World leaders opened the high-level segment of COP31 in Antalya on Wednesday, November 11, 2026, with several prominent leaders absent from the UN climate summit as global warming intensifies.
The two-week conference kicked off earlier this week in Antalya. Dozens of leaders spoke during the high-level segment on Wednesday and Thursday, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Iran's Masoud Pezeshkian.
COP31 world leaders include only one G7 head of government scheduled to address the summit: British Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen is coming to Antalya. French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are skipping the event.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Japanese counterpart Sanae Takaichi are absent from the most recent list.
United States President Donald Trump is not attending. Trump pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement and has not sent officials to climate talks since his re-election in 2024.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who rarely attends COPs, will be represented by Vice President Han Zheng. The United States and China are the world's top economies and biggest emitters of planet-heating emissions.
"It is a shame that some of the bigger European leaders aren't coming. We need Europe to be showing up strongly at this COP," Cosima Cassel, a climate diplomacy expert at think-tank E3G, told AFP, as reported by Channels TV.
Chiara Martinelli, director of Climate Action Network Europe, said: "If top leaders want influence over where the global (energy) transition is going, showing up is a pretty good place to start."
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU's top climate official, said the absences were "not completely atypical". He also said "expectations are not necessarily high" for this climate conference.
The French government said Macron would be absent because November 11 is World War I Armistice Day and the president will attend an EU summit in Ireland on Thursday.
Iran's Pezeshkian said he would use the event to express Tehran's position on environmental destruction in war. "At this conference, we will speak about the actions of the United States and Israel in destroying the environment," he said, according to Iranian state television.
Climate campaigners breathed a huge sigh of relief when Lula, who has championed cutting deforestation rates, defeated right-wing rival Flavio Bolsonaro in last month's Brazilian presidential election.
"But we have Lula," Cassel said.
COP31 host Turkey is championing a voluntary initiative to accelerate the electrification of transport, buildings and industry, with a target of raising electricity's share of global energy consumption to 35 percent by 2035.
The EU has stressed electrification must be "clean". Since agreeing in 2023 to transition away from fossil fuels, nations have struggled to advance that goal.
Global fossil fuel emissions are projected to fall slightly in 2026 due to the expansion of renewable energy and the oil price shock sparked by the Iran war, researchers said Tuesday.
Confirmed: COP31 world leaders began the high-level segment in Antalya. Speakers include Erdogan, Lula da Silva and Pezeshkian. Absentees include Macron, Merz, Meloni, Carney, Takaichi and Trump.
Unconfirmed: the full reasons behind each absence, beyond the explanation given by the French government. Final outcomes remain developing.
For countries facing floods, heat and rising seas, the absence of COP31 world leaders raises a question about pace.
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