COP25: Support business efforts to tackle climate change, urges Guterres

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday urged business communities and civil society leaders to press governments into articulating policies that support private-sector efforts to address climate change.

"I'm meeting more and more business leaders who complain that they cannot do more because governments will not allow them to do so, because of the environment that is still created in the bureaucratic, administrative, tax regulatory and other frameworks that are under government control," Guterres said in a speech at the annual Caring for Climate Meeting, held during the ongoing UN COP25 climate conference in Madrid.

Caring for Climate mobilises business leaders to implement and recommend solutions and policies to beat climate change.

With the climate crisis increasingly jeopardising life on the planet, the Secretary-General stressed that more collective action will be needed from governments, regions, cities, businesses and civil society.

"While we see some incremental steps towards sustainable business models, it is nowhere near the scope or scale required," Guterres said.

"What we need is not an incremental approach, but a transformational approach. And we need businesses to unite behind the science by taking rapid and ambitious action across their operations and value chains," he added.

The "science" refers to the goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, in line with the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change.

This will require reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to global warming, by 45 per cent by 2030, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

In his speech to the COP's high-level event, the Secretary-General urged the world's biggest emitters to do more on climate.

Meanwhile, Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg was also present at the UN conference on Wednesday, urging participants to focus on the science behind climate change.

The UN Secretary-General has welcomed this acknowledgment of young people's role in climate action.