Put People And Planet Before Profits: Greta Thunberg Slams World Leaders At COP31

Climate activist Greta Thunberg has criticised the United Nations' annual climate negotiations as “hypocritical”, accusing host countries of using the summit to whitewash their environmental records and allowing fossil fuel lobbyists to influence discussions. She urged world leaders to prioritise people and the planet over corporate profits and geopolitical power.

Thunberg made the remarks on Tuesday after arriving at the COP31 climate summit in Antalya, Turkey, which comes after a year of deadly climate-related disasters, including heatwaves and floods, and an energy shock linked to the Iran war.

“It’s a hypocrisy every year that the host countries are given an opportunity to whitewash themselves and we know that these negotiations are filled with lobbyists, paid by the very destructive industries which are benefiting from our extremely violent status quo,” she told reporters.

Warning that climate change was threatening everything, Thunberg said ordinary people and the planet were being sacrificed for a wealthy few to maintain profits and geopolitical influence.

She also questioned the environmental credentials of hosts Turkey and Australia, both of which continue to depend heavily on fossil fuels despite promoting renewable energy. Turkey is pushing to increase electricity's share of global energy consumption from 23 per cent to 35 per cent by 2035, while Australia is backing a pledge to expand rooftop solar adoption.

The summit has also exposed concerns over the growing climate crisis in the Himalayas. Nepal, Bhutan and Kyrgyzstan failed to secure major negotiating blocs' backing for a separate Himalayan agenda. Nepal's Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal said the countries had “pushed as hard as we could”. However, a high-level dialogue on mountain-related climate concerns is expected, with discussions focusing on glacier monitoring, research and financial assistance for disaster reconstruction.

Nepal has highlighted the devastating consequences of rising temperatures, including the August 2026 glacial lake outburst floods along its border with China.

Thunberg's appearance marks her first UN climate summit since COP26 in Glasgow in 2021, where she famously dismissed world leaders' climate commitments as “blah, blah, blah”. She rose to prominence in 2018 after launching a school strike for climate action outside Sweden's Parliament.

The United States has skipped COP31 for the second consecutive year under President Donald Trump, who withdrew the country from international climate cooperation after returning to office in 2025.