Your excellency, Mr. Firas Khouri, Chair of the Committee of Permanent Representatives,
Ambassadors and colleagues.
This is time of great sadness for UNEP and the wider environmental family, as we mourn the passing of former Executive Director Dr. Klaus Töpfer. Dr. Töpfer was truly a passionate and strong voice for the environment. He understood the power, fragility and beauty of nature, and our planet, and why it must be protected. Under his leadership, UNEP delivered very important, new multilateral environmental agreements which today we all celebrate.
On a personal level, I was deeply touched when Dr. Töpfer reached out to me after my appointment offering his ongoing support and advice. His legacy will live on in us and our work. My deepest condolences go to his family and friends.
I also extend my condolences to the families of those who lost their lives to the terrible floods in Brazil and Kenya, and in the unprecedented heatwave in India. These tragic events, there and elsewhere I’m sorry to say, came as we marked a full year of each calendar month being the hottest on record. As the World Meteorological Organization reported there is an eighty per cent chance of breaching 1.5°C in the next five years.
These events and scientific findings are reminders that we must urgently increase action and ambition on the crises we face, the crisis of nature and biodiversity loss and desertification, the crisis of climate change, and the crisis of pollution and waste, to help protect the most vulnerable populations. This is what Member States and UNEP are working on together and what we must push harder to achieve by pushing harder to fulfil the commitments we have made.
Excellencies,
As this is the first gathering of the CPR since the sixth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-6), it is important to remember what we have set ourselves to achieve. At UNEA-6, you, the Member States, adopted 15 resolutions that target pressing environmental challenges – with a focus on addressing issues that affect the most vulnerable in our societies.
We saw a resolution on aligning the extraction and management of minerals and waste with the 2030 Agenda. We saw a resolution on environmental assistance and recovery in areas impacted by armed conflict. We saw resolutions aimed at improving air quality – through regional cooperation on air pollution and tackling sand and dust storms; a resolution that asked UNEP to back efforts to combat desertification and land degradation; resolutions on highly hazardous pesticides, on improving water quality and on strengthening ocean governance.
We had the Ministerial Declaration, which reaffirmed Member States’ commitment to effective, inclusive and sustainable multilateral action on these environmental challenges. And, of course, we brought together the Multilateral Environmental Agreements to deliver a united push on the three crises I have mentioned. Please allow me to thank you once more for delivering yet another successful UNEA. The UNEA President will now transmit the outcomes of UNEA-6 to the High-Level Political Forum in July.
Excellencies,
Since UNEA-6, there have been many other key developments that dovetail with these resolutions and indeed earlier ones you have passed in previous UNEA’s.
In Ottawa, Canada, the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) to develop an international legally binding instrument on plastic pollution, delivered an advanced draft text and reached agreement on intersessional work. This created a clear path from Ottawa to landing an ambitious deal in Busan later this year We will need leadership to get it done. I ask Member States to show real, high-level engagement to get us over the line, including through ministerial representation at INC-5.
At the end of May, China and UNEP launched together the Kunming Biodiversity Fund. China and UNEP will co-chair the Fund, which is designed to back the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – now commonly known as the Biodiversity Plan – by delivering additional resources. My deep appreciation to China for its continued commitment to biodiversity. And I should observe here that China has held the presidency for six years, a presidency that should only last for two years, so my deep thanks for this.
The GBF is our collective plan to restore biodiversity. But a plan is only a paper exercise without implementation. That is why we were proud to host, here in Nairobi, the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice, chaired by Ms. Senka Barudanovic from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the Subsidiary Body on Implementation, chaired by Mr. Chirra Achalender Reddy, from India.
Lots of progress was made during the two-week session, but brackets remain on key areas that we need to address ahead of COP16, which will kindly be hosted later this year by Colombia under the theme of “Peace with Nature.”
At the fourth international conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS), UNEP was present and we committed to putting its knowledge, tools and platforms behind the new Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS – which the whole international community can support to help these vulnerable nations withstand the ravages of climate change.
I have just returned from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which hosted World Environment Day 2024 under the theme of land restoration, building drought resilience and combatting desertification. My deep thanks to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for helping us to deliver a record-breaking celebration.
Over 3,900 events were registered across the globe, by far the biggest recorded for World Environment Day (WED) ever. From Times Square to Trafalgar square; from Beijing to Osaka; from Botswana to Zimbabwe, World Environment Day was everywhere. The day’s hashtag trended at number one and there were over 22,000 articles published in almost 6,000 media outlets in 148 countries.
These numbers show that environmental action and challenges are on everyone’s mind. They show that people want to be involved and want change. And they deliver real support for the land restoration agenda. As we must remind ourselves, land restoration is the golden thread that runs through the three Rio conventions.
Excellencies,
We know that restoration boosts livelihoods, lowers poverty and builds resilience to extreme weather – supporting the Sustainable Development Goals. We know that restoration increases carbon storage, making it a key tool for achieving the Paris Agreement. We know that restoration avoids species extinctions, making it a vital tool to achieving the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
So, we need to get behind the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which is backing commitments to restore one billion hectares of land, and the UNEA-6 resolution to strengthen sustainable land management is an important tool to do this.
The UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) 16th session of Conference of the Parties later this year in Saudi Arabia will be an important moment to increase action on land – and I am delighted you will be briefed on preparations for the COP by my very good friend and colleague, Ibrahim Thiaw, the Executive Secretary of the Convention.
For the COP, UNEP is co-leading Land Day with UNDP, focusing on sharing experiences to help countries deliver their commitments, increase nature-based solutions, and strengthen drought resilience, restoration and role of pastoralism. This day coincides with the Business Forum, which we aim to use to help mobilize additional private sector partners.
We are also, at the request of Ibrahim Thiaw, leading on People Day, which will support youth and Indigenous Peoples to participate fully in addressing challenges that hit them hardest. We will also focus on cities, and how sustainable consumption and management of pollution and waste can support convention delivery.
UNEP is also supporting Parties to the Convention to report on their commitments, with a large number of projects supporting member states, with Global Environment Facility support.
Let us also remember that this is a three-Rio Convention COP year. Land restoration can, as I said, be the golden thread that ties the Rio Conventions together, action across climate, biodiversity and land. Nations can help to weave this thread by linking their climate pledges and national biodiversity strategies and action plans with land degradation neutrality commitments together, in one strong commitment. Through leadership in the Bern process, UNEP is supporting efforts to connect the threads across all Multilateral Environmental Agreements.
Excellencies,
Continuing with the theme of looking forward – in addition to the three big COPs and the last negotiation session on the plastics instrument – we also have the Summit of the Future which is fast approaching.
Part of the point of the summit is to inform international responses to complex global disruptions and shocks by guiding future-thinking. To contribute to such future thinking, UNEP will launch Navigating New Horizons, on July 15th in New York. Member states have been intricately involved in providing feedback to this report. This Global Foresight report on planetary health and human well-being represents a shift to a longer-term approach that can help the world to avoid or cushion future shocks. We will of course be happy to brief this sub-committee accordingly once the report is available.
In addition, I will shortly travel to Geneva for the third session of the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group on the establishment of a Science-Policy Panel for Chemicals, Waste and Pollution Prevention. This process will complete the three science-policy panels, joining the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). I hope and trust that you, distinguished ambassadors and delegates, will be pushing delegates present in Geneva to really get this work over the line. This is an important moment. It pulls together the science in the best possible way that we can and I hope and trust that the Working Group will find proposals so that science can help guide us as we seek to fulfil UNEA resolutions and the Global Framework on Chemicals, which will be an important element that this science panel can inform.
Excellencies,
At this CPR gathering, you will also have the chance to start thinking about future UNEAs and how to strengthen the process. As I have said before, UNEA is a relatively young body. It has already proven its worth. But we can do so much more. So, I thank the CPR for its work on the lessons learned from UNEA-6, which you will consider at this gathering. I look forward to guidance and feedback from this body – including through the informal exchanges I look forward to holding with permanent representatives later this year.
Of course, we will also be holding the Annual Subcommittee meeting on 8-12 July. This is the first time that the Annual Subcommittee meeting has been held in July, which better aligns with the programme performance report. At this meeting you will be consulting on the next Medium-Term Strategy and the Programme of Work, but you will also start to look at the theme for the next UNEA. Further consultations will of course follow. Even at this early stage, please let me highlight the importance of a focused, strategic theme – which can help to deliver more specific and impactful resolutions.
Excellencies,
I thank you once more for your tireless efforts this year and ask you to keep up your strong backing for UNEP as we work, together in the spirit of inclusive multilateralism, to strengthen the environmental foundation that supports all our societies and economies and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.
