• Opinion by Hari Krishna Nibanupudi (antalya, türkiye)
• Wednesday, November 11, 2026
• Inter Press Service

ANTALYA, Türkiye, November 11 (IPS) - As COP31 gets underway in Antalya, two realities demand attention. The World Meteorological Organisation reports that 2015–2025 were the 11 hottest years on record, with 2025 about 1.43°C above pre-industrial levels.

The World Health Organisation projects that the number of people aged 60 and over will rise from one billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion in 2030 and 2.1 billion in 2050, roughly one in five people.

These trends are connected: together, they define the population that climate policy must serve. Yet representation in climate negotiations has barely changed.

The UN climate process recognises nine NGO constituencies, including women and gender, youth, Indigenous Peoples and farmers, but none for older people. These constituencies coordinate interventions, nominate speakers and facilitate participation in mandated events. An older minister at the negotiating table cannot be assumed to represent older people facing drought, displacement or unaffordable electricity.

From agreement to whose action

There are reasons to defend the COP process. Dubai’s COP28 operationalised the loss and damage fund and agreed a transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems. Baku’s COP29 established a goal of at least $300 billion annually for developing countries by 2035, with developed countries taking the lead, alongside efforts to scale finance from all sources to $1.3 trillion a year.Belém’s COP30 called for tripling adaptation finance by 2035, adopted 59 adaptation indicators and agreed a just transition mechanism.

The COP31 agenda brings finance, adaptation measurement, emissions cuts and a just transition into focus, alongside loss and damage funding. Its action priorities include food security, resilient cities, health systems, clean energy and youth and education. Each has an ageing dimension. The test is whether the institutions delivering these priorities explicitly recognise older people as rights holders and partners, and reflect that recognition in investment.

Recognition has consequences. Women have a Gender Action Plan; Indigenous Peoples have dedicated institutional spaces; children and youth have an established constituency and a youth climate champion in the presidency. These gains were won through sustained advocacy and remain incomplete.

They demonstrate that institutions can change. Recognition exists in fragments: the Sharm el-Sheikh Adaptation Agenda identifies older people among populations requiring heat protection. But being named in a vulnerability list is a limited form of inclusion. Recognition must carry authority, resources and accountability across climate institutions, long after a summit closes. 

The mortality figures are already an answer

WHO reports that heat-related mortality among people over 65 increased approximately 85% between 2000–2004 and 2017–2021. Europe’s summer of 2022 brought an estimated 61,672 heat-related deaths.The 2025 Lancet Countdown, summarised by WHO, estimates an annual global heat death toll of 546,000 across all ages. “Every fraction of a degree of warming costs lives and livelihoods,” WHO’s Jeremy Farrar warned.

The risks accumulate. Heat can aggravate heart, lung and kidney disease. Isolation, inaccessible transport, inadequate housing and interrupted electricity or health services can turn exposure into catastrophe.

An early warning delivered only through a smartphone, or an evacuation plan that assumes everyone can walk, can exclude precisely those it is meant to protect.

A 2024 Nature Communications study projects that by 2050 more than 23% of people aged 69 and over will live in climates where the hottest days exceed 37.5°C, compared with 14% in 2020. Depending on the scenario, an additional 177–246 million older adults could face this acute heat exposure.

Population ageing magnifies the consequences of delayed adaptation. Every clinic without backup power, every unshaded settlement and every inaccessible shelter becomes a longer-term liability as the population it serves changes.

Ageism or institutional inertia?

Is this exclusion ageism? The UN’s Global Report on Ageism estimated that one in two people worldwide holds ageist attitudes towards older people. That does not establish climate negotiators’ motives. It does make it implausible to assume that climate institutions are insulated from a prejudice embedded elsewhere in society.

Perhaps overloaded institutions have developed inclusion fatigue: another constituency, another consultation, another demand on scarce finance.

But population ageing is not a fashionable new issue. It is a foreseeable transformation of the societies that these institutions exist to serve. The division between “today’s older generation” and “tomorrow’s climate victims” is also false. Someone aged 40 today will be 64 in 2050. Adaptation that neglects ageing fails both people who are older now and those who will grow old under harsher conditions.

The people still tending the land

The case for inclusion goes beyond preventing deaths. Older people continue to produce food and sustain the knowledge on which adaptation depends. Eurostat found that 33.2% of EU farm managers were at least 65 in 2020; they managed 16.9% of utilised agricultural land.

Furthermore, Japan’s agriculture ministry reports that 71.7% of its core agricultural workers were 65 or older in 2024, with an average age of 69.2. These are different statistical categories, not a global comparison. Both findings expose the folly of designing agricultural resilience without older producers. In remote rangelands, forests and mountain environments, experience can be an adaptation resource.

UNESCO’s African climate work identifies elders as holders of detailed, often undocumented knowledge about weather and coping practices. The IPCC finds that exchanges between Indigenous elders and youth can strengthen adaptive capacity, and that pastoralists’ local knowledge can complement scientific research. 

The ecological stakes are substantial: IPBES estimates that Indigenous Peoples traditionally own, manage, use or occupy at least a quarter of global land. That figure describes Indigenous Peoples collectively, not older people alone. It nevertheless underlines the importance of supporting the elders who help transmit ecological knowledge within these communities. Excluding elders can weaken the transfer of knowledge needed to sustain landscapes. Their expertise should be tested alongside contemporary climate science, supported and remunerated, rather than treated as a free substitute for investment.

Recognition must change where the money goes

Climate funding criteria should recognise older people and include them in decisions. The Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund should require proposals to assess age-related risks, consult older people’s associations and fund relevant measures.

Country programmes should support heat plans with home outreach, accessible cooling and evacuation, and resilient primary health and care services. Projects should report spending and outcomes by age, sex and disability, distinguishing older age groups.

Loss and Damage applicants should involve older people in assessing losses and selecting responses, including accessible temporary housing, livelihood recovery, and continued access to medicines and care. Assessments should capture non-economic losses, including cultural knowledge and community ties, not only wages and property.

Eligibility and delivery must not depend on employment records, land titles or digital access. The Santiago Network should help countries and communities assess older people’s losses and plan responses. National adaptation plans and early warning systems should identify who needs accessible information, transport or assistance, and release finance when agreed forecast triggers are met. Fund older people’s associations to plan, conduct outreach and monitor outcomes. 

Finally, the UNFCCC should establish a transparent, time-bound pathway towards recognising an older people’s constituency. Meanwhile, governments and climate bodies should include representatives of older women, Indigenous elders and older people with disabilities in national delegations, adaptation consultations and relevant advisory processes, with accessible participation and travel support.

Intergenerational programmes should pay elders and young people to combine ecological knowledge with climate science. None of this requires postponing action until another negotiating agenda is created. It requires institutions to recognise the demographic reality already before them and make existing commitments serve it.

The writing is on the wall: the world is growing hotter and older. How many more summits will pass before climate institutions let that reality shape who decides, what is funded and whose lives are protected?

Hari Krishna Nibanupudi is a global climate change and ageing adviser with HelpAge International

© Inter Press Service (20261111185022) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

Where next?

Advertisement