The key facts

  • COP31 begins next Monday in Antalya; Minister Murat Kurum has been appointed as president-designate
  • Saulo noted the alignment of WMO priorities with the COP31 agenda: clean energy, cities, youth, communities
  • The current El Niño, she said, will peak by the end of the year and underscores the urgency of climate action

Assessment of COP31 preparations

The Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Celeste Saulo, said in an interview with the Turkish news agency Anadolu that Turkey is doing an excellent job both at the organizational and strategic level in preparing for the UN climate conference COP31, which will begin next Monday in Antalya. She welcomed the fact that Turkey is hosting the conference, noting the country's evident active role in climate diplomacy and the relevance of the agenda.

From promises to implementation

Saulo emphasized that compared with the previous conference, COP31 shows a noticeably stronger drive to move from promises to implementation — and that, she said, is precisely where the WMO's expectations are focused. She expressed confidence that Turkey's Minister of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change, Murat Kurum, appointed as COP31 president, will be able to lead discussions and actions capable of changing the current course of climate efforts. She also mentioned Kurum's September visit to the WMO headquarters in Geneva as evidence of his commitment to strengthening national meteorological and hydrological services.

Scientific basis and key initiatives

The WMO head highlighted the COP31 Action Agenda, stressing the importance of approaches grounded in science, evidence and action, and noted the alignment between the organization's priorities and the conference agenda — in particular in the areas of clean energy, urban development, youth and communities. She also referred to two initiatives: the Systematic Observations Financing Facility, which supports the least developed countries and small island states in strengthening weather and climate observation systems (we cannot manage what we do not observe), and the Early Warnings for All initiative, for which a high-level event is planned at COP31. According to her, the recognition that early warning systems save lives is widespread, yet progress is slower than one would like.

El Niño as the backdrop of the conference

Saulo said the current El Niño event is expected to reach its strongest levels by the end of the year, calling it a tangible reality of climate impacts that will be part of the discussion at COP31 and underscores the urgency of resilience and adaptation action. Concluding the interview, she urged countries to accelerate climate action: Use science and evidence as the basis for policy. Move faster. Implement now. The material is based on a single Anadolu interview; no other independent assessments of the conference preparations are available in the sources.