Green Industrialisation at COP31: Why Supply Chains Decide the Outcome

Photo by yasin hemmati on Unsplash

Türkiye has billed the summit as an ‘Implementation COP’. When delegates gather in Antalya for COP31, agenda items will fight for attention in the negotiations. Green industrialisation is one of these agenda items and is the one most directly connected to economic transformation.

COP31's agenda has ten themes: clean energy and electrification, zero waste and methane reduction, climate-resilient cities, green industrialisation, youth and education, food security, oceans, resilient health systems, synergies with the other Rio conventions, and implementation of national climate plans. Two headline targets give a sense of the ambition: raising electricity to 35% of global final energy consumption by 2035 and lifting the global share of circular material use to 15%. Under green industrialisation, the COP31 presidency says it wants to accelerate competitive, resilient and low-carbon production through international cooperation, investment and technology deployment.

The logic is straightforward. A concept note prepared for a COP31 presidency event at the April 2026 UNFCCC Climate Week in Yeosu observed that industry accounts for roughly a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Steel, cement and chemicals manufacturing make up almost 70% of those emissions. These are also the sectors fundamental to employment and growth in emerging economies. 

The Agenda

Several concrete initiatives are expected to be launched or showcased in Antalya:

• A facilitation mechanism for the least developed countries. Türkiye introduced the Least Developed Countries Green Industrialisation Facilitation Mechanism (LDC-GIF) during the UN General Assembly and New York Climate Week. A formal launch is planned for COP31. It is designed to connect the industrial needs and project pipelines of LDCs with existing technology, technical expertise and finance, building on the UN Technology Bank for the Least Developed Countries.

• Sector and corridor initiatives. COP31 President Kurum has said that the summit will launch initiatives on green freight corridors, industrial decarbonisation, artificial intelligence and clean technologies, and circularity, among others.

• A multilateral platform hosted by UNIDO. At London Climate Action Week, UNIDO, the UK Government and the think tank E3G announced the Global Green Industrialisation Agenda (GGIA), to be launched at COP31 and hosted by UNIDO. It is meant to convene cleantech production, renewable deployment and industrial decarbonisation, with a focus on enabling policy frameworks and investment-ready project pipelines.

The Role of Supply Chains

Supply chains are the arena where climate policy, trade policy and industrial strategy intersect. Four areas are the most significant for COP31:

1. Materials and critical minerals. Batteries, wind, solar and grids all depend on minerals whose extraction and, especially, processing are concentrated in a few countries. Analysts have warned that processing bottlenecks and geopolitical pressure could slow or distort clean-technology scaling. Australia which will lead the negotiations at COP31) has its own stake: being a supplier to the transition does not make a supply chain green, and that a mineral's footprint includes the diesel trucks and trains that move it. Buyers are increasingly scrutinising those emissions.

2. Freight and logistics. Green corridors (specific routes where zero-emission fuels and vehicles are deployed together with infrastructure and finance) are the most visible freight tool. Linking Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's Hume Highway was earmarked as a Global Green Road Corridor with early deployments planned around COP31. Yet commentators in the shipping sector argue that corridors are only a first phase and that the real test is turning them into networks that work for everyday logistics decisions. The World Economic Forum has similarly argued that demand aggregation, such as a coalition of freight buyers committing to purchase green services, is what will draw in investment and shrink the green premium.

3. Trade. Emissions embedded in traded goods account for roughly 23% of global emissions. The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) was a flashpoint in Belém, where several emerging economies sought to put unilateral trade measures on the agenda. Studies of CBAM's effects suggest the impacts are highly localised, with job and revenue losses concentrated in particular regions. A side event at COP31 will examine plurilateral policies for green industrial trade, a sign of where some of the policy conversation is heading.

4. Value capture. For developing countries, the central question is whether green industrialisation means moving up the value chain or simply supplying raw inputs to someone else's factories. Work on regional corridors, including in Central Asia and Africa, stresses that pooling renewable energy and critical minerals could support clean-technology manufacturing, batteries and green hydrogen, but only if energy, transport and industrial planning are aligned rather than locking in fossil infrastructure.

   
   
   
   

Green industrialisation gives COP31 a tangible, economic story to tell of climate action as an industrial strategy. But factories do not decarbonise in isolation. Their energy, inputs, finance, freight and export markets all sit in supply chains that cross borders and, increasingly, trade rules. Antalya's success will be judged by whether it helps those chains change together, and whether the countries with the least industrial capacity get a real share of the new value rather than a seat at the edge of someone else's network.