so we need to continue doing it.”