Climate Change

“BUILDING BACK BETTER TOWARDS A MORE RESILIENT AND SUSTAINABLE POST-COVID-19 WORLD” 

Your Majesty, Emperor Naruhito, 
Excellencies, 
Distinguished delegates, 

It is a great pleasure to join this Special Session. I thank the Member States, the High-level Experts and Leaders Panel on Water and Disasters, and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies of Japan for organizing it.   

[Trilingual as delivered]

Dear President Sassoli,  
Distinguished Members of the European Parliament,  
Ladies and gentlemen, 

It is a pleasure to finally be back in Brussels. 

Having myself been a member of the Portuguese Assembly for 17 years, I am particularly honoured to address the European Parliament.   

We live at a time when the strategic partnership between the European Union and the United Nations is more indispensable than ever.  

And on behalf of the United Nations, let me begin with two words:  

Secretary-General: Thank you very much for your warm welcome. I think we must be humble when we face such a huge number of existential threats and recognize the fragility of our societies and our planet. Fragility in relation to the pandemic, in relation to climate; Fragility in relation to lawlessness in the cyberspace, in relation to growing inequalities and the lack of trust in many of our societies; Fragility also because of geopolitical divides; Fragility even because of the risks in relation to the proliferation of nuclear weapons that are there again on the table. 
 

Well, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen of the media, it’s an enormous pleasure to be with all of you today. I want, first of all, to thank Prime Minister Boris Johnson for his kind invitation. It's for me a pleasure to join several of the sessions, the working sessions, of the G7. 

And there are two issues of enormous interest for me and for the work I do as Secretary-General of United Nations. One is related to vaccination and the way to defeat COVID-19. And the second is climate change and climate action to defeat climate change.  

Excellencies, Friends,

I am pleased to welcome you to this Global Roundtable on Transforming Extractive Industries for Sustainable Development.

Mineral resources are one of Earth’s great endowments.

Their extraction plays a dominant role in the economies of 81 countries.

These countries account for a quarter of global Gross Domestic Product, half the world’s population and nearly 70 per cent of people living in extreme poverty.

I am very pleased to address this Webinar for the International Day for Biological Diversity.

Let me be frank.

Humanity is waging a war on nature.

We face a triple emergency – biodiversity loss, climate disruption and escalating pollution.

We will all be losers if we don’t achieve peace with the planet.

Nature sustains life.

It provides us with opportunities, services and solutions.

A healthy planet is critical for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.

Excellencies, Dear friends,  
   
I want to thank Chancellor Merkel and the German government for convening this year’s Petersberg Climate Dialogue with the United Kingdom, president of this year’s UN climate conference.  
  
I strongly congratulate Germany for aiming to achieve carbon neutrality in 2045 and increase its 2030 target to cut its emissions by 65 per cent compared to 1990 levels. 
  

Excellencies,

Thank you for being part of this important discussion.

The COVID-19 pandemic caught the world unprepared.

It has now taken more than 3 million lives and pushed millions into poverty.

To respond and recover better we need more investment in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Progress on reducing poverty, providing equal access to health care and tackling the climate crisis means better resilience to shocks.

If we had advanced further on the SDGs, we would have been better prepared to weather the COVID-19 crisis.

Friends,

Thank you, President Biden, for bringing us together to focus on the existential threat of climate change.  

You have started this summit by walking the talk, and I applaud the commitment of the United States to cut greenhouse gas emissions 50 to 52 percent below [2005] levels.

Mother Nature is not waiting.  

The past decade was the hottest on record. 

Dangerous greenhouse gases are at levels not seen in 3 million years. 

Global temperature has already risen 1.2 degrees Celsius – racing toward the threshold of catastrophe.  

The Secretary-General thanks President Biden for convening today’s Leaders’ Summit. The commitments and actions announced, provide a much needed boost to our collective efforts to address the climate crisis ahead of COP 26 in November in Glasgow.