Remarks by the President of the General Assembly
H.E. Ms. Annalena Baerbock
at the Press Briefing at COP30
17 November 2025
[As delivered]
Thank you and by now good afternoon, sorry for the time change. And thank you for being here as we are meeting in challenging times.
The world is coming together in Belém to confront the greatest threat of our time, the climate crisis.
Roughly 3.6 billion people, nearly half of the world’s population, are highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, such as droughts, floods, extreme heat, and food security.
And I’m here at the 30th COP in my capacity as President of the General Assembly of the United Nations, just back from the Second World Summit for Social Development, to underline that the climate crisis and that fighting for sustainable development are highly interconnected. To underline that the climate crisis and the three pillars of the United Nations, being peace and security, sustainable development and human rights, are depending heavily on each other.
Because the climate crisis is fueling hunger and poverty, leading to displacement, pressuring neighboring regions, often increasing tensions and fueling conflict. So, if we want to work on peace and security, we have to break this vicious circle.
As we see around the world, and also here in Brazil, Indigenous communities are often the most vulnerable to these climate shocks. Their lived experiences put them on the frontlines of this battle, and they came here also at the COP rightfully so to demand change. We hear their calls because we know that the inclusion of Indigenous peoples and their knowledge is integral to addressing this climate threat.
Yesterday I used the day for going also to the edge of the forest for a meeting with local communities for meeting with Indigenous people and they are showing here also in the forest how sustainable development, economic growth, and protection of the forest can go hand-in-hand if you’re working with the people.
It underlines again that climate action is not a “nice to have”. It’s not a charity. Climate action is in all of our security and economic interests.
Therefore, there is no alternative to climate cooperation. The climate crisis is unrelenting, and it doesn’t care about our frustrations or the denial of skeptics because CO2 does not have any passport and doesn’t recognize borders.
And the good news is, which I also underlined in my speech at the opening of the high-level segment, that we have seen progress all over the world, despite the challenging geopolitical times. Probably like many of you, I’ve been in Paris 10 years ago and the difference today is that we do have the solutions. The technologies are there, and they are affordable, and they are scalable.
In the Paris Agreement, renewable energies were only mentioned once and only related to technologies for Africa. Many doubted even their business case. Talking about phasing out of coal, phasing out of fossil fuel, as I was discussing back then, was also seen almost as sacrilegious.
And now, ten years later, all of this has changed. Last year alone, investments in clean energy amounted to 2 trillion USD globally — 800 billion more than in fossil fuels – which are now the ones being subsidized. Before it was renewables, today fossil fuels have to be subsidized to compete with clean energy, because clean energy is making up 90% of all new power installations in 2024 and solar energy became the cheapest electricity in history.
Yet, as we know and many delegations underlined here so rightly, the distribution is far from just. Only 4.2 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity was installed in Africa, compared to 421 gigawatts in Asia. And we pledged in Paris not only to limit the global warming well below two degrees, 1.5 degrees, but we also promised in Paris to electrify Africa, a continent rich in sunlight yet starved for power.
Still today, over 600 million Africans lack access to electricity as such, even though the continent’s renewable energy potential is 50 times greater than the world’s projected electricity demand for 2040.
Therefore, the question now is whether we have the capabilities to bring these cheapest forms of energy where they are needed most. The good thing again is money, as such, is not the problem. Solutions are not the problems, but we have to prioritize right. Vast potential remains untapped because capital is not flowing where it is needed most.
So we do have to shift the trillions of dollars in climate finance, especially to those countries which are hardest hit by the climate crisis but carry the lowest responsibility.
And again, the answers are here, again as the President of the General Assembly, I would underline that it’s not only the Paris agreement and now the results of COP to bring together climate action, sustainable development, and security. But we have all the agreements out there. We have to combine now the commitments of Sevilla at the International Conference on Financing for Development, the commitments in the Second World Summit for Social Development in Doha, and the now here described roadmap Baku to Belém.
And last year alone, we have seen that developing countries paid roughly 1.4 trillion USD to service external debt. Imagine what could be achieved if some of that burden was lifted and those resources reallocated to climate mitigation, clean energy, resilience and adaptation.
If we are doing nothing the opposite would be also true. We would not only fail in our promises on climate justice, but it would also be impossible to deliver on the SDGs.
Take Hurricane Melissa in the Caribbean and Typhoon Fung-wong in the Philippines just right now – such disasters directly amount for at least 200 billion USD in annual losses; some estimate even 2.3 trillion USD when other cascading costs are being factored in. This means concrete losses of infrastructure like roads, schools, hospitals, homes and fields.
So, 10 years after Paris, and at the 80th anniversary of the UN which we are celebrating this year, we are meeting here in Brazil at the birthplace of the UNFCCC, we have the chance to write the next chapter of climate justice to deliver on the three pillars of the UN: peace and security, sustainable development, and human rights.
This is the COP where the world shows the solutions are there. And the world, if they connect all the answers, is unstoppable in providing a clean future and a just future for all.
I thank you.
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