UN Climate Chief Urges Countries to Step Up Climate Action, Finance Ahead of COP30

At the opening of New York Climate Week, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called for faster implementation of clean energy shifts across all walks of society while remaining cautious on AI’s role. 

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United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell has called on the world to step up climate action ahead of November’s COP30 summit in Brazil.

“This new era of climate action must be about bringing our process closer to the real economy, accelerating implementation and spreading the colossal benefits of climate action to billions more people,” Stiell said on Monday at the launch of the New York Climate Week, the world’s largest annual climate event, hosted by the Climate Group in partnership with the UN.

For Stiell, the only way to combat climate change effectively is to establish strong connections and communication between key decision-making spaces and the general public: “Connecting the cabinet rooms closer to the boardrooms to the living rooms is how we supercharge climate action, and get this job done.”

Stiell highlighted the speed and reach of global investment in renewable energy over the past decade. The clean energy transition, he said, resulted in nearly $2 trillion dollars in investments in 2024. He also pointed out that, although the Earth is currently on a dangerous pathway to 3C of warming, without UN climate cooperation it would have been a catastrophic 5C.

Climate disasters are increasingly hitting economies around the world, but the benefits of the transition are distributed unevenly, with $1.6 trillion worth of projects remaining idle, he went on to say.

To combat these challenges, Stiell recommended programs such as the Build Clean Now initiative, launched at the New York conference to fast-track clean industry shifts. 

He exhorted policymakers to “extend this Paris-alignment country by country, sector by sector, across every stream of finance.” With this approach, he hopes for “faster, fully-inclusive, higher-quality decisions” that bring the lengthy process of climate policy “ever-closer to real economies and real lives.” This would include a roadmap to $1.3 trillion dollars annually of accessible finance and demonstrations of the effectiveness of climate multilateralism that “leaves no one behind.”

Stiell also called attention to the controversy on artificial intelligence (AI), echoing recent cautions by UN Secretary General António Guterres. He said that while AI is not “a ready-made solution”, it can still be a “game-changer”.

“[W]e now need to blunt its dangerous edges, sharpen its catalytic ones, and put it astutely to work. If you run a major AI platform, power it with renewables, and innovate to drive energy efficiency. Most important, it is powered to drive real-world outcomes: managing microgrids, mapping climate risk, guiding resilience planning,” he said.

Stiell, a former tech executive who held senior roles in the government of Grenada, was appointed to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 2022. 

The signatories of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change will meet in Belem, Brazil from November 10-21 for the 30th Conference of the Parties, better known as COP30. At this event, 198 countries will meet to report on their measures and progress in combating climate change. The United States, which withdrew for the second time from the agreement under President Trump in January, will not have any voice at the conference.

Featured image: UNclimatechange/Flickr.