H. E. Paula Narvaez, President of the Economic and Social Council,
Excellencies,
Distinguished delegates,
African countries, Least Developed Countries and Landlocked Developing Countries face severe challenges which threaten sustainable development. The triple crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution will continue to exacerbate these challenges.
In many of these countries, a “triple exposure” enhances multidimensional vulnerability- geographic and structural; socioeconomic, fragility and conflict.
UNEP’s Adaptation Gap Report 2023 highlighted that despite clear signs of rising climate impacts worldwide, adaptation is slowing – slow on financing, slow on planning; slow on implementation when it should be accelerating.
IPCC AR6 highlights the narrowing window of opportunity for enabling climate resilient development to secure a livable and sustainable future for all. It provides multiple opportunities for scaling up climate responses and adaptation.
For these countries, given the triple exposure, enhancing adaptation capacity and resilience requires a framework that is multi-level (global, regional and local) and multi actor approach (state and non-state actors -, industry, private sector, communities, women and youth, indigenous groups) with different instrumentalities and mechanisms – more knowledge sharing, capacity building, STI capabilities, technology sharing, more access to information and connectivity, a greater focus on coordination and rule enforcement, the design of social safety nets.
Efforts at global implementation and coordination of integrated actions to tackle the triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution are beginning to be increasingly seen at the global, regional and national levels, seeking to addressing these challenges through effective, co-sectoral, inclusive and sustainable actions, ensuring that such actions are science- and knowledge-based, taking into account traditional knowledge, and are gender sensitive, with the engagement of all relevant actors and partners.
This momentum must be seized, by enhancing mobilisation of resources from both domestic and international sources, from public and private sectors, and using triangular, North- South and South-South cooperation to advance solutions to these challenges.
UNEP will continue to strengthen its engagement to support African countries, LDCs and LLDCs in implementing actions to address the crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, to inspire impactful and collective action and reinforce action, global inclusiveness and solidarity and scale up means of implementation.
Thank you.