‘You Cannot Build Peace On A Burning Planet,’ Guterres Says In Final COP31 Address

Outgoing UN Secretary General António Guterres has urged his successor to keep climate action at the centre of the organisation’s work, using his final climate press conference at the Cop31 summit on Friday to argue that the issue cuts across everything the UN does.

“You cannot build peace on a burning planet,” Guterres said, as per reports. He added that poverty cannot be eradicated while climate disasters keep pushing people back into it, and that young people cannot be promised a better future while the natural systems supporting it are being destroyed.

Guterres will leave office at the end of December, while his successor has not yet been named.

Addressing the incoming secretary general, he said climate change “does not stay in its lane”. According to Guterres, it drives anger and displacement worldwide, wipes out development gains built over decades, pushes countries deeper into deficit and intensifies competition for land and water. He reportedly said it also fuels instability and increasingly threatens communities and countries. For these reasons, he said, he has never treated climate action as one issue among many and sees it as central to every aspect of the UN’s work.

Leaders Depart, Negotiators Remain

Guterres was among the few leaders still at the summit by Friday afternoon. Most of the more than 90 who attended had returned to their capitals, leaving negotiators to work on issues such as the electrification of the global economy and a just transition for workers moving out of fossil fuel industries, according to multiple media reports.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flew out after hosting a meeting between major international investors and Australian renewable energy companies, followed by talks with Kiribati President Taneti Maamau.

The Australian co-presidency of the 31st Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change released a list of “reflections” summarising proposals countries have made since the talks began on Monday. The list will serve as a loose basis for the first draft of the cover decision, the final negotiated document gavelled through at the close of the summit, which is expected to be the central outcome of Cop31.

Resolutions sought this year include a target of drawing 35% of the world’s final energy from electricity by 2035, pledges to cut methane emissions, progress on phasing out fossil fuels, and adequate finance for developing countries hit by climate disasters.

AI And Climate Info Get Separate Push

Notably, the Global Initiative for Information Integrity on Climate Change also launched the Priorities for Action on AI for Climate Information Integrity at the summit. Put forward by co-chairs Brazil, the UN and UNESCO, the document sets out what states, AI actors, advertisers, researchers, journalists and funders can do so that people can rely on climate information from AI and about it.

It targets two gaps, the reliability of climate information people receive from AI and the reliability of information about AI’s own climate impact. The Independent International Scientific Panel on AI has warned that producing fluent text is easier than producing factual text. The initiative said risks can rise during climate disasters, when AI-generated images and videos can spread faster than official warnings, while claims about AI’s own climate impact come without data to judge them.

The Priorities build on the Belém Declaration and the UN Global Principles for Information Integrity, and rest on transparency, accountability and human rights. For AI companies, they call for assessing how their systems affect climate information integrity and publishing the findings, as well as disclosing energy use and carbon, water and land footprints. For states, they call for integrating information integrity into national AI strategies and climate plans.