Speech delivered by: Inger Andersen
Event: Opening of Stockholm+50 International Meeting
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Your Majesty, King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden
Your Highness,
Your Excellency, President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta
Your Excellency Prime Minister of Sweden, Magdelena Andersson
Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres
President of the General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid
President of the Economic and Social Council, Collen Vixen Kelapile
Distinguished Heads of State and Government,
Ministers, Excellencies, Youth, Partners and Friends,
My thanks to Kenya and Sweden, co-hosts of the Stockholm+50 conference, and to the co-chairs: Canada, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia and Finland.
In 1972, visionary leaders came to this city for the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. Olof Palme. Indira Gandhi. Maurice Strong. They told us of the links between development, poverty, human well-being and care of the planet. They warned us that we were in trouble. And they told us what we should do to ensure a healthy planet, healthy people and healthy economies. Jomo Kenyatta followed up by offering Kenya as host nation to the United Nations Environment Programme.
We listened to them. Fifty years later, we have agreements and processes and promises covering every environmental challenge. Climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste – what we call the triple planetary crisis – are issues on everybody’s minds. We have a human right to a healthy and clean environment.
But did we really do everything these leaders told us we should do? No, we did not. You know the harm, the pain, the inequity and injustice that the triple planetary crisis is causing. You see the distress signals the planet is sending us. You hear youth pleading for a fairer and greener world. You know that the sustainable development goals are in trouble.
If Indira Gandhi or Olof Palme were here today, what excuses would we offer up for our inadequate action? None that they would accept. They would tell us that further inaction is inexcusable.
We know, more than ever, the terrible consequences of marching blithely further down the carbon-intensive development path we have gouged from the earth. But we also know what we should do. And we know how to do it. Science has delivered the solutions we need for fair and just transformational changes in our economy, our finance systems, our lifestyles, our governance. And we know need science to swing the needle to action on our moral compass.
Stockholm+50 is a chance for the world to commit, once and for all, to delivering these transformations. This conference is a chance to amplify a global movement for a more caring world. A world in which the needs of youth, vulnerable communities and indigenous peoples are more important than the lust of the elites for more wealth and power. A world that creates relationships of trust. A world in which people live in harmony with nature. A world that turns commitment into action.
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As the original Stockholm declaration said, “It is the people that propel social progress, create social wealth, develop science and technology and, through their hard work, continuously transform the human environment.”
As Olof Palme former Prime Minister of Sweden noted, “The air we breathe is not the property of any one country. We share it. The big oceans are not divided by national frontiers – they are our common property. What is asked of us is not to relinquish national sovereignty but to use it to further the common good. It is to abide by certain agreed international rules in order to safeguard our common property, to leave something for us and future generations to share.”
Fifty years ago, visionary leaders came to Stockholm and started the work of the environmental movement. In the days, months and years that follow, let us be the ones to finish it – by unleashing a paradigm shift for the benefit of future generations.
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