ANTALYA (The Thursday Times) — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called on Wednesday for a new “Climate Justice Compact” as world leaders opened the two-day summit at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, with the United States absent and most G7 leaders staying away.
“We need a new Climate Justice Compact, based on shared responsibility, shared security and shared benefits,” Guterres told the leaders’ summit. He said it should rest on four pillars: speeding up a “just transition” away from fossil fuels, protecting vulnerable people, ensuring adequate finance, and choosing cooperation over geopolitical fragmentation.
To keep the 1.5C goal within reach, he said, global renewable capacity must triple from 2025 levels by 2035 and unabated coal power must fall by at least 75 per cent. He urged developed countries to deliver at least $300 billion a year by 2035 and proposed taxing the windfall profits of the biggest oil companies, the nine largest of which he said made $95 billion last quarter. “Either plan this just transition, or pay for it in chaos and lost livelihoods,” he said, calling the current trajectory a “path to mutually assured destruction”.
Who came, and who stayed away
Leaders and senior officials from about 100 countries gathered at the Antalya Expo Center. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was among them, received by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Guterres. Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Chinese Vice-President Han Zheng, Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian were among those due to speak, and Britain’s Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, was expected to attend.
The United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, is absent again after President Donald Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement process. Leaders of Germany, France, Italy, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Canada and Japan also stayed away. The Climate Action Network gave its “Fossil of the Day” award on Tuesday to the “absent leaders of wealthy countries”.
An ‘implementation COP’
COP31 opened on Monday and runs until November 20. Türkiye holds the presidency, with Environment Minister Murat Kurum as COP31 president, while Australia’s Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen leads the negotiations under a compromise struck between the two countries over hosting. Kurum has called it an “Implementation COP”, focused on delivering earlier promises rather than setting new headline targets.
The presidency’s flagship is a proposal to raise electricity’s share of global energy use to 35 per cent by 2035, from about 21 per cent now. Some countries have pushed back because the draft wording does not require the extra electricity to come from clean sources, which critics say could lock in fossil fuels. Australia is backing a push to double the number of homes with rooftop solar to at least 300 million by 2030.
On Tuesday Guterres urged the hosts to move “from discussing the transition to organising it, financing it, and delivering it”, backing a roadmap for moving away from fossil fuels presented by Brazil, last year’s host. Finance and trade are on Friday’s agenda, and the high-level segment resumes on November 17 and 18 for leaders who do not speak this week.
