If COP climate summit comes to Australia, this city would be the perfect host

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s comment on Monday that he could not think of a better place to hold United Nations climate talks than Adelaide might have startled some observers from, say, Sydney and Brisbane.

If Australia is to co-host the COP (Conference of the Parties) talks with our Pacific neighbours next year as Albanese plans – an event that would be the largest diplomatic event ever held in this country – why not host them in a major capital city on the Pacific Ocean rather than a small one on the Southern Ocean?

Peter Malinauskas speaks alongside Clare O’Neil and Anthony Albanese. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

There are practicalities worth considering.

The first is that South Australia really wants to host the talks and is willing to contribute to the cost. “This is bigger than Ben Hur,” said SA Premier Peter Malinauskas, the AFR reported. “COP is Gather Round, plus LIV Golf, plus WOMAD, plus the [Adelaide] Festival, plus Tour Down Under all together,” he added, rattling off a string of Adelaide’s major events.

When he put forward Adelaide as host late last year, he said the 30,000 potential attendees would benefit the state’s economy to the tune of $500 million. By contrast the NSW government has been silent on the issue and Queensland’s new Liberal National government is less exercised by climate than its Labor predecessor.

The event would be held days before the next Victorian election, effectively knocking Melbourne out of contention. As Albanese points out, South Australia has a story to tell in tackling climate change.

It is a global leader in energy transition, ramping up its renewable energy share from about 1 per cent of capacity to 76 per cent in just over 16 years, with a goal of reaching net 100 per cent by 2027. For a nation such as Australia that has a patchy history in decarbonisation efforts, this is a startling achievement.

None of this will count for much if Australia does not win the right to host the event, which depends on two things. Firstly, its only serious competition, Turkey, will have to pull out, and secondly, Labor will have to win the May 3 election.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has declared it would be “madness” to hold the COP in the midst of a cost of living crisis.

He cites not only the price of hosting the event – which would probably land somewhere in the hundreds of millions – but also the cost that Australia would incur in contributing to any fund or climate financing mechanism the COP ends up creating. This, he says, could end up costing the nation tens of billions.

Dutton is right, partly. Most COP hosts end up championing climate initiatives that necessitate billions in contributions from world governments, and if you are going to rattle the can, you face an obligation to be the first to stick some cash into it.

Last year’s host, Azerbaijan, created the Baku Climate Unity Pact, which seeks to raise $300 billion annually by 2025. But Azerbaijan’s contribution is not clear, and as negotiations were carried out it was seeking contributions totalling $1 billion from developed nations. So Dutton’s bill estimation seems high.

Either way, it is not all cost. As Pacific island nations keep telling us, their key security threat and concern is climate change. One of Australia’s diplomatic priorities is ensuring that we remain the security partner of choice.

By hosting the COP in the Pacific, Australia would have a hand in designing any initiatives that come out of it. Australia would be in a position to build global goodwill and seek financial support for the project of decarbonising and building resilience in small island nations. It’s a project in our immediate national interest, says Dr Wesley Morgan, a climate diplomacy expert at the Institute of Climate Risk and Response at the University of NSW.

Australia has wind and solar resources to sell to the very decision makers COP would attract. Credit: Eamon Gallagher

He notes that the UK government’s assessment of the value of hosting the COP in Glasgow in 2021 found the net economic benefit was double that spent – around $1 billion. This includes benefits from trade deals and foreign investment. Morgan argues that with critical minerals and wind and solar resources to sell to the very decision makers COP would attract, Australia has even more to gain.

To Tony Wood, director of the Grattan Institute’s energy program, the maths is more simple. Climate change presents an existential threat to Australia and to the world. Whatever its faults, the Paris Accord and the annual meeting of its signatories – the Conference of the Parties – is the only viable international tool we have to fight it.

Hosting the COP, he reckons, is worth the cost. Even if it does run into the billions.

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