London

UNSecretary-General Antonio Guterres told world leaders at the COP31 summit in Turkey on Wednesday that the slow international response to climate change so far had placed the world on a path to destruction.

Governments must fight harder to preserve the planet for future generations, he said, in comments that set the tone for two days of rapid-fire speeches by world leaders at the UN conference on Turkey's Mediterranean coast."The brutal truth is that the climate crisis is outrunning us. This is the path to mutually assured destruction," Guterres said, pointing to rising emissions, global temperatures and worsening climate-driven disasters.

"But science is not telling us to surrender. It is telling us to fight harder."

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are seeking agreement on a plan to increase the share of electricity in global energy use and revive stalled efforts to move away from fossil fuels.

A UN report last month found the world on course to break through the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming limit that countries had agreed to pursue under the Paris Agreement to prevent the worst effects of climate change.

Meanwhile, 2026 has also stood out with a series of extreme heatwaves across Western Europe and a glacier collapse in Nepal that triggered a catastrophic flood killing more than 1,450 people, with thousands still missing. "The world's biggest economies should be leading the response to the climate crisis, not leaving it to others," said Mohamed Adow, director of climate and energy think tank, Power Shift Africa.