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Türkiye expects to welcome more than 100,000 people from 197 countries to the U.N. climate conference known as COP31, the head of the country's Zero Waste Foundation said Monday, calling it the largest international gathering the country has hosted since the republic's founding.
Samed Agirbas, who is also COP31's High-Level Climate Champion, said Türkiye wants the conference to produce action rather than new pledges.
"We want COP31 to be everyone's COP, a meeting where the realities on the ground are discussed, where problems in the field are brought to the diplomacy table, and where action replaces new commitments," Agirbas said.
He said more than 80 decisions have been taken at past COP meetings, "but most of them have no counterpart on the ground, and no way of being implemented."
Agirbas said the foundation and Vakif Bank, one of Türkiye's major banks, recently announced a ₺10 billion ($290 million) financing package for zero-waste and circular-economy investments.
It is meant to give small and medium-sized businesses loans well below market rates, he said.
The foundation aims to make more than ₺100 billion available over the next two years through Turkish banks, building on cooperation agreements with the World Bank and other international organizations, he said.
Agirbas also pointed to the foundation's Zero Waste Forum, held in recent months, which he said drew more than 5,000 people from 183 countries and more than 120 ministers. He described it as the largest gathering of its kind before a COP.
He said the zero waste approach promoted by Emine Erdogan, the wife of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, continues to spread worldwide.
The foundation has also held consultation meetings in all 81 of Turkey's provinces and in other regions of the world, he said.
The meeting, titled "Toward COP31: The Role of the Private Sector in the Climate Action Agenda," was organized by the foundation, the U.N. in Türkiye and the U.N. Global Compact Türkiye.
Babatunde Ahonsi, the U.N. resident coordinator in Türkiye, said the focus heading into COP31 is turning goals into implementation and scaling up solutions.
"Businesses are not only affected by climate change," Ahonsi said.
"They are also major drivers of investment, innovation, technology, employment and solutions. Türkiye is strengthening its enabling environment for this transformation."
Guliz Ozturk, chair of the board of the U.N. Global Compact Türkiye, said the aim is to identify and list obstacles facing companies and discuss solutions together, then feed that work into the COP31 process.
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