World leaders called for urgent and decisive action on global warming as formal talks began at the United Nations climate conference in Türkiye, saying the crisis disproportionately harms some of the world’s most vulnerable countries.
“You might as well bomb us. That might have been easier than watching climate change tear apart our homes piece by piece,” said Surangel Whipps Jr, president of the island nation of Palau. “We are at war with a crisis we did not create. A war no peace treaty can end, only urgent action can.”
The annual summit follows a year of deadly floods, heat waves and other disasters. Leaders said geopolitical conflicts had diverted attention from climate change.
Earlier this year, the United Nations said it is inevitable that the world will warm beyond 1.5C above preindustrial levels.
Limiting warming to that threshold was a goal of the 2015 Paris Agreement and remains a focus of international negotiations. The UN now wants the world to limit how much temperatures climb past that mark — called overshoot — and for how long, and find a way to get them back below the threshold by the end of the century.
“The evidence is now in. We did not try hard enough,” said Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley, who said five years ago that the 1.5-degree threshold was necessary for survival.
“Overshoot is not a new target, it’s a debt,” she added. “A debt of heat borrowed against our children’s future, and it must be repaid.”
She said every five years of delay increases projected peak warming by a tenth of a degree, “and a tenth of a degree, my friends, is a coral reef. It’s a harvest, it’s a village, and lives and livelihoods will be affected. Ask Nepal, where more than 1400 people died in the floods in August, and thousands are still missing.”
‘Every fraction of a degree counts’
UN Secretary-General António Guterres outlined a framework for climate negotiations, saying they must prioritise ending fossil fuel reliance, adapting to a warmer world, increasing financial support for poorer countries bearing the brunt of climate change, and promoting cooperation over conflict.
“We know the truth. Now we must act on it because climate action is more than a fight over a number or a thermometer,” Guterres said in his opening speech. “We are in the fight for our lives and our children’s future.”
“We do not need countries to agree on everything. But we do need them to cooperate on the things no country can solve alone,” he said.
Addressing climate change has been overshadowed by wars, inflation and geopolitical conflicts, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said. He pledged to protect the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest, and urged world leaders to work together for a just, sustainable future. “Brazil is back to defend the continuity of a healthy planet,” said Lula, who recently won reelection.
Micronesian President Wesley Simina said his country is already suffering irreversible losses of coral reefs that “protect our shores, sustain our fisheries, feed our families and carry the stories and traditions of our communities”.
He called climate change the “single greatest threat to the security, livelihoods, and well-being of Pacific peoples, but perhaps worse than what we’ve already experienced is what has yet to come” as temperatures continue to rise.
Both Simina and Mottley called for these climate talks to come to an agreement to slash methane — a short-lived but extra-powerful heat-trapping gas — which Mottley said could “buy time to supercharge” technology to help cut longer-lived carbon dioxide. She said cutting methane by about half by 2030 could help avoid almost 0.3 degrees of warming by the 2040s “and save 250,000 lives every year”.
Amy Pope, director general of the International Organization for Migration, called for more funding to help communities adapt to climate change and build resilience.
Climate change displaced almost 30 million people in 2025, while hundreds of millions more live in places unprepared to withstand future risks, Pope told The Associated Press.
Leaders of some major polluting nations absent
More than 70 world leaders and senior government officials spoke at the summit. But the top leaders of the world’s three biggest polluting nations — China, the United States and India, which together account for more than half of global carbon dioxide emissions — skipped the summit at COP31.
“It really is a disgrace that just one of the seven G7 heads of state and only a handful of G20 leaders are attending this summit,” said Mohamed Adow, director of Power Shift Africa, a climate and energy think tank. “The world’s biggest economies should be leading the response to the climate crisis, not leaving it to others.”
The United States, the world’s second-largest polluter after China, is absent from the talks for the second consecutive year. US President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, has targeted offshore wind projects and removed rules limiting power plant emissions.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen attended, but many leaders of European countries stayed away.
“If Europe wants to help steer the global transition, it needs to show up and be part of it,” Climate Action Network Europe Director Chiara Martinelli told the AP.
Conference coloured by fears over speed of climate action
The gap between nations’ climate plans and actions is widening, according to an annual climate change performance index published Wednesday by Germanwatch and the New Climate Institute.
Türkiye, which is hosting COP31, and Australia, which is leading the negotiations, ranked among the worst performers in curbing emissions.
The talks come as the war in Iran has driven up global prices for oil, gasoline and products such as fertilisers and pesticides, prompting governments to rethink energy policies and investment in renewable sources such as wind and solar.
