An important summit on tackling climate change took place in June ahead of COP31, which will be hosted by Türkiye. First held in 2019 and now one of the world's largest independent climate events, the international platform London Climate Action Week (LCAW) hosted vigorous debate and important decisions.
Bringing public institutions, companies, financial institutions, academics, NGOs and international organisations together from 20 to 28 June, LCAW has long played an important role in raising awareness of climate change and developing tangible solutions to the climate crisis. By convening actors from different sectors to accelerate the implementation of climate policy, it also serves as a form of preparation for COP summits.
This year's event was the largest LCAW to date, bringing together more than 75,000 people at over 1,300 events across London over nine days in June.
Extreme Heat Became a Presentation on the Climate Crisis
It would have been difficult to imagine a setting more appropriate for LCAW, yet also more disturbing. While tens of thousands of people gathered across London to discuss climate change, the city sweltered under the historic June heat affecting Europe. Some sessions were cancelled or held online because of the extreme temperatures. The heatwave provided a more powerful demonstration of the effects of the climate crisis than any presentation could have done.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres delivered one of LCAW's principal opening addresses. He stressed the need to accelerate the transition to clean energy and translate countries' commitments into tangible implementation. Guterres also issued a Methane Action Call, reminding participants that greenhouse gas reductions must extend beyond carbon and that methane emissions must be cut rapidly.
Although reports issued by different organisations during the week focused on various dimensions of the transition, they shared a common conclusion: climate action is no longer only an environmental imperative, but also a source of resilience, competitiveness and long-term value for companies.
One of the clearest themes of London Climate Action Week was the move from target-setting to implementation. Discussions focused particularly on financing adaptation projects in developing countries, private-sector investment and transformation of the financial system. They examined why viable projects struggle to access finance and what support project developers need before investors are prepared to participate.
Corporate Net-Zero Standard Version 2.0 Announced
Energy security, affordable access to energy and economic resilience also shaped the week's discussions. Energy security, renewable-energy investment, grid infrastructure and electrification consequently moved to the fore. At the Global Energy Transition and Electrification Summit, held during the week, governments, companies and international organisations launched a new platform called Electrify Now.
The initiative brings governments, international organisations, business, the financial sector and civil society together under one roof to expand the use of clean electricity in place of fossil fuels. In this context, COP31 President and Minister of Environment, Urbanisation and Climate Change Murat Kurum announced a target to increase electricity's share of final energy consumption from approximately 21% today to 35% by 2035.
In opening addresses, panels and private meetings, the question was no longer why companies should take climate action, but how they could implement it credibly in an increasingly complex operating environment.
For example, the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), one of the principal global organisations assessing and validating whether companies' emissions-reduction targets align with the Paris Agreement, brought business and civil-society leaders together to introduce Corporate Net-Zero Standard Version 2.0, the updated international standard for setting, implementing and reporting corporate net-zero greenhouse gas emissions targets.
Türkiye's COP31 Action Agenda Presented
Achieving net-zero emissions requires not only companies, but also sectors, financial systems, supply chains and public policy to move together. No single company, institution or standard can deliver the transition alone, which makes cooperation essential.
Many LCAW sessions emphasised that climate adaptation should be treated not as an issue affecting particular sectors, but as a system-wide concern.
One example was a roundtable entitled Pathways for Resourcing Community-Led Climate Solutions, organised by Global South House, an international platform that advocates directing decision-making power and resources in climate and nature finance more directly to local communities.
Participants said that local communities were not merely passive recipients of investment, but actors managing climate risks. They also stressed that communities experiencing the effects of climate change directly possess knowledge and experience that distant institutions often lack.
One of LCAW's flagship events was the 2026 Climate Governance Forum, which brought together representatives of government, business, finance, the United Nations and civil society.
Organised by Third Generation Environmentalism (E3G), an independent UK-based climate-policy think tank, the forum examined energy transition, climate finance, resilience, electrification and private-sector leadership in depth. It emphasised that long-term climate targets cannot be sustained without strong and credible institutions.
At the forum's diplomatic opening session, Murat Kurum presented the COP31 Action Agenda and explained Türkiye's implementation-focused approach to the COP31 process to international stakeholders.
Many Topics Aligned with the COP31 Agenda
Through LCAW's meetings and forums, governments, international organisations, the financial sector and private-sector representatives came together ahead of COP31 in Antalya and contributed to its implementation agenda. Many topics highlighted in London directly aligned with the COP31 Presidency's announced Action Agenda.
As in COP31's green-industrialisation agenda, LCAW discussed industrial decarbonisation and how low-carbon production could be accelerated while preserving competitiveness. In addition to forests, land use, nature-based solutions and protection of carbon sinks, the climate resilience of cities - another COP31 agenda item - was among the most widely discussed topics in relation to extreme heat, floods, droughts and other disasters.
The circular economy and waste, the public-health effects of extreme heat and adaptation of health systems to climate change were also among the areas of strongest alignment with the COP31 agenda.
This year's London Climate Action Week is regarded as an important milestone. The expertise demonstrated in the week's discussions and the capacity for public institutions, the private sector and civil society to work together showed how far collaboration has developed over the past 20 years. This provides strong evidence that awareness of the minimum requirements imposed by the reality of climate change is increasing.
As COP31 approaches, all stakeholders with growing capacity for cooperation should therefore view the summit as the starting point for moving climate action from an "idea that still requires persuasion" into implementation.
Date: 13 July 2026
