Top Leaders Skip Cop31 Climate Summit in Antalya as Wildfire Report Links Human Activity to Severe Blazes

The heads of government from Canada, Japan and multiple European nations are absent as the third day of the Cop31 UN climate summit gets underway in Antalya, Turkey. Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Canada and Japan chose not to attend, leaving the UK as the sole G7 member represented by its leader. Climate Action Network awarded its daily 'fossil of the day' prize to these absent wealthy leaders, noting that several are instead heading to Dublin for an EU artificial intelligence summit on Friday. Meanwhile, leaders attending include Brazil's president Lula, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Wildfire Findings

The low attendance comes alongside the release of the State of Wildfires report, which reveals that human-caused climate breakdown made extreme 2025 wildfires three times more likely. The European Union recorded its largest burned area ever last year, with Iberia facing 14 megafires spanning at least 100 square kilometres each and forcing over 40,000 evacuations. The study links the climate crisis to fires in Iberia being three times more likely and burning triple the area. In Canada, 2025 wildfires killed 35 people, proved 85% more likely due to climate breakdown, and burned roughly nine times more land. Chantelle Burton, a Met Office wildfire scientist and lead author of the study, warned that strong emission cuts can prevent worse future fires. Researchers project that under current warming trends, similar fires could burn about one-third more area in twenty years, though Paris Agreement emission pathways could cut extreme event burned areas by 5% to 36% compared to a high-emissions future.

Context

UN climate summits bring nations together annually to negotiate emission targets, climate finance, and global strategies to limit global warming. Wildfire studies rely on attribution science to measure how much human-driven greenhouse gas emissions increase the risk and severity of specific extreme weather events.