‘Make or bake time’: Guterres urges climate justice pact as leaders gather at COP31

Today saw packed corridors at the COP31 conference venue in Antalya as world leaders arrived for a two-day high-level Summit, bringing tighter security, road closures and an early start for delegates, some of whom reached the venue as early as 5 a.m.

Those who arrived before dawn were rewarded with a spectacular sunrise. Later, at the opening ceremony, traditional Turkish dancing, colourful performances, videos and even a COP31 theme song gave the opening ceremony an unusually festive air for a gathering confronting one of the world’s most pressing crises.

But the day’s most memorable message came from the Secretary-General, who accused polluters of delaying action, and once again warned that the climate crisis is advancing faster than global efforts to contain it.

“Our planet is heating up. The clock is winding down. It’s make or bake time,” he said, reminding world leaders that even if current national plans are fully implemented, the planet is heading towards more than 2.5°C of warming by century’s end.

But he insisted that breaching the 1.5°C threshold does not mean giving up. “Science is not telling us to surrender. It is telling us to fight harder” the UN chief said, stressing that every fraction of a degree of warming avoided matters.

Against that backdrop, the Secretary-General proposed a ‘climate justice compact’ to help developing countries move away from fossil fuels while protecting those already suffering from climate change.

“We cannot demand that countries transform their economies while denying them the means to do so,” he said.

The proposed compact rests on four priorities:

The UN chief took aim at fossil fuel interests, accusing them of distorting science and delaying climate action.

“Fossil fuels must go the way of the dinosaurs,” he declared. “The dinosaurs did not have a lobby. Fossil fuels do.”

He contrasted the $95 billion earned by the world’s nine largest oil companies in one quarter with the roughly $600 million received by the international fund helping vulnerable countries recover from climate-related loss and damage.

That was equivalent to just 14 hours of those companies’ profits, he said, urging governments to tax windfall profits.

“Polluters must pay”, a line that earned him an ovation in the plenary.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, whose country is co-hosting COP31 in Antalya with Australia, acknowledged that three decades of climate negotiations had failed to deliver sufficient results. 

“This success at the level of ideas has not produced the same results when it comes to implementation,” he said, calling for greater support for developing countries.

Brazilian President Lula da Silva, meanwhile, warned that climate change was losing ground on the international agenda as wars and trade disputes overshadowed the fight against global warming.

“We started talking more about weapons and tariffs than the survival of future generations,” he said, defending international cooperation at a time when climate science and multilateralism are increasingly under attack. 

Mr. Lula also announced that Brazil would develop national roadmaps to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and end deforestation, building on the work of last year's COP30, which was held in the Amazon.

An invisible gas that traps more than 80 times as much heat as carbon dioxide over 20 years featured prominently during Wednesday's “Zero Waste” thematic day.

Methane, released by fossil fuel operations, agriculture and rotting waste, is responsible for nearly a third of global warming to date. At a special event, Mr. Guterres called on the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to develop a global standard for near-zero methane emissions from oil and gas.

UNEP is already tracking major leaks from space, using satellites and artificial intelligence to identify emissions and alert governments and companies.

Julia Ferini, who leads UNEP’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, told UN News that the system has helped reduce emissions in 45 cases across 13 countries. 

She pointed to a recent case in Iraq, where a damaged gas pipeline had been leaking methane for two years, producing emissions equivalent to those of 350,000 cars. The leak was stopped by applying a coating to the corroded pipe.

“Methane is our climate emergency brake,” she said, explaining that cutting this short-lived gas could slow warming relatively quickly, buying time to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Yet despite more than 5,000 alerts issued since 2023, barely one in eight has received a response, the UN chief noted.

And while negotiators in Antalya wrestle with how to accelerate climate action, young entrepreneurs are already putting some of them into practice.

In Botswana, Makwena Moesi is tackling food waste with an unusual workforce: more than half a million worms.

Her company, Viva Organica, collects organic waste from food retailers and turns it into fertilizer through a process known as vermicomposting, improving soil health while keeping waste out of landfills.

The business has already processed more than 1,000 tonnes of organic waste.

But Ms. Moesi, a biologist by training, says climate-friendly solutions must also make economic sense.

“A farmer does not wake up in the morning thinking about what am I gonna do to help sequester this amount of carbon dioxide from the air,” she told UN News.

Instead, she said, farmers want to know how much food they can grow, how to improve their harvests and whether they can afford the products that could help them.

Alongside the leaders’ speeches, negotiators continued grappling with key unresolved issues:

Follow the latest developments from COP31 through our new podcast, Talk & Action, and our special daily coverage of the conference.