H.E. Mr. Fernando Coimbra, Chair of the Committee of Permanent Representatives
Ambassadors and Excellencies, colleagues
I am grateful for your presence at the 152nd meeting of the Committee of Permanent Representatives (CPR) as we approach the end of a tumultuous year.
I do not need to rehash in detail the tragic events of the year. There is not a single person here whose country – and in some cases, friends and family – has not suffered from COVID-19. But the consequences go beyond health impacts. For the first time in 30 years, poverty is on the rise while the pandemic is driving us further off-course from achieving the promise of the 2030 Agenda.
While COVID-19 has hit us hard, it has also underscored the urgency of meeting global goals. This pandemic, like others before it, is closely linked to the way humanity treats nature as a commodity that is gobbled up to fuel our economies. We urgently need to step up ambition and action on the three planetary crises of climate change, nature loss and pollution to head off further pandemics and other, potentially far graver, shocks.
Throughout this difficult period, you have all worked hard in this endeavour. I thank you for your commitment. I also thank you for your patience as we, at UNEP, have been adapting to the new reality of working virtually.
In response to the pandemic, UNEP refocused its efforts both to deal with immediate challenges and to push harder on the long-term solution – which is creating a world that works with nature, not against it. UNEP’s focus, based on our longstanding approach of ensuring that science and data drive effective policy, falls into four broad areas: delivering a transformational change for nature and people, investing in a green economic package towards the pandemic recovery, helping nations to manage COVID-19 waste and modernizing global environmental governance.
Please allow me to give you some brief highlights of our work during 2020 in each of these areas.
One, delivering a transformational change for nature and people.
Our joint report with the International Livestock Research Institute, Preventing the next pandemic – Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission, which was issued in July, identified the root causes of zoonotic diseases and highlighted that human, animal and planetary health must be treated as a single interconnected issue in planning and policy-making.
And I am pleased to announce that UNEP and the environment will have a greater seat at the One Health table. Together with WHO, FAO, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) and other experts, we embarked in the last few weeks on a process to strengthen environmental science and expertise for securing human, animal and ecosystem health.
Meanwhile, as poor air quality has been closely linked to vulnerability to COVID-19, UNEP collaborated with UN and private sector partners to launch the world’s largest urban air quality data platform. Spanning more than 7,000 cities, this tool can enable better and greener decision-making, policies and products, and equip citizens to hold their leaders accountable.
In an issue linked to air quality and climate change, UNEP launched a report calling for minimum quality standards on used vehicle imports to developing countries. As a result of our support, and with the leadership of Ghana, the Economic Community of West African States Commission has announced new vehicle standards for West Africa.
Global standards are also a matter of respect and equality. UNEP co-convened the Global Tailings Review, which led to the launch of the first-ever global industry standard on tailings, guiding the entire lifecycle of tailing facilities.
UNEP also found innovative ways to engage the next generation, partnering with TED to develop Earth School – the largest online learning initiative in UNEP history – and engaging gamers through the Playing for the Planet Alliance. Commitments from some of the video game industry’s biggest names include green activations in games, planting millions of trees and reducing plastic use – equivalent to a 30 million tonne reduction of CO2 emissions by 2030.
This year, UNEP also helped over 50 Member States develop national plans and early warning systems on climate change and launched new projects in Benin, Lesotho, Mauritania, Iraq and Ghana.
Two, investing in recovering better.
The pandemic has been a disaster, but it gives us an opportunity to recover better with policies and investments that address biodiversity loss, climate change and pollution.
UNEP’s Emissions Gap report, which will be crossing your desks in a few weeks, this year focuses on how stimulus packages can help with a greener, more sustainable recovery and can catch up on climate action. Insufficient international commitments leave us on track for warming this century in excess of 3°C. However, the Emissions Gap report shows that investing the stimulus and recovery packages smartly, and with the future in mind, can bring 2030 emissions close to levels that put us on a 2°C pathway.
While the weight of responsibility sits heavy on governments, the private sector must also shoulder its share of the burden. Public-private collaboration is growing, with UNEP playing a key role. The blended AGRI3 fund is set to mobilize USD 1 billion in commercial finance for sustainable agriculture and forest protection. And the Global Fund for Coral Reefs aims to invest USD 500 million over the next ten years to improve the health and sustainability of coral reefs.
I am also inspired by the ambition of the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, which brings USD 5 trillion assets under management, showed at a Global Roundtable hosted by the UNEP Finance Initiative last month. The Alliance members committed to implement deep greenhouse gas emissions reductions in the 16 to 29 per cent range by 2025 from 2019. These are the type of bold initiatives we need to meet our climate goals.
Three, managing COVID-19 waste.
The pandemic is setting back progress on reducing pollution and waste with a spike in hazardous waste, millions of litres of wastewater, and massive use of detergents, disinfectants and antimicrobial solutions. UNEP is working with member states to address these challenges. UNEP provided technical advice on medical waste management to Afghanistan, Haiti, South Sudan, and Sudan, as well as to UN peacekeeping operations. UNEP also published a report with practical information and guidelines on healthcare and municipal solid waste management.
Four, modernizing global environmental governance.
COVID-19 has forced environmental governance online. Despite the awful nature of the driving force, this is perhaps no bad thing. We now have the opportunity to reduce our footprints long after the pandemic has passed. This means moving to collaborative online platforms, holding virtual meetings and modernizing – but with an inclusive approach, being mindful of the very real digital divide and therefore taking action to counterbalance this.
As I mentioned earlier, we have seen some glitches, but also successes. We held several fully serviced online meetings, including the Annual Subcommittee and the Ad-Hoc Expert Group on Marine Litter – the latter of which identified ways forward for the fifth United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) in 2021, including negotiation of a global agreement on reducing marine litter. UNEP also supported the first virtual ministerial meeting on COVID-19 and the environment in West Asia in August 2020.
But perhaps the best example of how we can work virtually comes in the development of the Medium-Term Strategy (MTS 2022 – 2025).
The MTS, and its associated Programme of Work (PoW) and budget, are designed to enable a transformative shift to target the drivers of climate change, biodiversity loss, and pollution. This approach is grounded in the Agenda 2030 and the SDGs. The MTS also recognizes that this is the decade of action which will shape how we live on the planet and its sustainability.
You may remember that we initiated this process formally in October 2019, where we presented an initial roadmap for the MTS and PoW development. Since then we have engaged in continuous and timely consultations with the CPR, formally as well as informally through a series of five ‘Discovery Sessions’. We have reviewed your feedback – including sometimes-diverging views – to reflect your collective thoughts as we look to finalize the drafts.
I am pleased to say that, with your strong review and engagement, the MTS now charts a path for UNEP to scale up impact. Although, let me add that a coherent and focused MTS is not a destination but rather a point of entry to align our systems, operations, procedures and culture, to deliver with greater impact.
So today, we will be holding our seventh formal consultation on the MTS and fourth discussion on the PoW. We feel that they are ready to be submitted for CPR endorsement. If you share our view, I will hand over a draft decision to the CPR and its Bureau.
In order to meet the deadlines for distribution of documents before UNEA-5, following today’s consultation, we will seek your support and endorsement to submit final working versions of the documents for endorsement at the Open-Ended CPR.
Excellencies, it is critical for us to begin work on our strategy as soon as possible.
This is because 2021 could be a make or break year.
With news of successful COVID-19 vaccine trials, we can begin to hope that an end is in sight for the current phase of the pandemic. But we must also remember that an end to the pandemic cannot mean a return to the way we lived before.
The year 2020 is on track to be the warmest on record, with wildfires, droughts, storms and glacier melt intensifying. Yes, half of the world’s GDP and half of global CO2 emissions are covered by a net-zero commitment. But follow-up action is slow. We must use the coming year to create a brighter, greener future.
Ambitious policies and green investments need to be put in place before economies slot back into the old carbon-intensive groove. More-ambitious Nationally Determined Contributions need to be announced by the next climate meeting in Glasgow, and these words turned into deeds. A stronger post-2020 biodiversity framework needs to be agreed in Kunming next year – with a commitment to act, at every level and in every sector. And the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, which gets underway in the New Year, must deliver.
And this brings me to the preparations for the upcoming UNEA-5, which this Committee will be discussing later today.
As you may recall, the President of UNEA made a proposal outlining a “two-step approach” for UNEA-5. He also has shared with you some ideas on messages from the virtual session of UNEA-5 in February 2021.
Meanwhile, at your request and following the guidance provided at the Annual Subcommittee, the Secretariat has submitted a proposal for the structure of the virtual session of UNEA-5, which I believe offers a basis for compromise to ensure that UNEA not only takes the necessary decisions to ensure the effective management of UNEP, but also allows the world's highest-level decision-making body on the environment to have a voice even in such trying times.
As a Secretariat, we will continue to be guided by your decisions. I look forward to your guidance so that we can jointly chart the path ahead – for February 2021 and for a resumed session in 2022, at which the celebrations of UNEP@50 are also set to culminate. I look forward to the outcomes of the consultations at a Sub-Committee meeting in early December, to ensure that the UNEP@50 kick off next February will launch a year of intensive work, leading up to an ambitious commemoration.
Excellencies,
We must all deliver, not in spite of adversity, but precisely because of it. It is a common human flaw that sometimes we need to take a bitter blow to our health before we act: be it a heart attack or cancer scare. COVID-19 is our collective health scare, on a planetary scale. We must respond appropriately and immediately, by shifting from destructive economic activities to investing in a healthy planet.
2020 has been the year of the pandemic, a year that will live in infamy. It is now up to us to be brave enough and strong enough to make 2021 the year of action towards a green recovery.
Thank you.
Executive Director
