WASHINGTON, DC -- UNITED Nations Secretary-General António Guterres is warning that the global climate crisis is advancing faster than efforts to contain it, urging world leaders to step up their response before the consequences become even more devastating.
His warning comes as world leaders and government officials gather in Türkiye for COP31, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, amid growing concerns that countries are falling short of commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and limit global temperature increases.
Addressing the COP31 Leaders’ Summit on Wednesday morning, Guterres pointed to record-breaking temperatures and rising emissions as evidence that the international response is not keeping pace with the scale of the crisis.
He noted that global emissions reached record levels in 2025, while extreme heat continues to shatter temperature records.
“The last four years were the hottest ever,” he said. “And fossil fuel interests keep making a killing … while killing our planet. Climate disasters are pounding lives, livelihoods and economies across the globe.”
Small Island Developing States (SIDS), including countries in the Caribbean, remain particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Rising sea levels, extreme heat, changing rainfall patterns and increasingly unpredictable weather conditions continue to threaten communities, infrastructure and economic livelihoods.
Guterres warned that the world's current trajectory could lead to what he described as “mutually assured destruction” if governments fail to take decisive action.
The discussions at COP31 come approximately 11 years after the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015, under which countries committed to limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while pursuing efforts to keep the increase to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels.
However, global efforts to achieve that more ambitious target remain inadequate, with scientific assessments indicating that a temporary overshoot of the 1.5-degree threshold is now increasingly difficult to avoid.
Guterres stressed, however, that the prospect of exceeding the target should not be interpreted as a reason to abandon the fight against climate change.
“But science is not telling us to surrender. It's telling us to fight harder,” the Secretary-General said.
He argued that governments still have the ability to influence how far temperatures rise beyond 1.5 degrees, how long the world remains above that threshold and how severe the resulting impacts will be.
Guterres said the experiences of the past decade must inform the decisions taken over the next 10 years, indicating that he would outline three key lessons to guide the international community's response.
