In Turkey, where COP31 will take place in November, environmental activists are facing arrests, prosecutions, intimidation and restrictions on peaceful protest. Apparently, the planet is welcome to discuss its future, provided its defenders do not make too much noise.
Human Rights Watch raised the alarm on October 13, warning that Turkish authorities were arbitrarily arresting and prosecuting people involved in environmental protests ahead of the summit. Its findings describe villagers confronting coal mining, residents opposing gold exploration, and activists subjected to police intervention and legal pressure. Some cases involve allegations that peaceful demonstrators were detained without proper legal process. These are not abstract diplomatic disagreements. They concern people defending their homes, land, forests and water.
And these are precisely the voices a climate summit should be listening to. Instead, the international community prepares another magnificent gathering of government delegations, negotiators, corporate representatives and political celebrities, complete with carefully choreographed speeches about sustainability and the future of humanity. There will be declarations, photographs, promises and probably enough recycled conference stationery to make somebody feel environmentally responsible.
Meanwhile, a villager standing between a mining operation and a threatened forest may discover that defending the environment is a much more dangerous occupation than delivering a speech about it. Welcome to the green hypocrisy industry. The problem extends beyond Türkiye. International institutions repeatedly depend on governments whose domestic practices contradict the values their international events are supposed to promote. The host receives prestige, global visibility and an opportunity to present itself as a responsible international partner. The organisers receive their conference facilities, diplomatic access and another opportunity to announce that multilateralism is alive and well.
Everybody gets a photograph. The people challenging destructive projects get handcuffs. Of course, hosting a major international conference does not require a government to possess a flawless human-rights record. If it did, finding suitable hosts would become considerably more complicated. Nor should climate diplomacy be abandoned because a host government behaves repressively. Climate change does not wait for democratic perfection, and international cooperation remains indispensable.
But there is a difference between engaging an imperfect government and allowing international prestige to become a convenient shield against scrutiny. The United Nations climate process cannot credibly demand that governments listen to scientific evidence while ignoring citizens who document environmental destruction on their own doorsteps. It cannot celebrate public participation in conference halls while communities outside those halls face intimidation for opposing coal mines, forest clearance or potentially damaging mineral exploration.
Climate policy is not merely a negotiation between ministries. It determines who breathes polluted air, who loses access to water, whose farmland disappears and whose community is sacrificed in the name of economic development. Local residents are not decorative extras in this story. They are often the first people to recognise the consequences of decisions made far above their heads. When authorities criminalise peaceful opposition, they do more than violate individual rights. They weaken the public scrutiny necessary to expose bad environmental decisions before the damage becomes irreversible.
And what does the international community do? It books the conference centre. This is where the hypocrisy becomes particularly infuriating. Governments routinely praise grassroots action when activists provide attractive photographs for climate campaigns. Young people holding banners make excellent publicity. Indigenous communities defending forests become inspiring symbols. Villagers protecting their water supply are celebrated in carefully selected speeches.
But when these people obstruct the comfortable narrative of economic progress, suddenly they are accused of disrupting public order. The activist is welcome as a photograph, not as a political participant. Turkey’s COP31 preparations should therefore be judged not only by the agreements negotiated inside the summit but also by whether environmental defenders outside it can exercise their rights without intimidation. International delegates should raise these concerns publicly and insist on meaningful guarantees for peaceful assembly, freedom of expression and civil-society participation.
The summit's organisers should make clear that access to international prestige does not mean immunity from scrutiny. Governments must not be allowed to use global conferences as public-relations machinery while treating domestic dissent as a security problem. And if that sounds politically inconvenient, good. Climate diplomacy is supposed to confront inconvenient realities. The planet does not need another polished declaration promising a sustainable future while the people protecting that future are being dragged away from their forests. It needs governments prepared to accept criticism, examine evidence and change destructive policies. It needs international institutions willing to defend the right of ordinary people to challenge powerful interests.
Most of all, it needs fewer ceremonies in which the language of environmental responsibility is used to conceal the absence of political courage. COP31 may produce important agreements. It may advance negotiations that genuinely matter. But no diplomatic achievement should exempt its host from questions about repression, and no climate agreement can fully claim legitimacy while peaceful environmental defenders are being silenced.
A green future cannot be built on a blackmail of fear. If governments want applause for protecting the planet, they should begin by protecting the people who dare to defend it. Otherwise, COP31 risks becoming another expensive exercise in diplomatic greenwashing: a global celebration of environmental responsibility, hosted by a government whose critics are being taught the price of speaking up.
The forests will not care how many delegates attended. The rivers will not applaud the final declaration. And the planet will certainly not be impressed by the photographs.
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