Taking place from tomorrow against a backdrop of accelerating climate impacts, alongside intensifying conflicts, instability, economic pressures and global tensions, UNGA81 and Climate Week NYC are critical places to reinforce climate action, cooperation, and the clean energy transition not as separate issues, but as central to the response to today’s crises and opportunities– strengthening security and stability, reducing geopolitical vulnerabilities, building resilience, and supporting prosperity.
- Leaders must recognise the growing costs and devastation of escalating impacts and respond with greater urgency. From the hottest months on record to devastating wildfires, heat records, and devastation due to melting glaciers, climate impacts are not a distant risk but are here. This UNGA and CWNYC must respond to this reality with a commitment to faster action, strong cooperation, emissions reductions, stronger resilience, and scaled-up support for vulnerable countries.
- They must show how they will make the global fossil fuel crisis brought about by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz the last such crisis – by accelerating the shift to resilient, clean economies. Leaders across all sectors – from governments to civil society to industry – should demonstrate how greater roll-out of renewables, clean electrification, an end to new coal construction, and resilient infrastructure is the smart, strategic play and strengthens energy security and resilience, reduces exposure to fossil fuel volatility, and delivers prosperity, growth, and industrial development.
- They must demonstrate a commitment to domestic leadership and delivery on climate as a core pillar of work, and to support and strengthen international cooperation, including on adaptation and resilience and climate finance, particularly for countries on the frontline of climate impacts, while ensuring that addressing the climate crisis remains central to the multilateral system and the agenda of the UN.
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UNGA81 and CWNYC gets underway following a northern summer of record heatwaves, destructive wildfires and worsening droughts that have claimed lives, disrupted food production, power generation and transport, and damaged homes and livelihoods. Meanwhile, a record super El Niño is intensifying with heightened risks of devastating impacts worldwide, and further disruption to food, water and economic systems.
At the same time, multiple fossil fuel supply chokepoints and price impacts are putting an accelerated clean energy transition at the heart of government strategies for security and resilience, Against this backdrop, the new UNEP climate overshoot report, released on 2 September, asserts that “under current policies and alternative near-term trajectories, exceedance of 1.5°C is now widely assessed as unavoidable”.expanding opportunities for prosperity, energy security, and green industrial development to reduce exposure to built-in fossil fuel volatility and making the case for new partnerships and international cooperation so all countries can reap the benefits of the transition for shared stability and development.
This UNGA will also be the last with Secretary-General Guterres at the helm of the UN. As such, it will be an important moment for Leaders to signal that climate action must remain central to the UN’s work under the next Secretary-General, protecting and building on the progress made in placing climate, energy and resilience at the centre of the multilateral agenda.
Leaders travelling to New York will have much else on their minds: a global order in flux, intensifying conflicts and instability in the Middle East and Ukraine, rising US-China tensions, impending shifts in UN leadership, accelerating AI risks and opportunities, and pressure on economies and public finances. Climate action is not a competing priority in an unstable world – it is an integral part of the necessary cooperation that must be strengthened, and a critical response to instability and geopolitical uncertainty.
At London Climate Action Week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres framed the climate crisis and global energy insecurity as two sides of the same crisis, driven by continued dependence on fossil fuels, and challenged governments to accelerate the shift to clean energy while strengthening resilience. UNGA81and CWNYC is a critical moment to pick up that challenge both in demonstrating progress on their domestic action and in their support for international cooperation.
It is also a moment to build political momentum ahead of COP31 in Antalya, bringing together the real-world opportunities from the clean transition with the priorities that will be central to negotiations: accelerating implementation and electrification, strengthening adaptation and resilience, and scaling up accessible climate finance. With implementation and electrification at the center of the COP31 Presidency’s agenda, UNGA should help build a broader coalition for delivery of resilient, clean and electrified economies to displace fossil fuels while maintaining pressure for progress on adaptation and finance.
There will be several opportunities to elevate these messages:
- The UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Event on Climate and the Just Transition should reinforce the need to accelerate implementation across the global energy transition, building on momentum around electrification and energy security developed through 2026, while highlighting the need to strengthen resilience to growing climate impacts and ensure the transition delivers for workers, communities and countries most exposed to climate risks.
- The Global Renewables Summit and wider clean electrification agenda can demonstrate that the clean transition is already underway and that there are practical opportunities to move faster through greater domestic and international action to deploy renewables, commit to No New Coal, electrify transport, buildings and industry, boost grids deployment, and ultimately accelerate the orderly and equitable transition away from fossil fuels.
- The High-level Meeting on Sea-Level Rise should set the scene for the Pre-COP in Fiji shortly afterwards, bringing Pacific priorities and the acute realities of sea-level rise, adaptation and resilience into sharper focus ahead of COP31. It must also demonstrate that sea-level rise is a systemic threat not just to small island states, but to all coastal communities worldwide, with risks to economies, critical infrastructure, defence assets, food security, displacement and international stability. Leaders should use the meeting to strengthen political recognition of these risks and build support for more accessible and scaled-up adaptation and resilience finance.
- Climate Week New York City is this year set to deliver increased impact as it demonstrates whole-of-society action, bringing together leading voices across different sectors, and showing that business and civil society want more action, not less. With Climate (Action) Weeks now taking place across the globe and demonstrating progress on the energy transition at all levels of society, these events continue to showcase climate action from the grassroots to the treetops.
The world is entering a period of greater climate risk, but governments are not powerless in the face of it. Every fraction of a degree of warming avoided matters. Accelerating clean electrification, strengthening resilience, and closing the finance gap can simultaneously improve energy security, economic competitiveness, and development outcomes.
UNGA81 and CWNYC therefore needs to build momentum towards the Pre-COP in Fiji, the IMF/World Bank Annual Meetings in Bangkok and ultimately COP31in Antalya, by accelerating implementation of the clean transition, strengthening resilience and supporting those most exposed to climate impacts, and mobilising the finance needed to deliver both these goals, while protecting climate cooperation as a core function of the multilateral system.
Climate action cannot be left waiting for more stable geopolitical conditions. Indeed, what the world does or does not do in relation to climate shapes our geopolitical surroundings, from our economies to critical minerals, our livelihoods to the health and safety of our people. In an increasingly unstable world, it is central to maintaining, deepening, and building stability, security and prosperity.
Quotes
Clarence Edwards, Executive Director, E3G Washington DC, said:
“The momentum from London Climate Action Week is crossing the Atlantic. Even against fierce geopolitical headwinds, the clean energy economy is outcompeting the alternatives because it delivers security, resilience and growth. That is the smart, strategic play, and leaders in New York should press the advantage.”
Kaysie Brown, Associate Director, Climate Diplomacy & Geopolitics, E3G, said:
“As the majority of the world’s leaders come together in New York, this is the moment to stand fast on cooperation in a fragmenting world. The crises on their agenda, from energy shocks from ongoing conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine to record heat, wildfires and a looming El Niño, are not reasons to set climate aside; they are the reason to act on it, faster and together.”
“In Secretary-General Guterres’s final year, leaders must show they their resolve in building on the economic opportunities that clean energy and climate action affords, and to tackle challenges jointly to build the resilience their people need.”
Cosima Cassel, Programme Lead, Climate Diplomacy & Geopolitics, E3G, said:
“UNGA81 must give this crisis the due attention it deserves and galvanise momentum around implementing the solutions. This includes accelerating the clean energy transition, strengthening resilience and getting finance flowing to where it is needed most.”
“By the time governments reach Antalya, they need to show that international cooperation can move faster than the crisis and deliver tangible action to protect people most at risk. Every fraction of a degree of warming matters in limiting the severity of these impacts.”
Matt Webb, Associate Director, Global Clean Power Diplomacy, E3G, said:
“Now is the moment for leaders to step up and show how they are accelerating action to urgently reduce their dependence on volatile fossil fuels. They must show leadership on cleaning up the power system. This includes setting a global benchmark for no new coal plants – building on the progress of the last ten years – and doubling down on mobilising finance to support emerging and developing countries construct the renewables-based electrified global energy system of the future.”
Jurei Yada, Associate Director, Finance & Resilience, E3G, said:
“The mounting costs of climate impacts make the effective use of limited public finance more important than ever. Leaders in New York should make clear that finance must work harder at every level, from stronger institutions and financial systems to unlocking investment against country-led priorities, so countries can build the resilience needed to withstand future disasters.”
Salvatore Serravalle, Program Leader, Global Macro & Finance Resilience, E3G, said:
“Climate Week NYC is a critical moment for private investors to hear a clear signal from policymakers: the energy transition is underway, and it is investable. As energy insecurity, debt pressures and climate vulnerability converge, financing clean, resilient energy systems has become a macroeconomic and development imperative, not simply a climate goal. Public development banks can help reduce risk and open markets, but private capital must now move at the scale the transition demands.”
– ENDS –
Available for comment
Kaysie Brown (EN), E3G Associate Director, (multilateral climate diplomacy, geopolitics, US foreign policy) | kaysie.brown@e3g.org
Clarence Edwards (EN), E3G Executive Director, Washington DC, (US energy transition, energy security, geopolitics) | clarence.edwards@e3g.org
Travis Brubaker (EN, DE), E3G Senior Policy Advisor, (US Climate Foreign Policy)
travis.brubaker@e3g.org
Alden Meyer (EN), Senior Associate, (multilateral climate diplomacy, geopolitics, US federal & subnational policy) alden.meyer@e3g.org
Cosima Cassel (EN, SP, DE) Programme Lead Multilateral Venues, (Climate Diplomacy and Geopolitics, COP30) | Cosima.cassel@e3g.org
Leo Roberts (EN), E3G Programme Lead, (global energy transition, fossil fuel phase-out, energy transition finance) | leo.roberts@e3g.org
Salvatore Serravalle, (FR, EN), Program Leader, Global Macro & Finance Resilience, E3G | salvatore.serravalle@e3g.org
Notes to Editors
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