4 October 2022
Thank you very much, Madame Chair. Thank you, Kinga.
What I was trying to get prepared for was not so much a keynote, more of a provocative set of ideas I’d like to throw to you to stimulate the discussion.
The theme of this event is Green Transition. But basically when we talk about Green Transition, as it was mentioned here as well, immediately we talk about economies. Transforming economies. Transforming management. Transforming management of natural resources. Redoing infrastructure. Changing technologies. Changing the priorities of financing regulations and maybe the institutional backup.
So there you are. It is a sustainable development revolution. Green, blue, it is the sustainable development transformation.
For many, many years, we hoped that we can grow, we can develop, and leaving some bubbles behind. All sorts of debts. Debts in terms of natural resources, depletion of natural resources. Debts in terms of climate. Debts in terms of water. Debts in terms of depleted biodiversity. With the notion that those bubbles would just stay there. Forever.
But we know that they all tend to explode. All without exclusion. And someone will have to pay for that. If not us, then you. If not you, then your children. Mother Nature is fighting back. No debts remain unpaid for.
So basically we are building a crisis. Not because it was our intention but because it was our neglection.
What we are facing is in-fact, a sort of systemic challenge of what we have created and how we are operating and can it be fixed through silo-mentality? Piece by piece? Piecemeal? Hardly.
Once you really face a systemic challenge, you need to think of systemic solutions, as well. It is the most difficult one. We are not really good at that.
Let me be very provocative with you. With these systemic challenges, and with reflections of the leaders I heard a couple of days, weeks ago during the High-level Week in the General Assembly, I can clearly state to you, resounding what I heard from them – we have entered a new page in history. We are in a watershed moment. But basically we are already in a new page of history which started with the COVID pandemic. Which swept through our societies. Swept through our economies. Swept through our finances. Brought down more than 20 Governments within half-a-year and seriously undermined the political trust within and among countries.
If you take the challenge of non-sustainable development, and couple it with very traditional geopolitical conflicts, which are on the rise now, it’s the mixture we never wanted. It’s the most dangerous mixture. The most dangerous combination. And welcome to the Anthropocene Era Prototype Crisis.
Very likely that we are going to have these kinds of crises and maybe starting from different corners of our existence, but the mechanisms of how it can sweep through our societies might be very similar.
It is swift. It is cross-cutting. And it is very dangerous.
We haven’t given a name yet to this chapter of history. We haven’t given it scientific description. But we know already some features of it. And we feel we are in it.
In this chapter, while we try to think in terms of green transition, in terms of sustainable transition, we are very right because it is one of the directions that we have to go. To change the future. To change the outlook of where we are and where we would like to go. And we have good agreements on that.
We have goals. We have Sustainable Development Goals. We have biodiversity goals. We have climate goals and many others.
But we also need to focus on short-term challenges, which let’s call them by their name, it’s crisis management.
So crisis management and transformation are the two avenues we have to focus on in this house, as well as out there in others parts of the world.
When talking about sustainability transformation, green transformation, if you wish. When we crafted the SDGs, we made a calculation that in order to make this transformation, we have to change the fate of investments of size of $95 trillion. It’s about four-times the GDP of the United States.
So it is not simply to be nice. It is not simply to be comfortable with some regulations, it is profoundly readdressing the markets. Profoundly readdressing technologies. Profoundly redressing the system of finances, how are we going to finance our lives.
There will be countries who are doing it very well. They will have advantages in this transformation. There might be countries who might be dragging lower. They will have a hard time because markets will change.
Rest assured, it is happening. Whether or not we’re on board, it is happening. We cannot avoid it because if we avoid it, we die. It’s as simple as that.
So it will be a matter of survival. It will be a matter of competitiveness. It will be a matter of success and wellbeing. Choose. It’s your choice.
We still need to learn a few things how to move forward. Because we had a vision of the future. We have goals, we have even subgoals. But we have very little methodologies. We haven’t designed the way that would take us there to the green transformation, we can only feel.
But quite frankly, anyone could give a precise science-based answer to the question of what are we doing, where are we now on the sustainability transformation. We don’t know. We have educated guesses. We have certain parts of the equation, what we can measure. But we don’t have a methodology of measuring sustainability transformation.
It’s a piece that science still has to produce. It was already on the SDGs, under the code name “Going Beyond GDP”. But we haven’t developed it yet. Here and there, certain bits of pieces have been developed, but we don’t have an agreed system that would be applicable to all countries. Science-based. Evidence-based. Simple and flexible enough. And most importantly, useful for Member States to plan their future.
Most of these methodologies that we’re using now are retrospective. They can tell us how good or bad we did in the last couple of years.
So what is missing still – a lot of things – among them some scientific evidence. Therefore in my Presidency we are hammering with my team that our decisions should be science-based solutions.
In order to move ahead, in order to help the Member States, in order to help the green transformation in the Member States, we have some major events coming up during this year, and I would like to invite you to contribute. To join, contribute, and participate in the debate. The biggest event of the year will be the SDG Summit in September 2023. Which will be half-way through the Agenda 2030. We need to give a very honest account to ourselves, what has been achieved and what has not been achieved. What are the secrets of the success and what are the reasons for the lack of success.
We are going to start very soon with negotiations on the Summit of the Future, which will be in 2024. But since it will be a huge summarizing event, we need to start early enough.
Very close to maybe your mind and age, there will be a Declaration on Youth, which will be adjacent to the SDG Summit. What kind of world, what kind of commitment can we leave for the next generation.
And I would like to propose something to you because traditionally we talk about our right, human rights, rights to clean water, rights to clean nature, rights to health, rights to education. That’s fine. That’s how it should be. It is all based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued in the very early days of the United Nations. But have we ever thought of making a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities towards the next generations? We have never done it. Is it time to do it? I think sooner or later we have to.
So it will be a crucial year. I hope it will be a crucial year together with you. It will be a year when we really need to make progress on green and sustainability transformation. And it will be a year of historic responsibility. The year will elapse anyway, with us or without us.
Thank you very much.
