Exclusive: Lord Mayor says Adelaide’s COP31 bid running hot in New York
Fresh from intense lobbying and meeting New York City Mayor Eric Adams – Jane Lomax-Smith says Adelaide has top odds in the two-horse race to host the huge global climate conference that would attract hundreds of world leaders next year.
Global climate change conference COP31 would make Adelaide “the biggest thing on the planet” should the city secure the event, Lord Mayor of Adelaide Dr Jane Lomax-Smith told InDaily.
Speaking on her return from New York City where she addressed a forum at New York Climate Week, the Lord Mayor said Adelaide was “the hot favourite” to secure the event that would see Adelaide “in every newscast around the world”. Last year’s event in Azerbaijan attracted more than 50,000 people to the nation’s capital Baku.
“We will have a huge number of visitors and it will have a big impact in terms of national agendas,” she said.
Either Adelaide or Türkiye would host COP31 in November next year, but Australia’s rival was yet to concede and ramped up its lobbying for the conference at recent meetings in Bonn, Germany, where it announced its host city: Antalya.
The host for 2026 must be decided with consensus from UN member countries, which Australia is one of, but if no decision was made by November, then the host city reverts to Bonn.
Federal Climate Minister Chris Bowen previously said Australia’s bid was backed by 23 of 28 members.
Lomax-Smith travelled to NYC as part of ‘Team Australia’, alongside Local Government and Trade Minister Joe Szakacs and Federal Climate Minister Chris Bowen. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was also in NYC, and in his address to the United Nations, he pitched Adelaide’s bid to hold the significant event.
While there, Lomax-Smith met with several government leaders including the Mayor of NYC Eric Adams.
“As I was the Mayor of the potential host city for COP31, I got invited to a lot of events, and whenever I had the chance, I spoke at them because it’s really important to wave the flag,” she said.
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“You can’t be in it and you can’t win it unless you are showing willing enthusiasm and a team approach.”
A council spokesperson said the Lord Mayor’s New York trip was expected to cost Adelaide ratepayers about $3000–$5000, but that did not include accommodation.
Lomax-Smith would also attend COP30’s Local Leaders Forum and a World Mayors Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in November, with costs covered by the organisers – the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.
Premier Peter Malinauskas also lobbied to have Adelaide win the conference that last year attracted more than 50,000 people to Azerbaijan when he met King Charles in London recently.
If Adelaide does secure COP31, the city would be the “biggest thing on the planet”, Lomax-Smith said.
“All of the groups that we met wanted to come to Australia,” she told InDaily.
“They particularly saw the resonance and significance of having a Pacific Island bid. There’s clearly a view that this group of nations have suffered the most impacts from climate change.”
Behind the scenes, all three levels of government are already preparing to host the event. In the state budget, $8 million was allocated to preparations for COP31 – described by former Deputy Premier Susan Close as “akin to hosting the Olympics”.
The Federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water recently published an expression of interest on the AusTender website for specialist event management contractors for the hoped-for event.
The form said “the scale and complexity of COPs exceed any event the Australian Government has convened before”.
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Lomax-Smith said council had been planning and holding committees and working groups for “many months” already.
“The view last year was whether we get it or not, we have to start planning because you can’t just stitch it all together in a few months,” she said.
“It’s not the time to panic. We haven’t got just one year, we’ve had much more than that.”
Hosting the event was a “logistics exercise that has to involve every aspect of life in the city”.
This involved getting water supplied, the “massive communications program”, and knowing where to park cars: “logistics that occur in every major event”.
“We have extraordinary experience in those areas. We’re not amateurs at putting on a good show,” she said.
The event would see thousands of delegates, world leaders, lobbyists, researchers, business leaders and associates descend on Adelaide.
The city can accommodate 400,000 people a day, Lomax-Smith said, noting “if we have a major event it can be 50 per cent more than that”.
“So we have capacity. I live in the city and I know there will be an area that will be involved in the event, which is pretty small all things considered, and most people will not be allowed in that small area because it is a secure area.
“However, the city will be open for business and it will be an absolute buzz because when the event occurs there will be peripheral events, there’ll be art, there will be music, there will be protests, there will be meetings.
“Every single group will have a side show, a side event or a small festival. There will be talks, there will be displays, it will be an absolute buzz and I’m really looking forward to it.”
She said delegates would be “gobsmacked” by how easy it is to walk around the CBD.
“It’s a walkable, safe city. They will be stunned by the climate, the food, the wine and they will have a good time.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt about that.”
If Adelaide missed out, Lomax-Smith believed the city could still draw positives from energy invested into the bid.
“But should we not win the bid, we still have to make use of all the effort and work we’ve put into the bid, because the federal, the state and the local government have put a lot of thought into how this might operate and what would happen, and we can still have a legacy from that, irrespective of whether or not we actually get the event,” she said.
“I’m an optimist. I’m optimistic that we’ll quite likely get it, but on the other hand, I think we can still have benefits if we don’t.”
