Humanity has 'failed' on 1.5C rise - UN chief

Humanity has failed to limit global heating to 1.5C and must change course immediately, the secretary general of the UN has warned.

- Exclusive Jonathan Watts Waja Xipai

In his only interview before next month's Cop30 climate summit, António Guterres acknowledged it was now “inevitable” that humanity would 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” 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 was to shift direction “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”, adding: “We don’t want to see the Amazon as a savannah. But that is a real risk if we don’t change course and 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 had come up short.