The UN has issued yet another call for course correction in the human treatment of the planet, asking the world leaders to change course and end a “senseless and suicidal war against nature.”
“We know what to do. And, increasingly, we have the tools to do it. But we still lack leadership and cooperation. So today, I appeal to leaders in all sectors: Lead us out of this mess,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
Speaking at the opening of the UN Environment meeting — Stockholm+50, the
UN chief said the 17 Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement show the way.
“But we must act on these commitments. Otherwise, they are nothing but hot air. And hot air is killing us,” he remarked.
The two-day meeting, 2 and 3 June 2022 kicked off Thursday under the theme “Stockholm+50: a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility, our opportunity.”
Six thousand people have registered to attend in person, including 10 heads of state or government and 110 ministers from 146 participating Member States, according to UN officials.
The secretary-general urged delegates at the Swedish summit convened by the UN General Assembly, in a call for action against a “triple planetary crisis” that’s been caused by the climate emergency – “that is killing and displacing ever more people each year” – biodiversity loss – which threatens “more than three billion people” – and pollution and waste, “that is costing some nine million lives a year”.
All nations should do more to protect the basic human right to a clean, healthy environment for everyone, Guterres insisted, focusing in particular on “poor communities, women and girls, indigenous peoples and the generations to come”.
Part of the solution lies in dispensing with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as a gauge of countries’ economic clout, the Secretary-General continued, describing it as an accounting system “that reward(s) pollution and waste”.
He added: “Let us not forget that when we destroy a forest, we are creating GDP. When we overfish, we are creating GDP. GDP is not a way to measure richness in the present situation in the world.”
The Secretary-General also insisted that greater efforts were needed to bring emissions to net-zero by 2050.
Guterres noted that the final touches are expected to be added to a new global biodiversity framework to reverse nature loss by 2030.
Work is also ongoing to establish a treaty to tackle plastics pollution, the UN chief continued, and the 2022 UN Ocean Conference in Lisbon, is expected to galvanize efforts to save our seas.
“If we do these things we can avert climate catastrophe, end a growing humanitarian and inequality crisis and promote inclusive and sustainable development,” he said, adding that “every government, business and individual has a role to play”.
Conference convenor, General Assembly President Abdulla Shahid, said there was a simple truth all need to acknowledge: “human progress cannot occur on earth that is starved of its own resources, marred by pollution, and is under relentless assault from a climate crisis of its own making.
He said recent climate action initiatives such as a plastics pollution treaty push, “give me hope”, but they needed to be integrated into a much broader effort.
“We need solutions that address the common bottlenecks affecting the entire environment agenda, which will, in turn, accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, and promote resilient and sustainable recovery from the pandemic.”
In a related development at Stockholm on Thursday, an UN-backed coalition of 1,000 stakeholders from more than 100 countries, launched their bid to use digital tools to accelerate environmentally and socially sustainable development.
The Coalition for Digital Environmental Sustainability (CODES) offers ways to embed sustainability in all aspects of digitalization. This includes building globally inclusive processes to define standards and governance frameworks for digital sustainability, allocating resources and infrastructure, while also identifying opportunities to reduce potential harms or risks from digitalization, said the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
