2 December 2022

 

Thank you much, dear USG Fleming. Good morning, dear friends in Turtle Bay. Good afternoon in Europe and Africa. Good evening in Asia. And good late evening in Australia. I’m very grateful for you for being here, for being with us.

“Governments do not have a monopoly on good ideas.”

It is a short quote from a message sent to the Heads of State and Government during the High-Level Week. I had the pleasure to address them at the opening of the general debate of High-Level Week. And it has never been more true than now, when we are facing the most complex, interlinked multi-layered crises in the last 40 years.

Without going too much into details how those crises came together, you went through COVID. You went through the pandemic. You went through the economic downturn. You are experiencing the impact of the sovereign debt crisis. You are experiencing the impacts of the food insecurity, energy crises. And you are experiencing the impact of the climate crisis and loss of biodiversity.

In the face of these very complex challenges, should we suggest: raise up our hands that “I give up”? Or now, recommend to ourselves that no, there are solutions.  There will be solutions. There must be solutions. And the solutions must come from all of us. These are shared ideas. Shared ways, shared objectives.

We created the Goals jointly together, with you. It was in 2013, 2014, 2015, when we created the SDGs. It was in 2015, when jointly with you, we created the Paris Agreement on climate change. It was jointly with you when we created the Addis Ababa Protocol on how to finance sustainability transformation. And it is going to be jointly with you, I hope, later this month in Montreal, when we recreate the goals how to address the loss of biodiversity on this globe.

Without you, the ideas would not have come together. And without you, those ideas would never come to implementation. It is not a task of a couple of hundred of politicians or diplomats. But it is a task of 8 billion people. We are talking about a transformation that is going to determine the fate and future of the current and coming generations. I see many of you could be even my grandchildren – grandsons and granddaughters. But your grandsons and granddaughters will feel the consequences of the decisions we are taking together, with you.

So, I would like to invite you, once again, to the table.

We are about to launch 15 negotiating processes in the General Assembly – 13 out of them are directly or indirectly addressing the issue of transformation: What kind of world are we going to have here? What kind of Organization are we going to have here in Turtle Bay? And what kind of institutional architecture across the world do we need in order to serve us in the journey of transformation?

So, my plea to you when we think about transformation: Be bold. Be forward looking. Be imaginative. Be provocative. But also, be pragmatic. Be impact oriented. Focus on the exact moment, exact issue and the exact crisis you would like to address. But always keep in mind the big picture because our proposals, our steps, our days will land in a landscape that involves everything.

Each and every step of ours has implications on many, many other fields. We measure it or not. We like it or not. So, it’s very important that our policies, our plans, our projects always have direct impacts – and side impacts, externalities. So, what will be important for you – and for your children – is the overall balance of the desired impact and the side impacts, to make sure that we move forward and not backwards.

This year, as USG Fleming mentioned, our major task within the broader context on transformation – and keeping our eyes way beyond 2030 – this year, the major task is to make sure that the implementation of the SDGs can be brought back to track. Because we are not there. On many instances, the implementation of the shared Goals – what we adopted together with you, crafted and adopted together with you – on many of those Goals, we are further away from our objectives today than we were in 2015.

It might deserve a good thinking why is it so: Is it COVID? Is it something missing from our methodology? Is it something we are missing from our commitments? Something is missing from our cooperation? Something is missing from our thinking?

Or maybe something is missing from our shared responsibilities.

We used to talk about our rights. I’m very glad. It is in the foundation of our existence, it is in the foundation of our Organization, here. We talk less about our responsibilities. We talk less about how we share these responsibilities: My own responsibility as a person, my own responsibility as a member of a community. My own responsibility as a representative of a country. So, I would like to invite you to think bold. To keep your eyes on transformation. Speak about solutions. Be very pragmatic and be very provocative.

Welcome onboard.