Your excellency Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt
Your excellency Mostafa Kamal Madbouly, Prime Minister of the Arab Republic of Egypt
Your excellency Sameh Shoukry, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Arab Republic of Egypt,
Ministers, ambassadors, ladies and gentlemen
My thanks for the invitation to speak to you at the World Youth Forum.
We start the year, as we often do when the calendar turns, by looking forward. To how we can be better. Be stronger. Create a better future for ourselves and those we love. This year, it is ever more important that we stay positive and find new solutions to the challenges facing our planet and peoples.
We expected much of the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. We got some of what we were looking for. Promises were made on reducing coal use and ending fossil fuel subsidies. More climate finance to adapt to the impacts of climate change. Support for vulnerable countries that have suffered climate damage. Ending deforestation. Reducing methane emissions.
But when we add everything up, the world is still on a path to a temperature rise well above 2 degrees Celsius. This will mean more of the climate impacts we are already seeing. Storms. Floods. Wildfires. Displacement. Damage to human health, economies and businesses. It will mean the warnings outlined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent assessment report will come true.
To avoid this bleak future, the world must almost halve greenhouse gas emissions over the next eight years. This is what we need to have a shot at holding temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees Celsius. And we must not forget that the climate crisis is one prong of an interconnected triple planetary crisis that also includes nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. We need to change our entire systems to be green, sustainable and in harmony with the planet.
Friends, we can still change.
We can still – with the determination, activism, ideas and energy of youth at the forefront – build a greener, more prosperous future. Now, I mention youth at the forefront not to let other generations abscond from their responsibility. I mention youth to encourage the continued brave and powerful voices of young people around the world, to reverberate in social, economic, political, and environmental spheres.
Youth leadership will be the difference between success and failure across the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste. Youth leadership will also be essential to translate into action, the recent decision by the UN Human Rights Council to recognize the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.
This work starts now. UNEP is shifting into emergency gear – including through major events that seek to create new momentum and bring people together in this fight. We have the resumed fifth United Nations Environment Assembly this year. This is the world’s highest decision-making body on the environment. Important resolutions are being put forward to safeguard our natural world.
We have UNEP@50 in March, then Stockholm+50 and World Environment Day in June, all of which will mark fifty years since the global environmental movement was born. Only One Earth is the tagline for World Environment Day this year. It was also the slogan for the 1972 Stockholm Conference. Fifty years on, this truth still holds – planet Earth is our only home. Humanity must work together to safeguard Earth’s finite resources and urgently protect and restore the natural world on which our societies and economies depend.
We do not have another 50 years to solve our environmental challenges. We do not even have five. We need global engagement, and indeed global youth engagement, at and beyond these events – such as through the Youth Task Force for Stockholm+50, launched at the Glasgow climate summit in November.
Friends,
We have seen the energy and righteous anger of youth, most recently on the streets of Glasgow. You are right to be angry. Previous generations have failed you. Now you can channel that energy into showing the world how it should be done. Now you can join the changemakers.
There are many ways that you can channel this energy. Many ways to be the changemakers. Become the brave voices inside corporates to force them to move beyond lip service to sustainability. Use your vote to put in place the leaders who will do the right thing by the planet, and your future. Push for your schools, faith groups and organizations to move their finances and pension funds into initiatives that back solutions and environmental sustainability. Start your own green business to displace old companies that will not change. Mobilize and organize in your community, your city or your neighborhood. Bring your ideas and innovations to the table – because we need new technologies and new ways of living to replace our outdated and harmful practices.
But also consider your own footprint. And re-evaluate the type of life choices that you make daily. Individual lifestyle choices do make a difference. It’s important to choose greener forms of transport, swap the protein in your diet, and repair, reuse and recycle. But when we move from individual actions to collective action, this is when we make big leaps.
Friends,
We clearly have work to do. We must all play our part. Egypt has shown leadership by holding the presidency of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s 14th Conference of the Parties. The nation will also lead on the next Conference of the Parties on climate change, to take place in Sharm El-Sheikh later this year. We need more such leadership. Together, working across generations, fired up by the energy of youth, we can change the world. Youth are not willing to settle into the same groove that has worn deep wounds into our planet. You are not willing to just be part of the future. You can, and must, define the future. For it is yours.
Allow me to close in the words of Archbishop Desmond Tutu whose passing we mourn this month. “Do your little bit of good where you are; it's those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”
Thank you.
