A stark contrast in climate finance is now at the heart of COP31: while major oil firms rake in tens of billions, the world’s most vulnerable countries are scraping together far less to cope with climate damage.
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has called on governments to tax the windfall profits of major oil companies to help developing countries pay for the increasingly destructive consequences of climate change.
Addressing world leaders at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, Mr Guterres warned that global efforts to tackle climate change were failing to keep pace with the accelerating crisis.
He said the world was heading towards potentially catastrophic consequences unless governments dramatically increased their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The two-week conference kicked off earlier this week in the Mediterranean resort city of Antalya, with governments under pressure to tackle the climate crisis after a year of heatwaves in Europe, deadly floods in Nepal and major wildfires in Indonesia.
Mr Guterres called for a new international Climate Justice Compact to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels and provide developing countries with the financial and technological assistance needed to tackle climate change.
He said nine of the world’s largest oil companies had made approximately $95 billion in profits over a three-month period.
By comparison, he said the international fund established to help vulnerable countries recover from climate-related losses, and damage had received around $600 million.
He calculated that this was equivalent to what the nine oil companies had made in approximately 14 hours.
The UN chief accused powerful fossil fuel interests of obstructing progress by undermining climate science and delaying government action and that fossil fuels needed to become a thing of the past.
He called for an end to new coal developments and new oil and gas infrastructure that would undermine efforts to limit global warming.
He called on governments to introduce taxes on exceptional fossil fuel profits and use the proceeds to help countries suffering the consequences of global warming.
“Polluters must pay,” he declared.
The 31st United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place at the Antalya Expo Center
Mr Guterres said one of the most encouraging developments of the past decade had been the extraordinary growth of renewable energy and other clean technologies.
He pointed out that solar power accounted for only around 1% of global electricity generation ten years ago.
Last year, he said, solar energy alone met almost three-quarters of the increase in global electricity demand.
Electric vehicles had also grown from less than one in every 100 new cars sold a decade ago to approaching one in three today.
In his address, Mr Guterres also called on developed countries to fulfil their commitment to provide at least $300 billion annually in climate finance for developing countries by 2035, alongside efforts to mobilise $1.3 trillion a year from all sources.
He argued that governments could not expect developing countries to transform their economies without providing the means to do so.
Ireland has crucial role in leading EU negotiations – O’Brien
Minister for Climate, Energy and Environment, Darragh O’Brien said he has been “honest” in admitting that Ireland will get only around half way towards its 2030 emissions reductions target.
The minister said that Ireland has a crucial role in the conference in helping to lead the EU’s negotiations.
Mr O’Brien is travelling to the summit in Turkey on Friday.
Absence of many world leaders noted
Dozens of leaders will speak during the “high-level segment” taking place today and tomorrow, including Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian.
However, observers have pointed to the absence of some big names, with UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham the only leader from a G7 country scheduled to address the summit.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is coming to Antalya, but French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni are skipping the event.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and Japanese counterpart Sanae Takaichi are also absent from the most recent list.
Several European leaders will skip COP31 to attend the Irish EU Presidency summit
“It is a shame that some of the bigger European leaders aren’t coming. We need Europe to be showing up strongly at this COP,” Cosima Cassel, a climate diplomacy expert at think-tank E3G, told AFP.
Wopke Hoekstra, the EU’s top climate official, said the absences were “not completely atypical” as leaders may have “practical” reasons for not being able to attend a summit.
But he also told reporters in Brussels that “expectations are not necessarily high” for this climate conference.
Iran’s Mr Pezeshkian said he would use the event as an opportunity to express Tehran’s position on environmental destruction in war.
“At this conference, we will speak about the actions of the United States and Israel in destroying the environment,” he said before departing for Turkey, according to Iranian state television.
The French government said Mr Macron would be absent because today is World War I Armistice Day and he is attending the Irish EU Presidency summit in Dublin tomorrow.
“If top leaders want influence over where the global (energy) transition is going, showing up is a pretty good place to start,” said Chiara Martinelli, director of Climate Action Network Europe.
“I am afraid that Ursula von der Leyen will be lonely on the stage while the leaders of the biggest EU economies are a no-show,” Ms Martinelli said.
Unsurprisingly, US President Donald Trump, who pulled the United States out of the Paris Agreement and has not sent officials to climate talks since his re-election in 2024, is not attending the summit.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, who rarely attends COPs, will be represented by Vice President Han Zheng.
The US and China are the world’s top economies and biggest emitters of planet-heating emissions, making their presence at climate talks crucial to the process.
COP31 host Turkey is championing a voluntary initiative to accelerate the electrification of transport, buildings and industry, with a target of raising electricity’s share of global energy consumption to 35% by 2035.
The EU has stressed that electrification must be “clean”, which could spark debate over the role of oil, gas and coal in the Turkish proposal.
Since agreeing in 2023 for the first time to transition away from fossil fuels – the main driver of climate change – nations have struggled to advance that goal at the annual COP conferences.
Additional reporting AFP
