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Bula COP31!
Bula COP31 is a podcast for anyone wanting to understand what it means for Australia and the Türkiye to co-host COP31 in 2026, and why this moment is influential in the UNFCCC process. Australia will be putting the Pacific Islands at the forefront of the climate negotiations to ensure adaptation and infrastructure investments flow to the region.
Your hosts are Heidi Dumesich and Jack Whelan.
Jack is a proud boomer who started his sustainability career long before it was considered ‘cool’. His experience spans the earliest COPs and reaches across business, industry, government, development agencies, NGOs, and the UN. He’s worked with the International Chamber of Commerce and the World Business Council on Sustainable Development; and across Asia-Pacific with the Pacific Region Infrastructure Facility, Asian Development Bank, and World Bank. Jack was nominated by Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to the design team that established the IRIS initiative, supporting climate- and disaster-resilient infrastructure in Small Island Developing States — work that sits at the heart of Pacific climate priorities.
Heidi Dumesich is a millennial environmental scientist focused on implementing practical solutions. She’s the seasoned podcaster behind Life on Planet A, and currently a Sustainability Manager at Ventia, leading an Infrastructure Sustainability Council rating for a major road project. Heidi brings a fresh, grounded perspective on climate action and how sustainability plays out across communities and sectors.
Bula COP31 explores what really happens behind the scenes of a COP — with a special focus on how Pacific leadership, values, and voices shape the global climate agenda. Through candid conversations with stakeholders across Pacific governments, Australian agencies, industry, civil society, youth, and community groups, we unpack how climate diplomacy in our region is driven by relationships, resilience, and shared responsibility.
Whether you're a policymaker, business leader, activist, Pacific climate champion, or simply COP-curious, this podcast is your guide to getting the most out of COP31 — and understanding how it can deliver for the Blue Pacific Continent.
Tune in, get engaged, and say Bula COP31!
Bula COP31!
Episode 'P' for Palau: The Palau Pledge
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With COP31 just six months away, Heidi brings Jack — and all of us — up to speed on the rapidly shifting climate diplomacy landscape.
From Istanbul to Bonn, Palau to Queensland, this episode maps the crowded pre-COP calendar and asks what it all adds up to. COP31 host Turkey is ramping up its diplomatic presence: COP President Murat Kurum is in constant motion — most recently at the Copenhagen Climate Ministerial, where he joined Azerbaijan and Brazil in signing the "Belem Mission to 1.5" — a joint push to strengthen national climate contributions, accelerate adaptation, and scale up implementation. And UN Climate High-Level Champion Samed Agirbas is consulting stakeholders on what earns a place on the Action Agenda.
We share our conversation with Selen Inal, founder of the COP31 Turkiye Brief — a must-follow resource as Antalya approaches. Plus, Australia and Turkey's joint COP31 Youth Climate Champion has been announced: Sally Higgins, a farmer from Queensland, who'll be saying Bula! to us soon.
In the Pacific, preparations are intensifying. A Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Palau in September carries the theme BELAU — Building Economies, Life, Action, Unity. A Pre-COP lands in Fiji in October. And a landmark new Pacific Resilience Facility has been established by Treaty, with Australia making a substantial initial contribution to channel climate finance to vulnerable island states.
And before all of that: the SB64 Subsidiary Body meetings open in Bonn on 8 June, where government officials will be hammering out the technical and policy groundwork for COP31 negotiations on finance, mitigation, adaptation, and transparency.
#BulaCOP32 #COP31 #ClimateAction #UNFCCC #PacificClimate #ClimateFinance #Belem #NetZero #PacificResilience #ClimateJustice #COP31Turkiye #SB64 #Bonn #ClimatePolicy #Pacific #Palau #Fiji #Tuvalu #MarshallIslands #Vanuatu #YouthClimate #Podcast #ClimatePodcast #Sustainability #GlobalClimateAction
Links from the podcast:
- https://www.palaupledge.com/
- unfccc.int › sb64June Climate Meetings (SB64) - UNFCCC
- https://globalzerowasteforum.org
- https://sdg.iisd.org/events/55th-pacific-islands-forum-leaders-meeting/
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