COP President: Looking Back and Stepping Forward Wilson Center, Washington DC

Good morning everybody. It’s a pleasure to be right here.

I wish to begin by thanking Ambassador Inexperienced, and Ambassador Quinville, for the nice and cozy welcome that I’ve had right here on the Wilson Middle.

I wish to mirror again to almost a yr in the past when the world got here collectively, and we cast collectively the historic Glasgow Local weather Pact.

I’ve to say that what we agreed in that Pact went additional than really many individuals had imagined was doable.

Because of the commitments made, each inside and certainly exterior the negotiating rooms, by each the private and non-private sector, we left Glasgow with what I described on the time as a fragile win.

The heart beat of 1.5 levels remained alive.

And we did this in opposition to the backdrop of an more and more fractious geopolitics, and we had practically 200 nations come collectively to affix forces within the face of a shared world problem.

Now virtually a yr on, it’s simply 23 days to COP27, the tip of the UK’s COP Presidency, and the tip of my time as COP President.

And the transition to Egypt’s Presidency is coming at a profoundly difficult juncture in our present geopolitics.

Vladimir Putin’s brutal and unlawful warfare in Ukraine has precipitated a number of world crises: from vitality and meals insecurity, to inflationary and debt pressures world wide.

These crises are completely compounding present local weather vulnerabilities, and naturally, then the scarring results of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

However as critical as these crises are, we should additionally recognise a seismic structural shift that’s underway.

Our world political economic system, constructed on fossil fuels for the final century, is in a state of flux.

Concurrently, leaders and their residents world wide are coping with spiralling local weather impacts.

Local weather catastrophes have gotten extra frequent, and  sadly they’re changing into extra ferocious.

In current months, as you understand, an space the scale of the UK has flooded in Pakistan, with dying, illness and the displacement of tens of millions of individuals following within the water’s wake.

The truth is that these occasions have gotten more and more related.

Excessive drought and warmth, for instance, amplify the drivers of migration, of provide chain fragility, and with vital disruption to main financial sectors, not least world grain manufacturing.

And so I’ve to say this to you that that is not one thing that occurs to different individuals, someplace far-off.

Proper right here within the US, in current weeks, Hurricane Ian has battered the East Coast.

There are critical issues about defending the Jap seaboard, and the real chance that whole cities must relocate away from the coast in our lifetimes.

Earlier this summer season, the Colorado River, which generates energy for tens of tens of millions of People and is a lifeblood for agriculture, was positioned in an unprecedented state of emergency, as a consequence of falling water ranges.

So the longer term that scientists and local weather activists have lengthy warned us about, and which has frankly been a actuality for among the most local weather susceptible nations for many years, is now a actuality for a lot of tens of millions. It’s a actuality for us on this room.

And because the science continues to inform us sadly: the worst is but to come back.

Disaster for a lot of tens of millions extra lives and livelihoods.

Prices hovering into the trillions.

And whole sectors changing into stretched, and uninsurable.

There was a report from the Australian Local weather Council Research that got here out this June that concluded that 1 in 25 Australian properties will turn out to be successfully uninsurable by 2030. 1 in 25.

So associates, we’re in a brand new world.

And navigating this context is our defining problem.

And admittedly, it’s a problem that we’ll rise to, or fall wanting, on this decisive decade.

And so at present, from the vantage level of the ending of my time as COP President, I wish to take inventory of the place we’re.

And I wish to begin by recognising, and certainly championing, the truth that, in some quarters, excellent work is being achieved to cement the beneficial properties of the Glasgow Local weather Pact, and to take us additional.

We at the moment are a part of an irreversible course of journey.

Sure, there’s nonetheless oil, gasoline and coal in use and manufacturing world wide.

However round half a decade in the past, we handed a tipping level, when annual newly put in energy from renewables surpassed that from coal, throughout the OECD.

And estimates recommend that by the center of this decade, renewable capability is anticipated to be up 60 % on 2020 ranges.

And leaders are internationally more and more turning to renewables to ensure cheaper, cleaner, and safer energy for his or her populations.

We’ve the Inflation Discount Act right here within the US. International locations like Australia are again on the frontline of the combat in opposition to local weather change.

India has revealed a strengthened emissions discount goal, its 2030 Nationally Decided Contribution.

And as you heard I used to be simply in Kenya, whose exceptional geothermal potential is really a imaginative and prescient of a cleaner future.

Now individuals in my nation speak about nuclear or fossil as baseload, however geothermal is doing that job in nations like Kenya.

The plant I visited, Olkaria, was already producing 1 gigawatt of energy. Kenya has the potential for ten occasions extra geothermal energy.

And certainly should you look alongside that rift, there are a lot of different nations which have potential as properly.

Now companies are additionally stepping up. They’re reimagining methods of engaged on sustainability, relatively than plastics, air pollution and waste.

Simply final week you’ll have seen that the world’s greatest reinsurer and underwriter to almost 1 / 4 of the worldwide economic system, Munich Re, turned its again on oil and gasoline.

And civil society, represented on this room as properly, is embracing the ability of the collective, to clarify that it merely is not going to settle for something lower than a web zero future.

Now, in all of this work, we’re realising the expansion story of this century.

A development story that may ship tens of millions of inexperienced jobs on this decade, and financial growth advantages.

A narrative through which collective motion and quickly rising scale ship huge advantages by way of value and innovation.

I imply simply have a look at the extraordinary fall in the price of renewables from which we’re already benefiting.

Photo voltaic prices down 80 % since 2010.

Wind energy prices down by as much as three-quarters since their peak simply over ten years in the past.

And all while we now have skilled the biggest ever annual enhance within the worth of wholesale gasoline.

And take a look on the kind of improvements that might see parked vehicles feeding vitality again into the grid, or the electrical cable vehicles I used to maneuver round on my go to to Mexico Metropolis earlier this yr.

And it’s a way forward for hope, through which our cities turn out to be extra habitable, and extra breathable, our vitality turns into cheaper, and cleaner, and our ecosystems turn out to be extra strong.

However, regardless of all of this, I do discover myself reflecting on three years on this function, and all of the speeches and all of the interventions I’ve given in actually each nook of the globe.

And I’m reflecting on conversations I’ve had right here in Washington over the previous few days, they usually bear exceptional similarity to conversations I used to be having three years in the past, as a fresh-faced COP President-Designate.

And I’ve been reflecting on the G20 Local weather and Surroundings Ministerial conferences in Indonesia, which I attended earlier this summer season, the place among the world’s main emitters threatened to backslide on commitments that they had made beforehand, in Glasgow, and certainly in Paris.

And this all while the intense climate occasions that I spoke about earlier, proceed to batter and devastate nations and continents internationally.

And certainly, these excessive local weather occasions are impacting communities within the very G20 nations which have been pulling again on ambition in that Local weather Ministers assembly.

So I’ve to say this very frankly to you associates, that there does stay a giant deficit in political will.

In that can-do spirit which is so badly wanted.

And I’m left questioning what additional proof, and what additional motivation, world leaders might presumably have to act.

It’s unfathomable to me that we’re not doing the whole lot in our energy to answer the inevitable structural adjustments that we face, and to forestall local weather disaster.

And we needs to be beneath no illusions.

We aren’t but doing the whole lot in our energy.

So we now have to ask ourselves: why are we not going additional? Why are we not going sooner?

Competing priorities, and the necessity to do multiple factor without delay

Now, I do perceive that leaders world wide have confronted competing priorities this yr.

However you understand, we can’t deal with any of the crises we face in isolation.

And we can’t enable cyclical crises, as painful as they’re, to distract us from the web zero transition.

Or, as my buddy Mark Carney has put it, we should not fall sufferer to the “tragedy of the horizon”.

Now that sadly occurred amidst the World Monetary Disaster of 2008, only a yr after tons of of IPCC contributors have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And admittedly many determined local weather motion might watch for the longer term.

And so we misplaced crucial momentum consequently.

We should discover the power to give attention to multiple factor without delay.

And I’m reminded, once I was the UK’s Enterprise and Power Secretary.

My crew and I labored to help companies by the darkest and most difficult moments of the pandemic.

On the identical time, the UK’s Vaccine Taskforce sat in my authorities division, and I chaired our Ministerial Funding Panel, deciding which vaccines to again.

So, working across the clock for months, and supported by a crew of excellent civil servants, we delivered the UK’s COVID vaccine portfolio.

And it was on the identical time in that very same yr in my division we introduced ahead the UK’s bold 2030 Nationally Decided Contribution.

So the purpose I’m making is that it’s doable to tackle a number of challenges, and to succeed, even in probably the most difficult occasions.

And certainly, as many local weather susceptible nations have been recognising for a while, we not have the posh of selection. We’ve to attempt to do that concurrently.

However I’ve to say I feel we additionally must ask ourselves some extra basic questions.

We’re approaching the twenty seventh iteration of the United Nations Convention on Local weather Change. The COPs.

Over a quarter-of-a-century of labor.

I’m on the finish of my very own three-year journey on this course of.

So I’m going to be frank.

I feel we do must query whether or not all our present worldwide establishments have absolutely internalised the grave urgency of our local weather scenario.

And whether or not we’re really able to delivering web zero, by the center of this century.

So, is certainly one of our basic drawbacks that we’re developing in opposition to the boundaries of our present buildings?

Now Prime Minister Mia Mottley, of Barbados, who is likely one of the world’s strongest local weather voices,

and whose nation could be very a lot on the frontline of this disaster, set out her views on this specific query on the United Nations Basic Meeting final month.

Her “Bridgetown Agenda” is a compelling name for an overhaul of our world monetary structure.

And really I agree with a lot of what she has set out.

Establishments, just like the World Financial institution, as admirable as their founding intentions are, weren’t arrange with the aim of tackling an existential local weather disaster.

At the moment, local weather should be on the coronary heart of the whole lot that we do.

The world can’t afford for such establishments to be cautious in how their appreciable assets are deployed to deal with the local weather disaster.

That, I feel, is a matter of social justice in addition to environmental safety.

And sure, we even have to speak severely about coping with the debt disaster, with the intention to successfully deal with the local weather disaster.

As a local weather buddy stated to me final week, the street to an bold final result in Sharm-el-Sheikh, and certainly to all forthcoming COPs, will move by this metropolis, it should move by Washington.

And I do know the sentiment of Prime Minister Mottley’s agenda instructions a lot help.

Secretary Yellen has additionally spoken, extremely powerfully, on the problem of MDB reform final week.

I used to be at Chatham Home in London a few weeks in the past, with among the world’s greatest companies, discussing the course to a 1.5-degree world.

And so they too have been speaking in regards to the world order being ripe for a “Bretton Woods II” second.

So associates, the world is recognising that we can’t deal with the defining problem of this century, with establishments that have been outlined by the final.

We’ve to incentivise each side of the worldwide system to recognise the systemic danger of local weather change, and to make managing it successfully a central activity.

Whether or not that’s multilateral growth banks or the personal sector.

Central banks or funding banks.

Regulators or credit standing businesses.

Finance ministries or philanthropies.

There may be frankly no logical cause why each single a kind of establishments shouldn’t be adapting, to creating tackling the local weather disaster a basic a part of their total function.

And finally, that is going to be completely crucial to our efforts to ship public, personal and multilateral finance, together with concessional finance, which is so vitally essential, at magnitudes which might be far, far larger than we’re at present attaining, and which we frankly want.

It will likely be crucial to making sure the multilateral growth banks and the worldwide monetary establishments particularly present a willingness to innovate, and to stretch their steadiness sheets.

The G20’s Capital Adequacy Assessment suggests methods through which they’ll do this, and many people expect an bold response to that overview.

And it’s all going to be crucial to making sure the foremost philanthropies ramp up their contributions, significantly in areas of upper danger or decrease return.

Now in fact, while finance is totally central, our political establishments, whether or not that’s the COP course of, the G7, the G20, the G77, in addition they all have a task to play.

That is significantly true as we search for a genuinely efficient multilateral strategy to carbon pricing.

Proper now, credible estimates recommend lower than 4 % of world emissions are at present coated by a direct carbon worth at, or certainly above, the extent we would want to restrict warming to 2 levels or much less.

So that time, addressing one of many nice market challenges of our time, is in fact of specific significance.

So associates, this programme of labor is the one means we are going to absolutely ship on the guarantees made in Glasgow, and in Paris earlier than that.

And sure, completely it’s an awesome agenda of labor.

However it’s commensurate with each the size of the problem, and the size of the environmental and financial alternative.

And, as I mirror on the legacy of COP26, and the UK’s Presidency, I do know that the world can rise to the problem.

Now in fact, it should quickly be time for our associates in Egypt to select up the baton.

COP is a course of, and I need COP27 to construct on the success of COP26, simply as COP26 constructed on COP25, and COP24 earlier than that.

And sure there’s a lot work to be achieved.

At COP27, there’ll should be critical conversations on mitigation.

Sure, we now have seen 24 new or enhanced Nationally Decided Contributions this yr, together with from the UK.

However that isn’t sufficient.

All Events agreed in Glasgow to step ahead on this subject by the tip of this yr.

And as local weather impacts spiral, loss and harm will in fact once more be more and more a part of the dialog.

A dialog that ought to go even additional than our collective progress at COP26.

And there needs to be a brand new agenda merchandise to contemplate how finest to enhance the worldwide response, by funding and wider help, aligned with the Glasgow Dialogue.

And nations should get entry to the technical assist they want by absolutely operationalising the Santiago Community.

And we should additionally proceed to set out exactly how the billions are going to be was the trillions, to enter climate-resilient infrastructure and to help a clear vitality transition internationally.

And so we are going to proceed to press on with our Simply Power Transition Partnerships, the primary of which, for South Africa, we launched at COP26.

Now every of these partnerships will tackle a distinct, country-specific form, however they’re, and can stay, a key legacy of COP26.

So, with this work forward, I hope all Events come to Egypt with the identical spirit of urgency, of collaboration and certainly compromise, that underpinned our success in Glasgow.

I will probably be there because the UK’s negotiating minister.

And I can inform you that we’ll definitely be stepping ahead.

So with that, associates, as we sit up for COP27, and I look to the tip of my COP Presidency, I wish to finish on a hopeful notice.

The final three years have been a singular privilege.

I’ve been impressed by the urgency and the ambition I’ve felt in rooms like this one, world wide.

And I’m sure that, if we will align all the work that I’ve seen and that I’ve talked about at present, and adapt the techniques that underpin it, the twenty first century is not going to simply be the century we pulled the world again from the precipice of local weather disaster, it will likely be the century we unlocked a simply and sustainable path to prosperity for billions of individuals world wide.

Frankly what larger motivation might we’d like?

Thanks.

ENDS