UN Secretary-General’s Press Encounter - Rio de Janeiro, 17 November 2024

Secretary-General: I thank President Lula and the people of Brazil for their warm welcome, and for hosting the G20 Summit. 

I am arriving here from COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan.  

From Baku to Brazil and beyond, I am seeing and hearing common themes and concerns. 

Our times are tumultuous, and we need to race much faster to tackle fundamental common challenges. 

The climate crisis has burned through another record, with 2024 likely to be the hottest year in history. 

We see the impacts everywhere.  Look no further than the drought in the Amazon and horrible floods in southern Brazil.  

Meanwhile, conflicts are raging.  

Impunity is spreading, with repeated violations of international law and the UN Charter. 

Inequality is growing, and progress on poverty and hunger has stalled. 

The Sustainable Development Goals are off-track. 

New technologies have unprecedented potential for good -- and bad. 

And our inability to tackle these challenges and more is eroding peoples’ faith in governments and institutions. 

The threats we face today are interconnected and international. 

But global problem-solving institutions desperately need an upgrade -- not least the Security Council, which reflects the world of 80 years ago. 

In September, UN Member States adopted the Pact for the Future, to help strengthen multilateralism and advance the Sustainable Development Goals. 

I have come to Rio with a simple message: 

G20 leaders must lead. 

G20 countries – by definition – have tremendous economic clout.  They wield massive diplomatic leverage. 

They must use it to tackle key global problems. 

First -- on peace. 

As wars grind on, people are paying a horrible price. 

We must step up for peace. 

Peace in Gaza – with an immediate ceasefire, the immediate release of all hostages, and the beginning of an irreversible process towards a two-State solution. 

Peace in Lebanon -- with a ceasefire and meaningful steps towards implementing Security Council resolutions in full. 

Peace in Ukraine -- by following the UN Charter, UN resolutions and international law. 

Peace in Sudan -- by leaders leaning on the warring parties to end the horrific violence and desperate humanitarian crisis being unleashed on civilians. 

Everywhere, peace requires actions grounded in the values of the UN Charter, the rule of law, and the principles of sovereignty, political independence and the territorial integrity of States.  

Second -- finance.  

Vulnerable countries face tremendous headwinds and obstacles that are not of their making.  

They aren’t getting the level of support that they need from an international financial architecture that is outdated, ineffective and unfair. 

The Pact for the Future calls for ambitious reforms to make the system more representative of today’s global economy and the needs of developing and vulnerable countries.  

This includes expanding the voice and representation of developing countries in international financial institutions. 

The Pact also calls for substantially increasing the lending capacity of Multilateral Development Banks to make them bigger, bolder and better...  

For effective action on debt relief, and reviewing the debt architecture to enable countries to borrow with confidence... 

Strengthening the global financial safety net to ensure all countries are protected when shocks hit... 

And promoting more inclusive tax cooperation… and expanding all forms of innovative finance – putting a price on carbon and levies on different forms that will eliminate pollution.  

The global community is looking to the G20 to deliver on these agreements. 

Third -- climate. 

I am concerned about the pace of the negotiations at COP29 in Baku. 

Countries must agree to an ambitious climate finance goal that meets the scale of the challenge faced by developing countries. 

An ambitious and credible goal is crucial for building trust between developed and developing countries and incentivizing the preparation of high ambition national climate plans next year. 

Finance fuels ambition. 

I will appeal to the sense of responsibility of all G20 countries. 

Now is the time for leadership by example from the world’s largest economies and emitters. 

Failure is not an option.  

A successful outcome at COP 29 is still within reach, but it will require leadership and compromise, namely from the G20 countries. 

And it cannot come soon enough.  

Countries’ current climate policies are pushing us to a disastrous 3.1 degree temperature rise by the end of the century. 

To avoid the very worst of future climate catastrophe – we must limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. 

And so emissions must be cut by 9 per cent a year to 2030 – but yet they are still rising. 

The spotlight is naturally on the G20.  They account for 80 percent of global emissions. 

They must lead with national climate plans that follow the guidance they agreed to last year - 1.5 degrees aligned, whole of the economy and all greenhouse gases.   

The recent announcements from two G20 members -Brazil and the UK – represent an important start. 

The principle of common but differentiated responsibilities must be respected -- but all G20 countries must make an extra effort. 

And developed countries must support emerging economies and developing countries – with technology and finance. 

Developed countries must keep their promises to double adaptation finance. And we need significant contributions to the new Loss and Damage Fund. 

As Brazil prepares to host next year’s COP30, I am working closely with President Lula on a global mobilization effort to secure the highest levels of ambition from all countries, and especially the G20. 

I am pleased we will discuss these issues in detail with G20 leaders on Tuesday. 

We must also fight the coordinated disinformation campaigns impeding global progress on climate change, ranging from outright denial to greenwashing to harassment of climate scientists. 

The Global Digital Compact adopted at the UN Summit of the Future includes the first universal agreement on artificial intelligence governance that brings every country to the table. 

It calls for an independent international Scientific Panel on AI and initiating a global dialogue on its governance within the United Nations. 

And it requests options for innovative voluntary financing for AI capacity-building in developing countries within the next year. 

So, Ladies and gentlemen of the media, 

Many challenges, but also many possible solutions. The G20 must lead by example. 

This is fundamental to restoring trust, credibility, and legitimacy of every government and our global system in these turbulent times. 

We need to seize every opportunity to lead transformative action for a safer, more peaceful and sustainable world.  

I am at your disposal for a few questions.   

[END]

 

QUESTION AND ANSWERS:  

Question: James Bays, from Al Jazeera. Secretary-General, in all recent G20 events, you have been calling for a reform of the international financial system and action on the global climate crisis. How are these things possible without US leadership? Because you know that you are not going to get that with President Trump. And if I may ask, you say that the G20 must lead, and you specifically mentioned Lebanon and Gaza. What do you want the G20 to do?

 

Secretary-General: First of all, this time I came to the G20 with the Pact of the Future, that got approval in the Summit of the Future, and with the Global Digital Compact, that got an approval at the Summit of the Future, which means all countries in the world committed for the first time to seriously move in the direction of reform of the global government system.

 

Second, it is obvious that the US has a very important role, and namely in relation to climate. But it is also obvious that the US is a federal country and it's a market economy, and all the signals given by the markets today are in the sense that demonstrates that renewables are not only the greenest, but also the cheapest way to produce energy. And so I'm pretty confident that the dynamism of the American economy and the American society will move in the direction of climate action as I recognize that the influence of governments today is much more limited than it was in the past.

 

Question: And on the Middle East?

 

Secretary-General: On the Middle East, I do believe that we cannot have double standards. We need to apply the same principles everywhere. We need to apply the Charter, International Law, and International Humanitarian Law. And on the Middle East we need peace, but we need peace on the way to a two-state solution. We need peace that guarantees the right of the Palestinian people, as the right of the Israeli people, to have a State, and for the two States to live in peace and security. And at the same time we need to address the immediate crises. Condemning, as we have condemned, the Hamas attacks, but recognizing that they do not justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people. So we need immediately a ceasefire, the immediate release of the hostages, and effective humanitarian aid to Gaza.

 

Question: [AFP] I'll do my question English so everybody can understand it. I would like to know if you expect any advancement [on the global financial goal during the G20].

 

Secretary-General: The debate about the new global financial goal is not in the G20, it is in the COP. But we are still far in the COP to reach a consensus. For what we need is a very ambitious global financial goal to reestablish trust and to allow developing countries to have the resources necessary for the mitigation and adaptation that is required to accelerate climate action.

 

Now it is true that the negotiation is in Baku, but it is true that 80 per cent of the emitters

are the G20 countries. So I'll make a strong appeal, a strong appeal to the leaders here in [Rio de Janeiro], to give instructions to the negotiators in Baku to make sure that we reach an agreement. And an agreement is essential. If there is no agreement, if we have a failure in COP29, that will leave inevitably negative consequences on the ambitions of Member States to reduce emissions, to their capacity to protect their populations, and that will also have a very negative impact on COP30 in Brazil.

 

So, my appeal to G20 leaders is to give clear instructions to negotiators in Baku

to reach an absolutely essential agreement on the new global financial goal in Baku until the end of the week.

 

Question: Good afternoon, James Landale from the BBC. Secretary-General, what advice do you give to the world leaders arriving here for the G20? How should they respond to the arrival of Donald Trump? What should they be doing now to prepare and get ready for that moment? You called their leadership for these other issues, but how should they organize to prepare for something that could set all of those agendas in an entirely different context, because of decisions that could be coming down the road?

 

Secretary-General: The most important is to recognize the importance of multilateralism and to trust the multilateralism institutions. If you do that at the level of the United Nations, at the level of the international financial architecture, if you adopt a meaningful dialogue in relation to the governance of AI and if you are able in all these areas to make a strong battle on multilateralism, that is the best possible response.