After close to ten years running the United Nations, Antonio Guterres has held his last media briefing at a UN climate gathering, and he devoted it to a single theme. From the floor in Antalya on Friday, the departing secretary-general said that barely any of the body promises can be kept unless the world confronts a warming climate. “You cannot build peace on a burning planet,” he said.
One by one he traced the ripple effects. Disasters keep dragging families back under the poverty line, he argued, decades of progress can disappear in a single season, national budgets sink deeper into the red and the contest over land and water sharpens. Global heating, as he put it, refuses to stay confined to one brief. That, he said, is why he never filed it away as merely another item on the agenda.
His tone was strikingly personal. Brushing off the applause, Guterres cast his job as speaking a truth grounded in science even when it landed badly. Pressed on whether he regretted being so vocal, he answered that he had done no more than state what was true. He left his successor a four-part instruction, telling the summit to confront the evidence, heed the science, opt for the future and, as he put it, “never give up.”
On the detail, he threw his weight behind the drive by hosts Turkey and Australia to electrify economies, so long as the current flows from clean sources. He pushed the heads of the big climate funds to strip away red tape so cash lands in recipient countries sooner, and he cautioned that trebling money for adaptation would still leave most of the need unmet. He also went after the fossil fuel lobby, warning that the planet future must not be decided to suit those who profit from wrecking it.
His term ends in December with no replacement yet chosen, which has left campaigners uneasy that the next chief may push the issue down the list. By the time he spoke, most of the 90-odd leaders who had turned up were already on their way home, handing the remaining days to the negotiators.
