Humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5C and must change course immediately, the secretary general of the UN has warned.
In his only interview before next month’s Cop30 climate summit, António Guterres acknowledged it is now “inevitable” that humanity will overshoot the target in the Paris climate agreement, with “devastating consequences” for the world.
He urged the leaders who will gather in the Brazilian rainforest city of Belém to realise that the longer they delay cutting emissions, the greater the danger of passing catastrophic “tipping points” in the Amazon, the Arctic and the oceans.
“Let’s recognise our failure,” he told the Guardian and Amazon-based news organisation Sumaúma. “The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs.
He said the priority at Cop30 was to shift direction: “It is absolutely indispensable to change course in order to make sure that the overshoot is as short as possible and as low in intensity as possible to avoid tipping points like the Amazon. We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and if we don’t make a dramatic decrease of emissions as soon as possible.”
The planet’s past 10 years have been the hottest in recorded history. Despite growing scientific alarm at the speed of global temperature increases caused by the burning of fossil fuels – oil, coal and gas – the secretary general said government commitments have come up short.
Fewer than a third of the world’s nations (62 out of 197) have sent in their climate action plans, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) under the Paris agreement. The US under Donald Trump has abandoned the process. Europe has promised but so far failed to deliver. China, the world’s biggest emitter, has been accused of undercommitting.
Guterres said the lack of NDC ambition means the Paris goal of 1.5C will be breached, at least temporarily: “From those [NDCs] received until now, there is an expectation of a reduction of emissions of 10%. We would need 60% [to stay within 1.5C]. So overshooting is now inevitable.”
He did not give up on the target though, and said it may still be possible to temporarily overshoot and then bring temperatures down in time to return to 1.5C by the end of the century, but this would require a change of direction at and beyond Cop30.
He called for governments to rebalance representation at Cops so that civil society groups, particularly from Indigenous communities, will have a greater presence and influence than people paid by corporations.
“We all know what the lobbyists want,” he said. “It’s to increase their profits, with the price being paid by humankind.”
He said a transition away from fossil fuels was a matter of economic self-interest, because it was clear that the era of fossil fuels was coming to an end: “We are seeing a renewables revolution and the transition will inevitably accelerate and there will be no way in which humankind will be able to use all the oil and gas already discovered,” he said.
Asked if he had raised this with the Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, whose government has just given the green light for oil exploration near the mouth of the Amazon, he said: “Not yet. I’ll take advantage of the Cop [to do this].”
One of Brazil’s initiatives at Cop30 will be the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, which aims to raise $125bn for the protection of standing forests. A fifth of any money disbursed will go directly to Indigenous communities, whose territories contain most of the best-preserved biodiversity and most effective carbon sinks.
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On several occasions, Guterres stressed the essential importance of Indigenous voices at Cop30. The UN said this was the first time the secretary general had given an exclusive interview to a journalist from an Indigenous community, Wajã Xipai, a Sumaúma reporter from the Xipai people who was joined by the Guardian.
“It is fundamental to invest in those who are the best guardians of nature. And the best guardians of nature are precisely the Indigenous communities,” Guterres said.
World leaders should also be schooled by Indigenous peoples in how to achieve a balance with nature, the secretary general said. “Political leaders are often more concerned with the day-to-day problems of society, especially at times when the economic situation is complex and aggravated by climate change, by disasters, by catastrophes. So sometimes there is no notion of the importance of a harmonious relationship with nature and therefore it is necessary to permanently maintain a pedagogy with the political leaders, and there is no one better than the Indigenous communities to do this pedagogy,” he said
Despite growing pressure on the Cop system of global environmental governance, Guterres said it played a crucial role.
“The alternative is a free-for-all,” he said. “And we know what free for all means. Free for all means that there will be a small privileged elite, people and companies that will be able to always protect themselves, even if disasters will spread. Floods will spread, communities will be destroyed, but there will always be a group of rich people and rich companies that will be able to protect themselves as the planet is being progressively destroyed.”
Next year will be Guterres’s last as secretary general. Looking back on his nine years in the post, he said he wished he had focused on climate and nature earlier, though it was now a priority. He said: “I will never give up on my commitment to climate action, on my commitment to biodiversity, on my commitment to the protection of nature, on my commitment to help and support all the democratic movements that around the world are fighting and fighting hard to preserve the most precious possession that we have, which is our mother nature.”
