My sincere thanks to His Excellency President of the General Assembly Abdulla Shahid for bringing us together as we seek – a “moment for nature”. Because we are seeing – and we need to see – growing attention to the crisis facing nature and biodiversity. Indeed, over the last year, we have seen a set of cross-cutting challenges being highlighted in the debates at multilateral environmental meetings.
The climate meeting in Glasgow last November recognized the centrality of healthy nature to a healthy climate – and to helping vulnerable communities adapt to the changing climate. Through the Glasgow Declaration, world leaders re-committed to conserving and restoring forests and other terrestrial ecosystems. More than USD 19 billion was pledged to help protect and restore forests globally – including more than USD 1 billion to help indigenous peoples and local communities, the best stewards of nature, get more involved. Businesses and financial institutions, meanwhile, stepped up with commitments to protect forests by adjusting their business models and portfolios.
At the fifth UN Environment Assembly earlier this year, a package of resolutions gave impetus to the movement for nature. An agreed multilateral definition of nature-based solutions provided us with a real basis to start building such solutions. We also saw the establishment of a new panel, the triplet to the IPCC on climate and to IPBES on biodiversity if you like. This new panel will focus on pollution from chemicals and waste which we all know are poisoning our planet. We saw a milestone with the resolution to create, by 2024, an international legally binding agreement on plastic pollution which is choking our oceans. We saw resolutions ranging from sustainable lakes management to animal welfare and biodiversity and health.
And then Stockholm+50, in June, showed us that the world is ready to commit to transform our economies so that they contribute to a healthy planet, and so to human well-being, peace and prosperity. The recently concluded fourth Open-ended Working Group on the post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework in Nairobi brought some progress – although too many items remain in brackets. A lot of work remains to be concluded during the next intersessional period.
But we have not yet reached that moment for nature – the moment when we truly find common ground for nature and deliver on the many commitments and pledges that have been made. From December 5-17, the world will gather for COP15 in Montreal, a city which the seat of the Biodiversity Convention Secretariat, under the Presidency of the Government of China, to conclude the Global Biodiversity Framework. With this framework, we need to see a massive political lift for nature.
The framework must come with an ambitious package of goals and targets that moves action for nature beyond the environmental bubble. It is only by involving every sector, company and investor that impacts or depends on nature that we will address the key drivers of nature loss. Resource mobilization will be essential, as nothing can be achieved in this world without adequate financial, technical, and human resources.
Transparency will be essential. We can no longer greenwash or hide the lack of progress which unfortunately has been the norm in many parts for so long. We need to know that commitments are being delivered, and we need to know where additional support is needed to make progress. And we need to see implementation kick-off immediately. Because a framework is no more than a plan. When we build a home, do we put in place the plans and architectural drawings and declare the house is built? No. We deliver on those plans and invest in that project until the home is complete.
And part of building that safe, secure home is to protect and empower everyone to contribute equally to its delivery. As I speak, Member States are deliberating in New York on the adoption at the General Assembly, of the universal human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. What Member States are deliberating on is the very foundation of human life because the environment sustains humanity and indeed the other rights we enjoy. So, I call on Member States to unequivocally pass this Resolution and get to work on implementing it. Because the real moment for nature will only come when the plan is delivered, when the home is in place – and all of humanity is able to take shelter and live in harmony with nature.
Thank you.
