Prime Minister Voreqe Bainimarama this morning joined the Prime Minister of UK, Rt Hon. Boris Johnson, and the President of the EU, Ursula von der Leyen, Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres in calling for far greater commitment to increasing global financing for climate action.
Mr Bainimarama told this High-Level event on Climate Action that “If we don’t win the race to net-zero emissions, we are headed for three or four degrees of global warming and create an earth we will not recognise and a climate we cannot survive.
Speeches won’t save us and neither will nice tweets or photo-opportunities. Our only expectation is action and we need solidarity we can feel, reductions in emissions we can measure and resources vulnerable nations can afford to access now.
The strong message was delivered by Mr Bainimarma at the High-Level Virtual Roundtable on Climate Action convened by the United Nations Secretary-General along the margins of the 75th United Nations General Assembly.
“Five years post-Paris, the front of the climate emergency is expanding and its impacts are intensifying. Billions of people now share the anxiety Fijians have known for a generation, as they find themselves one super-storm, mega-fire, or flash flood removed from catastrophe,” Mr Bainimarama said.
“With revenues across the developing world gutted by COVID-19, the resources to fund resilient development are running thin, leaving us exposed to trillions of dollars in climate-driven losses. Without urgent reform to climate finance, we will struggle to fund our very survival.
“In advanced economies, rather than compounding the climate crisis by looking backwards to coal and fossil fuels, Leaders must view post-pandemic recoveries through the lens of opportunity, heed what the market is telling us, harness renewables, and return people to work in green and blue industries.
“Governments and the private sector must lead a transparent transition to a more climate-resilient financial sector, beginning with regular reporting of corporate climate risks. Fiji intends to make climate-risk reporting mandatory across every Government Ministry.”
Mr Bainimarama said that this is still our “decade of action”.
“It hasn’t started as we imagined, but it must finish as we planned, and press onwards to a future of net-zero emissions, the only “new normal” worth fighting for.”
Fiji’s Prime Minister was invited by the UN Secretary General to join a small group of leaders from Government, industry and businesses to chart the way forward from the 2019 Summit.
Mr Bainimarama joined the Head of Microsoft Brad Smith, and other industry leaders and a small group of world leaders.
As a follow on event from the successful 2019 Climate Summit convened by the UN Secretary General at the UN; this event sought to speed up actions being taken by businesses, cities and local governments, and by investment banks.
In the lead to this summit, the head of Google had already announced that Google will be running all its global operations on carbon-free energy by 2030. Several major investment banks have also sought to align their businesses to promoting climate friendly investments. These are significant changes only a year after the Climate Summit. A lot more needs to be done and much faster.
The UN Secretary General called the meeting to maintain and speed up such transitions everywhere and to ensure that climate actions did not become a victim to the COVID crisis.
