COP26 President gave his closing remarks
to the Petersberg Climate Dialogue by video on Tuesday 28
April 2020.
Thank you all for a very good session. We’ve had around
thirty contributions and speakers today, and particular
thanks to Chancellor Merkel and to Secretary General
Guterres for their very welcome remarks.
I’d also like to thank Andrew for facilitating the
discussion earlier and Minister Schulze thank you for a
very good facilitation indeed. It’s shown that we can all
come together in a virtual way.
I think we’ve all recognised that we do face an immense
scale of the challenge. As we’ve heard from Carolina
Schmidt who talked about the fact that the climate crisis
has not taken time off, but on the other hand we’ve also
acknowledged the fact that there is still time to define
the future.
But of course the window is closing. We know, Patricia
Esponosa has said to us, there is a whole list of issues
to deal with on the road to COP26, but again as
Ambassador Lois pointed out, we need to have an ambitious
road map to COP26, that is absolutely vital.
Sergio Costa made the very important point about the
importance of youth, and the work we will be doing with
our friends and colleagues in Italy in terms of pre-COP
and particularly the youth events that they are going to
be leading ahead of COP26.
As you know we have defined a number of key themes for
COP26, which include transition to clean energy, clean
transport, nature based solutions, adaptation and
resilience and of course bringing it all together,
finance.
I think what is very heartening, was to see the
contributions today have very much echoed these
particular themes. We’ve heard colleagues talk about the
need for a green deal, a green transition, the need to
invest in innovation, to shift the investment to green
technologies, and all of that is going to be absolutely
vital.
We heard from colleagues about raising ambition on
renewable energy, and that is of course very important.
And particularly, so many colleagues made comments on the
importance of nature based solutions, ensuring that
solutions that we have in terms of fixing climate change
must integrate nature based solutions.
And also making sure that whatever we do, we have nature
based adaptation and biodiversity protection at the heart
of our work in tackling climate change.
And of course, adaptation and resilience which was again
brought up by many colleagues. And the final point on
finance, which was made about the call to disperse
climate finance from developed countries to those in the
developing world who need our support.
I think from my perspective and Minister Schulze
perspective, it’s very good that we’ve had all colleagues
acknowledging that the Paris Agreement and Sustainable
Development Goals, are a very strong framework to guide
our recovery.
The Secretary General made a point where he talked about
that we are in a difficult place in terms of the global
economy right now, but it is always, as he said, darkest
before the dawn.
Of course, we do believe that COP26 can be that moment
and lead up to COP26 can be those footsteps when the
world comes together to ramp up momentum towards a
climate resilient zero carbon economy.
I can tell you that as incoming COP Presidency, our
promise from the UK together with Italy, is that our
teams will work night and day to raise the ambition on
climate change.
This does mean more ambition to reduce emissions, more
ambition to build resilience, and more ambition to
cooperate with each other, as we have done and shown
today.
And, of course, as we recover this transition must be
fair and inclusive, which many of you have made the point
on, and we must make sure that no-one is left behind.
I do believe we owe that to ourselves and of course to
future generations. So thank you so much for
participating today, and we look forward to continuing
this dialogue in other forums.
