If anybody needed a reminder about why our planet is in trouble, UNEP’s Making Peace with Nature report gave it in detail. This report, released by the UN Secretary-General last week in the run up to UNEA-5, brought home the full scale of the planetary emergency.
If we do not take action, future generations stand to inherit a hothouse planet with more carbon in the atmosphere than in 800,000 years and still rising. Future generations will live in sinking cities. From Basra to Lagos. From Mumbai to Houston. The global economy has grown, but the world’s stock of natural assets has fallen. Future generations will be lucky if they can spot a black rhino. And future generations will have to live with our toxic waste – which every year is enough to fill 125,000 Olympic size swimming pools. Our patterns of unsustainable production and consumption are destroying the natural foundations on which life and prosperity depend.
But this report, produced with support from the EU and Norway, also laid out a scientific blueprint to fix the climate crisis, the biodiversity and nature crisis, and the pollution crisis. It underpins UNEP’s Medium-Term Strategy, discussions at the leadership dialogues, and helps provide a framing for our work towards the resumed session of UNEA, in 2022, including informing priorities to be considered for resolutions and decisions that will be taken at that time.
I will not repeat all the solutions from the report, as they were widely reported. Our task is to bring together every country, every business, every investor, every organization, every citizen from young to old, to implement these solutions as a matter of urgency.
I am encouraged by what has happened at the UN Environment Assembly so far. I must thank Member States for approving UNEP’s Medium-Term Strategy, which runs until 2025. This strategy is about providing science and know-how to governments. About environmental governance and rule of law. About transforming the finance and economic sectors. About leveraging the power of digital technologies. Because it is only by tackling environmental sustainability that we can tackle poverty. The strategy is also about transforming how UNEP operates and engages with member states, UN agencies, the private sector, civil society and youth groups, so we can go harder, faster, stronger.
The strategy is also about collective, whole-of-society action – moving us outside ministries of environment to drive action. Again, the last few days have been encouraging. We saw a new global effort on resource-efficient, circular economies. A push on financing emission reductions from forests. Governments, scientists and businesses coming together to look at big data as a tool for change. Youth raising their voices and telling us “nothing about us, without us” and calling for targeted funds to enable their deeper engagement.
All of this is great. But we need to start putting words into action after UNEA-5. This means backing a green recovery from the pandemic. Stronger nationally determined contributions to the Paris Agreement and more funding for adaptation. Agreeing on an ambitious biodiversity framework. A new chemicals management framework and renewed progress on plastic pollution. Rapid efforts to renew nature during the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. In this regard, I want to thank Pakistan for hosting this year’s World Environment Day, which will take place on June 5 and officially launch the decade.
2021 can be the year we began making peace with nature. It is up to all of us to make it happen.
Thank you.
Executive Director
