My thanks for inviting me to speak at the Youth4Climate event – hosted by the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea and partners at this crucial time, as we seek to build momentum ahead of COP26 in Glasgow.
As so many youth from around the world gather today, we, the previous generations, must hold up our hands. We have left you with a legacy of environmental devastation. Not just in the climate crisis, which a recent study found is causing anxiety and distress to almost half of global youth. But in the nature and biodiversity crisis, and in the pollution and waste crisis. Together, these interconnected crises are casting a clear shadow over your future.
Even now, as those who lead are finally getting round to trying to repair the damage, they are still not listening to your voices. They are not always giving you a seat at the table. They are not following through on the principle that young people told me at the 5th UN Environment Assembly: Nothing About Us Without Us. This is why this particular Summit is so important. To amplify your actions, your leadership and your vision. And to give that leadership and vision meaningful influence and space.
I recognize that you are a critical part of the changemakers, now and in the years to come. You are not locked into the status quo. You are forcing a different road. You look for new and better ways to live and be.
This attitude and appetite for change stands out in the many actions that you have taken starting businesses, organizing your communities or pushing the scientific barriers. This attitude and appetite also stands out in the ideas delegates have put forward for a sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Ideas on the energy transition. On green jobs. On adapting to climate change. On nature-based solutions. On rethinking how financial system works.
You have, in essence, laid out what a sustainable recovery from the pandemic should look like. A recovery that accelerates action on Agenda 2030 and the Paris Agreement. A recovery that creates decent jobs, decreases inequality, improves health, increases food security and helps us achieve a more just and equal world.
But the simple fact, though, is that governments and businesses are not yet backing this kind of recovery. Only 21 per cent of USD 2.33 trillion in recovery spending so far is green, while the new promises on climate action under the Paris Agreement are insufficient to slow climate change and adapt to the impacts we cannot avoid.
Those in power should listen to your proposals and implement them. But if they will not, you must make them. We at UNEP will continue to work for a more sustainable world. We we will continue to present the science and both support governments to make the change, while also calling for change.
But your voices will be key. Key to get on to a more sustainable path. We need fearless youth inside governments, inside corporates and inside science as well as inside activism. We count on you to start green businesses. We need your ideas and innovations. We need you to normalize greener ways of living by showing how it should be done: in how we travel, how we eat, in the careers we choose to pursue, how we use resources, in how we live and in how we spend and invest.
And we need you to use your votes. So many previous generations are locked into their voting patterns, casting knee-jerk votes for the party or leader they have always voted for. But sustainability is not a left or right issue: It is an inter-generational issue. It is a long-term survival issue. It is an existential issue. We all need to get on the right side of history, and vote for the leaders who will do the right thing by the planet, and so by us.
Those in power now must do the right thing. But this is your future we are talking about. You should be deeply involved in shaping it. As the UN Secretary-General laid out in his Common Agenda, it will take all of us, working together with reinvigorated multilateralism, to make peace with nature. And this is a task we cannot shirk.
Thank you.
Executive Director
