History
The Beginning: Rio, 1992
Climate change first emerged as an issue of international policy in the late 1980s. In 1988, the United Nations Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to synthesise scientific findings. The IPCC’s first assessment report, published in 1990, made the fact that human-induced greenhouse gas emissions are altering the climate an indisputable item on the international agenda.
The result came at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 — commonly known as the Rio Summit. Three conventions emerged from the summit: on climate change, biodiversity and desertification. Known today as the ‘Rio Conventions’, these three treaties are the origin of the concept of Rio Synergy, one of the agenda items of COP31.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force in 1994. The word ‘framework’ in its title is no coincidence: the convention did not impose any numerical reduction obligations on anyone. Its aim was to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would not be dangerous for the climate system and to establish a permanent platform on which negotiations to achieve this could take place. The Conference of the Parties is precisely this platform.
The Convention’s founding principle. The Convention recognises that the responsibilities of industrialised countries—which have historically contributed most to climate change—cannot be the same as those of countries that have not yet completed their development. This is referred to as ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’. Almost all the major debates in the thirty-year history of the COP have centred on the question of how this principle should be applied.
Phase One: The search for legally binding commitments (1995–2009)
The first COP was held in Berlin in 1995, and it was established at that very first meeting that existing commitments were insufficient. With the ‘Berlin Mandate’, a negotiation process was launched to draft a text that would impose numerical obligations on industrialised countries. Two years later, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted: the first legally binding emissions reduction agreement in climate history.
Kyoto was strong in theory but fragile in practice. Obligations were imposed solely on industrialised nations; the US, one of the largest emitters of the time, did not ratify the Protocol, whilst rapidly growing economies remained outside the system. The fact that the Protocol did not come into force until 2005 is also indicative of this resistance.
Two scenes from this period sum up the nature of the COP. In 2000, negotiations in The Hague collapsed and the conference adjourned without reaching a decision; the following year in Bonn, talks resumed where they had left off and a compromise was reached. In 2009, expectations reached a peak: Copenhagen was seen as the venue for a comprehensive and legally binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol. The resulting text was not only non-binding but was not even formally adopted; the Parties merely ‘took note’ of it.
The Copenhagen breakdown and the Paris framework (2010–2015)
The main outcome of Copenhagen was a questioning of the negotiation method. The logic of ‘imposing targets from above’, which had been tried for fifteen years, was failing to generate universal participation. Instead, a framework was proposed whereby each country would declare a target determined according to its own national circumstances, these targets would be reported transparently, and they would be increased over time.
This approach was institutionalised in Cancún, tied to a timetable in Durban, and brought into effect in 2015 with the Paris Agreement. The three key elements of the Paris Agreement are as follows:
- A shared temperature target: to keep global warming well below 2 °C compared to pre-industrial levels, whilst pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C.
- Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs): each party sets its own target and updates it every five years. Updates are expected not to represent a step backwards from the previous commitment.
- Global Stocktake: every five years, an assessment is made to determine whether the collective efforts of all parties are sufficient to meet the target.
The success of the Paris Agreement lies in its inclusivity: almost the entire world has joined the system. The criticism centres precisely on this point: as countries set their own targets, there is no guarantee that the aggregate total will align with scientific requirements.
Third phase: implementation, finance and equity (2015–2026)
Following Paris, the focus of the debate shifted. The question is no longer ‘shall we agree?’, but ‘how will we keep our promises, and who will bear the cost?’ The key themes of this phase were as follows:
| Heading | What does it mean? | Where was it decided? |
|---|---|---|
| Rulebook | How targets will be reported, measured and monitored | Katowice, 2018 |
| Carbon markets | Rules on the transfer of emission reductions between countries (Article 6 of the Paris Agreement) | Glasgow, 2021 |
| Loss and damage | Compensation for irreversible climate damage that cannot be adapted to | Warsaw 2013, fund Sharm El-Sheikh 2022 |
| Fossil fuels | Inclusion in the text of a transition away from coal, oil and gas | Glasgow 2021, Dubai 2023 |
| Climate finance | The amount and source of funding to be channelled to developing countries | Baku 2024, Belém 2025 |
| Just transition | Ensuring the transition is carried out without harming workers and communities | Belém, 2025 |
The first Global Stocktake, completed in Dubai in 2023, officially established that countries’ collective efforts were insufficient to meet the 1.5 °C target. At the same summit, for the first time in the thirty-year history of the COP, a reference to transitioning away from fossil fuels was included in an outcome text. The ‘Global Mutirão’ decision, adopted in Belém in 2025, called for increased adaptation funding and a new mechanism for a just transition; however, a roadmap for phasing out fossil fuels was excluded from the official text due to resistance from producer countries.
Do COPs work?
This question is asked anew every November, and there is no one-word answer. To make a balanced assessment, one must consider both sides.
In favour: Without the COP process, there would be no mechanism whereby 197 countries negotiate their climate policies at the same table every year. The Paris Agreement, the Green Climate Fund, the Loss and Damage Fund, global reporting standards and the legal framework for carbon markets are all products of this process. Moreover, the process grants the smallest island state the same right to speak in the same chamber and under the same consensus rule as the largest economy; no other international mechanism ensures this.
Against: The consensus rule leads to texts being watered down to a level acceptable to the most reluctant party. Decisions are often non-binding, there is no enforcement mechanism, and the gap between commitments and implementation remains unbridged. The influence of fossil fuel-producing countries and industry representatives on the negotiations is a regular subject of criticism.
Thirty years of history show that COPs have not, on their own, resolved the climate crisis; yet without them, there would be no common benchmark against which national policies could be held to account. Perhaps the primary function of COPs is not so much to produce decisions as to make indecision visible.
Where does Türkiye fit into this history?
Türkiye was unable to become a party for a long time because it was listed in both Annex I and Annex II in the 1992 text of the Convention; despite being at a different level of development from the countries on the same list, it was subject to the same financial obligations. This situation was resolved at COP7, held in Marrakesh in 2001: Türkiye’s special circumstances were recognised, the country was removed from Annex II and retained in Annex I with a status distinct from that of other Annex I countries.
Following this decision, Türkiye acceded to the Convention on 24 May 2004 as the 189th Party and became a Party to the Kyoto Protocol in 2009. The Paris Agreement was signed in 2016, but ratification took place on 7 October 2021 in the Grand National Assembly of Türkiye; Türkiye became a Party to the agreement on 10 November 2021. During the same period, the target of net-zero emissions by 2053 was announced.
Türkiye’s experience of hosting United Nations environmental diplomacy events had begun prior to COP31: the outcomes of the 12th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP12), held in Ankara in 2015, are referred to as the ‘Ankara Decisions’ in subsequent documents. COP31, meanwhile, will mark the first time Türkiye has hosted a conference of the climate convention and will be the largest-scale international event it has ever organised.
For a year-by-year, city-by-city breakdown of the thirty-one conferences, please see the Past Summits page.
