Guterres at COP31: ‘Polluters must pay’, calls for climate justice pact and tax on fossil fuel firms

UN Secretary-General António Guterres has urged world leaders at the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Türkiye, to agree a new "climate justice compact", including taxes on fossil fuel companies to pay for help to the countries hit hardest by global warming.

Speaking at the conference's leaders' summit on Wednesday 11 November, Guterres said: "The clock is winding down. It's make or bake time." COP31, co-hosted by Türkiye and Australia, runs from 9 to 20 November, UN News reported.

What Guterres said

• Current national climate plans, if fully implemented, point to more than 2.5°C of warming by the end of the century, he said. 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."
• He proposed a compact with four priorities: speeding the move away from fossil fuels while protecting workers and expanding renewables; protecting vulnerable people through early warning, adaptation and faster post-disaster support; delivering affordable climate finance; and strengthening international cooperation.
• On money, he said the nine largest oil companies earned $95 billion in one quarter, while the international loss-and-damage fund has received roughly $600 million, about 14 hours of those companies' profits. "Polluters must pay," he said, drawing an ovation.

Methane

Guterres asked the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) to develop a global standard for near-zero methane emissions from oil and gas. UN News noted that methane is responsible for nearly a third of global warming to date and traps more than 80 times as much heat as CO₂ over 20 years. UNEP's methane observatory has helped cut emissions in 45 cases across 13 countries, but of more than 5,000 alerts issued since 2023 barely one in eight has received a response, said its head Julia Ferini.

Other leaders

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said three decades of negotiations have not delivered enough on implementation and called for more support for developing countries. Brazil's President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva warned that climate change is losing ground on the agenda: "We started talking more about weapons and tariffs than the survival of future generations."

Still unresolved

UN News said negotiators are still divided on predictable climate finance, how quickly emergency loss-and-damage money reaches affected countries, how long the UN's emissions-acceleration programme should run, and a mechanism for a just transition.