Joint Statement 4 September 2025 H.E. Dr Fitsum Assefa, Minister, Ministry of Planning and Development of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia & Mr Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary, UN Climate Change   This Climate Week has shown that no continent holds greater potential than Africa for climate actions that transform lives and economies for the better.  With the world’s youngest population, vast natural resources, unparalleled renewable energy potential, and extraordinary diversity and human ingenuity, Africa is a colossal coiled spring of climate action possibility. This Climate Week has shown that African innovators are putting forward pioneering solutions to boost climate resilience and cut planet-heating emissions. However, it has also highlighted again that only a fraction of this potential has yet been realized. Global decarbonisation is charging ahead, with clean energy investments hitting $2 trillion last year alone, driving economic growth and millions of new jobs, but only a fraction of that investment is flowing to African nations. The Climate Week has again shown climate adaptation can be truly transformative through protecting communities, people, businesses, infrastructure and creating new development gains, as it is as crucial for climate justice as it is for safeguarding infrastructure and communities. But despite these huge dividends, available at relatively low cost, Africa remains starved of adaptation investments at scale.   Recent Climate COPs delivered concrete global agreements that should materially benefit Africa and other developing regions: a historic Loss and Damage fund at COP27, just transitions to clean energy and transformation across other sectors that leaves nobody behind, and a global goal on adaptation at COP28, a tripling of climate finance to developing countries – to be scaled up to 1.3 trillion annually by 2035 – and operational carbon markets at COP29, among others.  But to realize these benefits, COP30 must take the next concrete steps forward: with ambitious outcomes which convert agreements into results on the ground, and scalable solutions which drive a new era of implementation. This Climate Week was deliberately timed to build momentum for the Second Africa Climate Summit (ACS2). Next week in Addis Ababa, leaders will gather in unity, urgency, and purpose. The Summit is Africa’s platform to project climate leadership that is impossible to ignore, setting the stage for nations around the world to prepare for COP30.  The ACS2 is an unmissable opportunity to send a message loud and clear. The message is clear: Africa is ready to supercharge climate action. But COP30 must ensure Africa is fully enabled to do so. In short: COP30 must deliver for Africa and its 1.5 billion people. Because when all nations are empowered to take bold climate actions, this strengthens the entire global economy and lifts up all the world's 8 billion people. 

Below are remarks delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell on 3 September 2025, during the high-level opening of the Global Transparency Forum taking place in Songdo, Republic of Korea, from 3-5 September. Excellencies, Honourable Ministers, colleagues, dear friends, I am honoured to join the Global Transparency Forum, and I thank the Government of the Republic of Korea for its continued leadership on this cornerstone of climate action. This meeting takes place at a decisive moment. Transparency has moved beyond a technical exercise. It is a vital enabling tool for all countries. It helps governments – and indeed whole economies – to build a stronger evidence base: driving more ambitious climate policies over time, unlocking access to climate finance, and accelerating progress toward development goals. To date, more than 100 nations have submitted their first Biennial Transparency Reports – or BTRs. By doing so, these governments have made a very smart investment. Because compiling strong climate data enables more inbound investment, and stronger policies that reap the huge benefits of the global shift to clean energy and climate resilience:  stronger economic growth, more jobs, better health and much lower health costs, more affordable and secure energy, and rising living standards. These reports represent years of effort to build systems, mobilise expertise, and institutionalise climate reporting. Many countries are using their Transparency Reports to identify urgent needs for finance, technology, and capacity-building, while also highlighting innovative approaches in adaptation — from new sources of finance to inclusive governance structures or locally-driven resilience metrics. This is the impact of transparency: it accelerates ambition, sharpens policy, and strengthens the case for investment. The Enhanced Transparency Framework or ETF may have been the quiet achiever of the Paris Agreement, but let me speak loud and clear about how proud I am of what my secretariat team have delivered, because the progress made, and benefits delivered, are significant:   More than 10,000 experts from over 140 developing countries have taken part in ETF training and peer exchanges. Over 1,200 experts are now certified BTR reviewers. Over 1,400 national officials are using ETF tools to compile and submit their reports. Where gaps remain – and the Paris Agreement Implementation and Compliance Committee has identified 37 Parties still missing one or more mandatory ETF reports — we will work with Parties on their capacity and resource constraints. No country can be left behind. The BTR synthesis report, to be released ahead of COP30, will deliver a valuable early picture of implementation progress by countries across mitigation, adaptation, and support. It will offer initial insights into diverse national efforts to implement the Paris Agreement — including some of the barriers that must be overcome, and the successes that can be built upon.  It will also be a crucial input informing the next Global Stocktake.  The report will be released prior to COP30 in Brazil, which itself will have a strong focus on driving implementation in the real economy, to the benefit of real people everywhere. Indeed, bringing our COP process closer to real economy implementation will be a defining feature of this next decade of global climate action.  So make no mistake – the ETF, and the evidence base built by these reports, will be vital to getting the Paris machinery into top gear. Colleagues, we often say: what gets measured gets managed. But let me take it further: What is measured can be acted upon. What is reported helps build trust and collaboration. And what is shared becomes a force for change. Looking to COP30, we must keep transparency central to climate ambition, support all countries to reap the benefits of meeting their reporting goals, and turn insights into faster progress on implementation. I commend this Forum as a vital moment to help turn reporting into stronger real-world results, and transparency into transformation. I thank you.

UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, at the Closing Plenary of the UN June Climate Meetings (SB62)

Below are remarks delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell at an event to mark the 10-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement at the UN June Climate Meetings, Sixty-second session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB62), in Bonn, Germany, on Saturday 21 June 2025. Colleagues, Friends, Ten years ago, the Paris Agreement showed the world that multilateralism can deliver. The prognosis was – and remains – clear: without cooperation between nations, humanity was on a crash course for self-destruction. We know from the science that without the Paris Agreement we'd be headed for up to 5 degrees of heating. No nation, no economy could survive that. We're now headed for around 3 – it shows how far we've come, and how far we still have to go. The work Parties and many others have done through this process of UN-convened cooperation has literally changed the course of history. The world we live in today is different because of Paris. Today’s event gives us an opportunity to explore how it is a different place because of it. And crucially what that means about the decisions we make in this process today, to create the world we want and we need. Since Paris, clean energy investment has increased tenfold. If you had said ten years ago that clean energy investments would hit 2 trillion U.S. dollars in 2024, you would have been met with heavy scepticism. And that the Paris Agreement’s fingerprints would be visible across the multilateral system – from shipping to development finance, to national constitutions and courtrooms. Paris was not the beginning, but it opened the door to much of the world order we accept as normal today. Since Paris, over 80% of global GDP is now covered by net zero targets. But we also know that change is not happening fast enough. We know this through the outstanding global scientific cooperation with the IPCC. That cooperation is one of this era's most unsung but most powerful human advances. Unfortunately, what that science shows us is that this can’t be described as human achievement. The IPCC showed us that almost half of humanity is living in climate crisis hotspots – where people are 15 times more likely to die. Friends, I raise this because it's a stark reminder that there are two sides to the 10-year anniversary of the Paris agreement. It's a moment to reflect on all that has been achieved – and frankly I think we all need to a better job at explaining that to the world. On that topic - I commend the Government of France for its initiative, with Brazil, to create a commemorative logo which can be used to promote climate-related events this year. But this 10-year moment must also be an inflection point. A moment where we step it up on multiple fronts. This must be the decade of delivery. Of acceleration. Of implementation on the ground. And I’m not talking about grand gestures or virtue signaling – I’m talking about blueprints for real-world economic opportunity; for security; for resilience; for growth.  Backed up by real delivery. And we know what will make the difference: Finance – the great enabler of climate action in real economies - especially for those who need it most. People often ask: what will the next decade of climate action look like and how must our process evolve? The short answer is: over the next decade we must move our intergovernmental process much closer to the real economy and to climate action and the 8 billion people around the world, to accelerate and to implement. We must go further, faster, fairer. We will see from the secretariat’s three reports later this year how far we have come – on NDCs and the imperative of 1.5 - which remains both essential and achievable. On adaptation and resilience. And through the BTRs an important snapshot of the state of implementation. COP30 then becomes the moment for the nations of the world to respond. And how we respond is up to us. I thank you.

The global response to climate change under the UNFCCC continues to advance. The policy and governance frameworks established through the intergovernmental process have expanded the support available to Parties, facilitating

Remarks during Presidency-led-Consultation on Baku-to-Belém Roadmap at June Climate Meetings

Written Statement Upon the Opening of SB62 June Climate Meetings

Below are remarks delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell following the adoption of the agenda at the UN June Climate Meetings, Sixty-second session of the Subsidiary Bodies (SB62), in Bonn, Germany, on Tuesday 17 June 2025. Colleagues – time is short, so I will skip my formal statement of welcome. It will be posted on the website instead. I will just say this: The past 30 hours have been hard. And have not reflected the urgency that we face. Yes, the issues have been complex, as they usually are. But now we have consensus. Through cooperation and compromise, we have resolved the impasse. In parallel, work has been proceeding on important mandated events. The GGA workshop The Ocean Dialogue And the workshop under the Sharm el-Sheikh Dialogue We must now move the work ahead. This means we will need to make up time.  We are working on practical ways to help you do so, including extending the availability of these facilities. I will make only one other point: Even if imperfect, even if no country or group gets everything it wants, climate multilateralism has delivered clear progress at each recent COP. But clearly more is needed, and faster.  And we need to demonstrate to the world that climate cooperation can deliver. Now more than ever. And if we want COP30 to take us another global step forward, we need the next eight days to deliver concrete progress, across all aspects of the agenda. Time is short, so let’s get to work. I thank you.