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‘CHANGE COURSE NOW’: HUMANITY HAS MISSED 1.5C CLIMATE TARGET,
SAYS UN HEAD  
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Jonathan Watts; Wajã Xipai
October 27, 2025
The Guardian
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_ ‘Devastating consequences’ now inevitable but emissions cuts
still vital, says António Guterres in sole interview before Cop30 _

A flooded village in the low-lying island nation of Kiribati. The UN
secretary general says Indigenous communities must be better
represented at Cop climate summits., Jonas Gratzer/LightRocket/Getty
Images

 

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 [[link removed]]
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”
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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
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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
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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 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
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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.

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
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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
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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.”

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This interview is also published in English, Portuguese and Spanish by
Sumaúma
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* UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
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