By Abbas Nazil
Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has returned to the United Nations climate negotiations for the first time in five years, using her appearance at COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, to renew criticism of world leaders over what she described as the failure to make meaningful progress in tackling global warming.
The 23-year-old activist attended the opening day of the two-week climate conference on Monday, November 9, marking her first participation in the annual negotiations since COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021.
Thunberg, who founded the youth-led Fridays for Future movement in Stockholm, questioned the effectiveness of the international climate negotiation process, arguing that successive conferences had failed to reverse the direction of global efforts to address the climate crisis.
“We have had 31 COPs and we are still speeding in the wrong direction,” she said during an interview while waiting in a long security queue to obtain accreditation for access to the United Nations-controlled Blue Zone, where the negotiations are taking place.
Her return comes amid growing concerns over rising global temperatures, continued dependence on fossil fuels and the widening gap between governments’ climate commitments and their implementation.
Despite becoming one of the world’s most recognisable climate campaigners, Thunberg’s presence at the summit attracted mixed reactions, with some delegates requesting photographs while others appeared unfamiliar with her activism and the youth movement she established as a teenager.
The activist maintained that political and business leaders attending international climate conferences were largely engaging in what she described as greenwashing rather than addressing the underlying causes of the crisis.
She also expressed concerns about the human rights record of the Turkish government hosting this year’s negotiations, highlighting issues beyond the immediate discussions on emissions reduction and climate finance.
Thunberg said meaningful climate action required governments to confront the actual causes and consequences of global warming rather than allowing international meetings to become platforms for political statements without sufficient implementation.
“If we are not focusing on the actual crisis, we are wasting time,” she said, warning that continued inaction would result in more lives being lost.
Her journey to Antalya also reflected her longstanding commitment to reducing the environmental impact of travel.
Rather than flying, she travelled from London on November 3, undertaking a journey involving trains and buses, which she described as exhausting and marked by insufficient sleep before arriving in Türkiye.
The activist also raised concerns about emerging environmental challenges, particularly the growing expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure and the increasing demand for energy to operate data centres.
Asked whether she was concerned that young people who had previously joined climate campaigns might shift their attention towards debates surrounding data centres, Thunberg argued that the issues were closely connected.
She pointed to the environmental consequences of data centres and the possibility that growing attention to technological development could overshadow more fundamental human needs.
“They are both the same issue,” she said, arguing that society was increasingly becoming disconnected from basic human values.
Thunberg’s return to COP31 comes at a time when governments face mounting pressure to translate international climate commitments into measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Her criticism also reflects wider frustrations among climate campaigners who argue that more than three decades of international negotiations have not delivered the scale and speed of action required to address the climate emergency.
