UN chief António Guterres called on countries to break their dependency on fossil fuels at a high-level event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, where COP31 presidents Türkiye and Australia set the tone for November’s climate summit. As the world faces extreme climate impacts turbocharged by a ‘super El Niño’ event and fossil fuel prices soar amid conflict in the Middle East, Guterres said reliance on fossil fuels ‘wreaks havoc’, and urged governments to boost their renewable energy capacity as a way out. ‘Doubling down on oil and gas will only lock in vulnerability for decades. Fortunately, we have a way out. Because the crisis is accelerating – but so are the solutions,’ he said. Reiterating a point made in his farewell speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Guterres urged all countries to submit ‘credible’ national roadmaps to end their production and consumption of coal, oil and gas – ‘with clear timelines’. ‘The G20, responsible for 80 percent of global emissions, must lead. The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities must apply. But all countries must raise their ambition,’ he added. At last year’s COP30 climate summit in Belém, a group of some 80 governments led a failed push to develop a global roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. Brazil instead will draft a voluntary report to be presented this year ahead of COP31, incorporating views from a range of countries and organisations. Governments first agreed to transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems at COP28 in Dubai in 2023, but have since been unable to agree at UN climate talks on how to move forward with that commitment, as efforts to do so have been effectively blocked by large fossil fuel-producing countries. The UN chief urged the world to match the accelerating climate crisis ‘with accelerating action’, by matching the revolution in clean energy with a revolution in finance and rising impacts with rising protection. ‘I ask you all to deliver – then over-deliver,’ he said. ‘We are the first generation with the tools to end the fossil fuel age – and the last who can avert climate catastrophe.’ UN launches country platforms to support mineral-rich nations More than two years after a UN panel of experts called for justice and equity to underpin the development of the mineral supply chains needed for the energy transition, the UN is starting to follow up with concrete action. On Wednesday, UN chief António Guterres announced that six countries – Guinea, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Zambia and Zimbabwe – will be the first to receive dedicated support to turn their mineral wealth into engines for sustainable industrialisation, job creation and revenue generation so that it ‘drives local development, with added value remaining there’. The country support mechanism, launched at the UN Climate Summit, will identify what individual recipient countries need to improve mineral governance, boost value addition and protect environmental and human rights and respond with coordinated technical assistance and capacity building from across the UN system. Zambia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mulambo Haimbe said the initiative will support the country’s ambition ‘not simply to produce more, but to create greater value at home through investment, value addition, industrialisation and jobs’. Booming demand for minerals such as copper, lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earths that are needed to build the equipment the world needs to move away from fossil fuels offer real development opportunities for the countries that hold them. But communities living near extraction sites often shoulder most of the costs while seeing few of the benefits. The UN panel’s recommendations set out a vision for more just and sustainable mineral value chains. But implementation has been slow to follow. Suneeta Kaimal, president and CEO of the Natural Resource Governance Institute, welcomed the announcement of a delivery initiative, adding that to succeed it needs to be truly driven by local stakeholders. The new support mechanism ‘could enable countries to lead on the design of strategies, safeguards and policies that will allow them to shift from rule-takers to rule-shapers and unlock prosperity for all their people’, she said. The post UN SUMMIT LIVE: UN chief says world has tools to end the fossil fuel age appeared first on Climate Home News.