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What a mess.
It was after 10pm in Belem, Brazil, when Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen finally conceded publicly that, after a three-year campaign spanning the Pacific and the world for a role Australia believed was all but locked in, Turkey would host next year’s United Nations COP climate talks.
Not only that, the crucial leaders’ meeting that traditionally runs before or during the first days of those talks would also be held in Turkey. And as host, Turkey would appoint the COP president to run the event and manage the mechanics of the world’s key multilateral machine to combat climate change for the succeeding year, as the rules dictated.
Still, Bowen, looking grey and drawn, was determined to put a positive spin on a thorough diplomatic rout of Australia by Turkey.
Australia’s goals in the bid, he said, were to elevate the concerns of the Pacific and to act in the nation’s best interests. To that end, he had secured an in-principle agreement that he would serve at the talks under the title of “president of negotiations”, with authority to set the negotiating agenda, appoint chairs and leads and prepare the draft decision text.
A pre-COP meeting would be held in the Pacific, which Australia would use to browbeat participants to contribute to a Pacific Resilience Fund.
This is not nothing. Anyone who has watched UN climate negotiations up close knows the roles of those who drive them are powerful and significant. The Pacific will be devastated by Australia’s failure, but it will not turn down any finance that might be extracted at such a forum.
Bowen insists that had he not blinked, and had the meeting reverted to the UN climate headquarters in Bonne, the result would have been a rudderless meeting at which Australia and the Pacific had no control.
“Some people will be disappointed in that outcome,” he said to reporters during a gap in ongoing negotiations in Belem.
“Other people, of course, would be even more disappointed if it had gone to Bonne without a COP president in place. This is a better outcome than that.”
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What went wrong is not yet entirely clear, but it is clear that the Australian effort never looked like the smooth, unified and energetic campaigns that saw previous governments secure a seat on the UN Security Council in 2013 or install former finance minister Mathias Cormann as secretary general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 2021.
For months, diplomatic observers were warning that Bowen did not appear to have the full and enthusiastic support of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for the bid, nor the focus of Foreign Minister Penny Wong and the heft of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
It was noticed that Albanese did not attend the Brazil leaders’ meeting the week before this COP.
It is not clear how much difference late interventions by the prime minister would have made.
The process demands consensus, not overwhelming support, and Turkey simply would not concede.
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