UN chief António Guterres called on countries to break their dependency on fossil fuels at a high-level event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, where COP31 presidents Türkiye and Australia set the tone for November’s climate summit.
As the world faces extreme climate impacts turbocharged by a “super El Niño” event and fossil fuel prices soar amid conflict in the Middle East, Guterres said reliance on fossil fuels “wreaks havoc”, and urged governments to boost their renewable energy capacity as a way out.
“Doubling down on oil and gas will only lock in vulnerability for decades. Fortunately, we have a way out. Because the crisis is accelerating – but so are the solutions,” he said.
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UN chief António Guterres called on countries to break their dependency on fossil fuels at a high-level event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, where COP31 presidents Türkiye and Australia set the tone for November’s climate summit.
As the world faces extreme climate impacts turbocharged by a “super El Niño” event and fossil fuel prices soar amid conflict in the Middle East, Guterres said reliance on fossil fuels “wreaks havoc”, and urged governments to boost their renewable energy capacity as a way out.
“Doubling down on oil and gas will only lock in vulnerability for decades. Fortunately, we have a way out. Because the crisis is accelerating – but so are the solutions,” he said.
Reiterating a point made in his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Guterres urged all countries to submit “credible” national roadmaps to end their production and consumption of coal, oil and gas – “with clear timelines”.
“The G20, responsible for 80 percent of global emissions, must lead. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities must apply. But all countries must raise their ambition,” he added.
At last year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, a group of some 80 governments led a failed push to develop a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil instead will draft a voluntary report to be presented this year ahead of COP31, incorporating views from a range of countries and organisations.
Governments first agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, but have since been unable to agree at UN climate talks on how to move forward with that commitment, as efforts to do so have been effectively blocked by large fossil fuel-producing countries.
The UN chief urged the world to match the accelerating climate crisis “with accelerating action”, by matching the revolution in clean energy with a revolution in finance and rising impacts with rising protection.
“I ask you all to deliver – then over-deliver,” he said. “We are the first generation with the tools to end the fossil fuel age – and the last who can avert climate catastrophe.”
Türkiye’s president says countries can’t all move at the same pace
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan urged countries to deliver an “implementation COP” in Antalya, noting that the “devastating floods in Nepal already demonstrate we no longer have time to lose”.
However, he stressed that developing countries cannot be rushed into taking measures outside of their capacity, adding that “in Antalya, we must bring ambition closer to capacity and targets closer to implementation”.
It is “not realistic to expect all countries to move forward all at the same pace”, he added, emphasising that “any proposal that fails to reconcile climate objectives with social and economic realities will be doomed to fail”.
The Turkish COP31 co-presidency has prioritised a voluntary target to increase electricity’s share of final energy consumption to 35% by 2035, up from the current level of 23%. Erdoğan also flagged a proposed target to reduce global waste, which is being championed by his wife.
IEA head: Strait of Hormuz pushing countries towards clean energy
As governments prepare for COP31 – where one of the flagship targets will be to boost electricity’s share of global energy consumption to 35% by 2035 – International Energy Agency (IEA) chief Fatih Birol said the Middle East conflict presents an opportunity not seen in years.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, due to tensions between the US and Iran, has led countries to reassess their energy sources and partners, Birol said. Their response, he added, has been in “a big chunk if not all” cases to pick clean energy as the most secure, affordable and green option.
“In the energy world, we have three choices in front of us: shall I choose the most secure option, the most economic energy option or the cleanest? We have to make choices and tradeoffs. When I look at the world today, for the first time in years, all three objectives hit very close to each other,” he said.
The IEA chief said an electrification target at COP31, proposed by Turkiye, would send “a very strong and unmistakable signal to investors, financiers, utilities, governments and beyond”.
“This, in turn, will not only make the world much more secure, and offer a more affordable option to consumers, but at the same time it will bring emissions down, which would be a major outcome and major good news,” he said.
Australian PM promotes Pacific climate resilience
Anthony Albanese, Australia’s Prime Minister, whose country is co-hosting the COP31 climate summit in Türkiye, offered firm support to the Pacific region which will host pre-COP discussions next month in Fiji. He called on countries to contribute to the new Pacific Resilience Facility (PRF), a regional climate financing mechanism intended to provide money for community climate action.
Australia has contributed $100 million dollars towards the fund’s goal of reaching a capitalisation of $1.5 billion. “It is a fact that those countries which are least responsible for the rise in emissions and the change in temperatures, such as our Pacific Island family, are those who are most affected by climate change,” he said.
He noted that for island nations such as Tuvalu and Kiribati, “it is literally an existential threat”. “So we must act, and we must act as a matter of urgency,” he added.
Palau’s President Surangel Whipps Jr. told the summit that the PRF will allow finance “to go directly to the communities that need it the most”, adding that “speed and agility are essential” for Pacific islands to adapt to extreme climate impacts.
Albanese added that Australia is seeking a non-permanent seat on the UN Security Council for 2029-30, and if elected, aims to “elevate the importance of climate security, particularly in the Pacific, but more broadly as well”.
He stressed that while the cost of not acting would be “too high”, there are also economic – as well as environmental – benefits from tackling global warming.
“The truth is that it makes good macroeconomic policy to shift to a renewable-led clean energy revolution,” he said, adding that it also helps families. Some 540,000 Australian households have taken up subsidies to install solar panels with battery storage in the past year, he noted, slashing the cost of their power.
UN launches country platforms to support mineral-rich nations
More than two years after a UN panel of experts called for justice and equity to underpin the development of the mineral supply chains needed for the energy transition, the UN is starting to follow up with concrete action.
On Wednesday, UN chief António Guterres announced that six countries – Guinea, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe – will be the first to receive dedicated support to turn their mineral wealth into engines for sustainable industrialisation, job creation and revenue generation so that it “drives local development, with added value remaining there”.
The country support mechanism, launched at the UN Climate Summit, will identify what individual recipient countries need to improve mineral governance, boost value addition and protect environmental and human rights and respond with coordinated technical assistance and capacity building from across the UN system.
Zambia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mulambo Haimbe said the initiative will support the country’s ambition “not simply to produce more, but to create greater value at home through investment, value addition, industrialisation and jobs”.
Booming demand for minerals such as copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earths that are needed to build the equipment the world needs to move away from fossil fuels offer real development opportunities for the countries that hold them. But communities living near extraction sites often shoulder most of the costs while seeing few of the benefits.
The UN panel’s recommendations set out a vision for more just and sustainable mineral value chains. But implementation has been slow to follow.
Suneeta Kaimal, president and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, welcomed the announcement of a delivery initiative, adding that to succeed it needs to be truly driven by local stakeholders.
The new support mechanism “could enable countries to lead on the design of strategies, safeguards and policies that will allow them to shift from rule-takers to rule-shapers and unlock prosperity for all their people”, she said.
