ANTALYA (The Thursday Times) — UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has asked the UN Environment Programme to set a global near-zero benchmark for methane from oil and gas, as philanthropic groups pledged more than $480 million at the COP31 climate summit to cut methane and other fast-acting pollutants.
“Voluntary action is no longer enough,” Guterres told a leaders’ roundtable in Antalya on Wednesday. He asked governments to enforce rules and create incentives to “prevent, recover and responsibly manage waste”.
Methane drives nearly a third of current global warming, he said, yet barely one in eight of the more than 5,000 leak alerts the UN Environment Programme has issued since 2023 has received a response.
A $480 million pledge
The funding was announced on Thursday at a leaders’ summit on methane and other non-carbon dioxide greenhouse gases, according to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, a UN-hosted partnership. The UN’s climate chief thanked China, Britain, and the COP30 and COP31 presidencies for convening it.
The money will go to projects in energy, farming, and waste, and to work on black carbon, cleaner cooking, transport, and cooling. Britain also announced $25 million to help seven more countries, including Ethiopia and Côte d’Ivoire, join a programme that helps governments act on these pollutants, according to an account of the meeting.
The European Union said it would start a global process to tackle sulphur hexafluoride, a very powerful greenhouse gas used in electricity equipment, as power grids expand.
‘Breathing space’
“In a world of suffocating disasters, action on methane offers breathing space,” UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell told the summit. He called it one of the fastest and cheapest ways to slow warming in the near term, but said it must come with rapid cuts in carbon dioxide.
Stiell said 70 per cent of methane from oil and gas can be removed with existing technology, much of it at low or no net cost. In 2023, he said, just half a per cent of the climate finance set aside for cutting emissions went to such pollutants. More than 90 per cent of countries have included methane measures in their new national climate plans.
International Energy Agency chief Fatih Birol said about 200 billion cubic metres of gas a year could be saved by fixing leaking pipelines and stopping flaring. World Bank President Ajay Banga said the bank’s methane programmes had grown from 15 to 45 countries.
Speakers warned against putting the cost of cleaner farming on smallholder farmers, and called for public and philanthropic money to pay for the change.
Pakistan at the summit
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif told COP31 that Pakistan needs $138 billion for clean power by 2035, and urged leaders on Thursday to provide grant-based finance for countries hit hardest by climate disasters. Poorer nations have also complained that disaster money is too slow to reach them.
