The following is a transcript of opening remarks delivered by UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell during a press conference at the midpoint of COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, on 14 November 2026. Remarks from Telemundo's Vanessa Hauc and Tamseel Hussain, Founder and CEO of PLUC, follow below the Executive Secretary's remarks. You can watch a playback of the press conference here.
Remarks from UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell
We have reached the midpoint of a dynamic COP. One of the largest COPs ever.
Delegates, governments, international institutions, businesses, civil society and more are here in Antalya.
Scores of world leaders have reaffirmed their commitment to climate action and the UN climate process - building momentum.
Nations are increasingly focused on climate change to protect their peoples and to respond to the cost pain inflicted by global heating and the energy market chaos.
It's equally clear nations are taking climate action to strengthen their economies, because they know renewables are a key driver of growth, jobs, and secure, affordable energy. And that adaptation is central to competitiveness.
Issues like electrification and access to finance are firmly in focus - among others.
Negotiations are in full swing. Parties are engaged and are making progress.
Nearly 200 countries are working through 165 mandates. Each country has a view. Every country has a voice.
Getting agreement on every word, every sentence, is tough but vital work. There is no collective success without compromise from every Party.
As we head into the second week, I urge Parties to move swiftly to the hardest issues and to avoid tactical delays.
Work is also gathering pace beyond the negotiating rooms.
The Action Agenda connects what countries agreed with what gets delivered within the real economy.
Clean power. Stronger infrastructure. Cleaner industry. People protected from disasters: Changes that create jobs, save lives and protect livelihoods.
There's no climate quick-fix. No single COP can magic this crisis away. But each must drive progress.
We can only win this global climate fight if we - in the climate community - get better at enlisting billions of people.
To do that, we need to meet people where they are at, in their everyday lives.
We need to get better at connecting climate impacts and solutions to the things people need - like better health, good jobs, and affordable secure energy - and with the things they love - like sports.
For so many people, sport is family, community, identity. The team we inherit. The friendships we build. The joy we pass to our children.
Earlier this week, here at COP, world-class athletes told us how climate change is reshaping their sports: their safety, their performance, their futures.
UEFA and other signatories to our Sports for Climate Action Framework described investments to help sports adapt.
This summer's World Cup brought this home. Storms stopped play. Heat strained players and sent fans to hospital.
Today we are joined by Telemundo's Vanessa Hauc, who brought the climate story to millions watching the tournament, using hydration breaks to explain what was happening and why it mattered.
And we need to get better at reaching people in the spaces where they hear and tell their stories.
Films, music, television and art help us understand who we are, where we belong and what we believe is possible.
They can make loss real. They can also make action imaginable.
Climate action needs imagination.
That is why UN Climate Change convenes Entertainment and Culture for Climate Action: ECCA.
Tamseel Hussain, who joins us today, is part of that work, working with our team and other partners to help a new generation of creators tell stories rooted in people's lives.
We are just getting started on this work in sports, culture and entertainment, so there is a huge potential ahead.
So let me handover first to Vanessa and then to Tamseel.
Thank you.
Remarks from Telemundo journalist Vanessa Hauc
Thank you very much Simon. Thank you everybody for being here. It is an honor to be here with you all.
My name is Vanessa Hauc, I'm a journalist with Telemundo Network and also the Director of Planeta Tierra, that is our research environmental unit at the network.
So this year, Telemundo broadcasted the FIFA World Cup, and millions of people around the country in the U.S., watch through Telemundo. An average of 6 to 10 million people watch each match, and almost 24 million watch the final between Argentina and España (Spain). So of course, for those weeks, everything revolved around sports in my network and I think around the planet.
So as a climate journalist, I decided to do a story specifically about the hydration breaks, and why they were created. So, I interviewed the doctors and the physicians for them to explain what was the impact of extreme heat and the high humidity in the players, in their body, in the performers, in their health. I interviewed some of the players and I even interviewed a referee from Guatemala that collapsed on the field because of extreme heat.
The research was already there. World Weather Attributions said that one-fourth of the games played in the World Cup were going to be played under conditions that were a risk for human health, specifically for the athletes that were making such a tremendous effort.
So, during the research I came across a video from Simon and he was inviting everybody to make that connection. He was inviting the broadcasters to connect the dots for the viewers and let them know that this was not something that it was a coincidence. The hydration breaks were happening because of the climate crisis.
At the same time, Telemundo decided not to cut to commercials during the hydration breaks. Instead, they actually let the viewers see how the players were reacting, they were drinking water and putting ice packs on the body, basically trying to cool down because of their extreme heat. So, at that moment, I saw that I had a unique opportunity to communicate climate science and bring this information, this meaningful and important information to our viewers to a place that it was not usual for me, that it was sports, but that it was a great opportunity. So, I talked to our leadership at Telemundo, to Luis Fernandez, that is our president, an amazing journalist himself and a great believer in science. And I proposed this idea to intervene in the hydration breaks and he was on board.
So, we implemented this idea and I had the opportunity to be in a couple of the matches. The sports anchors were in the fields, and they will toss it to me in the studio and I will explain our viewers from a very scientific point of view what was happening to the players. You know, like what the temperature was, what was humidity, what was impact in their body. In their capacity to react, to perform. And so, we did this, and we also were able to be on the pre-shows and also on the post games, going in depth and basically really connecting the dots for our audience.
I make sure also to explain to them that this was happening because of the fossil fuel industry, because I think it was important to bring accountability to the story. And if we wouldn't bring that aspect; we wouldn't be telling the whole story to our viewers. So, I wanted to share this and tell you why I think this is so important. And it's because the World Cup is much more than a sporting event. It's a moment where people connect beyond language, beyond borders, beyond generations. Millions of people are together united.
Probably those millions of people aren't going to wake up one day and read a scientific paper. Or watch a climate change documentary, but they were watching the game and they were paying attention. So, it was definitely an opportunity for us to bring climate communications into the space where people were already there. They could see the players, they could see their impact of climate change in their favorite stars, and they could relate to that.
So, for me, as a climate journalist, it's very important to always be very attentive. Looking for opportunities to meet the viewers where they are, to bring the stories to the places that they love, to connect the dots for them and make them understand that this crisis is happening and that we can all do something about it and why is it happening. So hopefully the goal is for them to not only be informed but also to be inspired to live more sustainable lives.
What I learned from this experience is that we do not always have to expect the audience to come to the climate story. We can bring the climate story to the places where people are already there, where they are paying attention to the place that they love, that they care. And if we do it in a way that it makes sense for them, that it resonates with the priorities, the values, and what they love, I have no doubt that we are going to be successful in communicating this message.
Remarks from Tamseel Hussain, Founder and CEO of PLUC
Good afternoon, good morning everyone.
As an Indian, I'm proud of two things and very proud of them.
And the first is we have the most thriving and transformative clean energy transformation happening in India, be it the most remotest areas to the most biggest cities.
And the second, which a lot of you don't know, we have the most thriving creative economy that goes in.
India produces over 1,800 films every year. In 20 different languages and spread across different regions. At PLUC, we believe this is an opportunity to bring together climate embedded into mainstream cinema. But in order to do this, we had to bring some of the best screenwriters in India, some of the producers, some of studios, to literally get the whole entertainment industry to create a storytelling engine around it.
In the past year, to take this forward, we launched India's first climate script writing lab in partnership with Netflix India, which to our surprise had the most overwhelming response that any lab has had, be it climate or non-climate.
It had over 6,000 credited screenwriters who applied, out of which 65 were selected. And you know what the one thing we asked them to do is not to tell a climate story. We wanted them to tell love story. We wanted them to tell horror story, a sci-fi story. So that they can meet where the audiences are, as Simon says, in their living rooms.
And the most important part, earlier this year, when Simon was in India, the response that we've seen from the industry is completely significant that people really want to tell these stories. But when Simon came to India, we had some of the top nine studios who gathered together on a round table, along with Producers Guild of India.
They not only want to tell climate stories, but they want to tell it in a clean way. And in a way which can lower emissions. In order to do this, we started with nine top studios, has built a momentum of 170 studios across India who've come together to create India's first green production handbook, which tells you the best practices India already has, the best practices internationally studios have to reduce emissions and tell stories in an amazing way and in a clean way.
It's not enough that we tell these stories, and the most beautiful part is, this handbook is co-created by 170 studios under the leadership of producers Guild of India. So marrying the two, India's thriving energy transition and India's thriving creative economy, we hope to create a storytelling engine that can produce many films every year that inspires people to take action on climate. In their own living rooms.
