Speech by M. Emmanuel Macron, President of the Republic, at COP27 [fr]

Sharm el-Sheikh, 7 November 2022

(Check against delivery)

Mr President,

United Nations Secretary-General,

Heads of State and government,

Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,

Dear friends,

First of all, I’m pleased to be with you again. I want to thank and congratulate President Sisi for his welcome and for this COP, which is at the same time an African COP, a climate-justice COP, and a COP for implementing – as several have said before me – essential work, and so I’d like to thank him for this perfect welcome. We were together a year ago in Glasgow, where together we raised our ambitions and noted progress but also took several measures. Everything that was said in Glasgow is still and must remain valid, because even though our world is no longer the same, the climate mustn’t pay the price for the war launched by Russia on Ukrainian soil.

Indeed, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has not only brought the war onto European soil, it’s also plunged the whole world into a grave period of uncertainty, energy and food tensions, difficulties added to difficulties, in particular for many countries on the African continent and around the Mediterranean. The crisis, coming a few months after the pandemic and adding to other crises, could make many people give up and say: “we have other priorities, the climate could wait”. But at the same time, we’re seeing many of our countries hit by the very consequences of climate disruption and which are showing us once again, if it were needed, that the climate emergency is real. It’s not for tomorrow. And so we have only one obligation: to continue taking action, taking action on mitigation, on adaptation, on preparation for crises and reparations for crises and disruption, while experiencing this period of shock, of the return of war and its consequences on our soil.

To this end, I wanted to say a few simple words here, after the heads of State and government who have preceded me and before several others. Firstly, we won’t sacrifice our climate commitments under Russia’s energy threat. And so all the commitments countries have made must continue. For the richest countries, in particular the European countries including France, this meant submitting our national strategies in line with our commitments; now it means honouring them. It’s about the Fit for 55 programme and the European plan to reduce our emissions by 55% by 2030. It’s a strategy that will rely heavily on energy sobriety, on the accelerated development of renewables and solutions enabling us to do without fossil fuels in the long term, and on speeding up nuclear energy. So it’s about a full energy strategy, commitments and a change in our ways of travelling and producing, etc.

The second key element is that we must continue the mitigation battle and not only move our economies away from coal – that’s what lies at the heart of the European strategy, which must apply to all the richest countries – but also help the emerging countries do so as quickly as possible. That’s a key point if we want to make the overall strategy and the Paris Agreement a success. We must keep on course with this strategy; that’s why I believe especially in what we launched together on the sidelines of Glasgow, the JETPs [Just Energy Transition Partnerships], which allow us, the major consumers, to plan this effort and which are really key to this mitigation strategy.

We’ve taken a significant first step with South Africa: France will invest €1 billion to support this action along this path and help South Africa with a strategy based on renewable energy, nuclear energy and saving energy, to move away from coal. We want to step this up: that’s what we’ll be doing with Indonesia, India and Senegal. It’s clear we must move further and more effectively. The energy revolution is possible, and it requires this strategy with the emerging countries. It also requires action we want to take with several other countries. India has set the pace with a very ambitious strategy; Kenya and Rwanda have also initiated very ambitious strategies on these issues, having really accelerated renewables strategies which we’ll continue supporting very strongly, because renewable energy, too, is increasingly less expensive, increasingly safe and obviously less carbon-intensive than the others. In the situation we’re living through, they’re demonstrating their full relevance.

The third big message I want to send you here is that basically we mustn’t forget that this battle for the climate, against climate disruption, is inextricably a battle for biodiversity, and that they’re two twin battles. I’m saying this before the important meeting in Montreal and after the One Planet Summits we’ve been holding on these issues since the beginning of 2021. As we know, nature is our best ally in achieving the Paris Agreement targets. Climate and biodiversity are two sides of the same coin, two sides which also show that the countries often seen as the poorest provide solutions to the fight against climate disruption. Those countries with biodiversity reserves, be they marine or terrestrial, have absolutely incalculable carbon-sink reserves. We must help them to protect them; we must help them to provide these nature-based solutions.

I’m thinking in particular of critical ecosystems, ancient forests, peat bogs, mangroves, humid areas, which bring together the biggest carbon stocks and the greatest wealth in terms of biodiversity. If these ecosystems are destroyed, vast carbon reserves will be released, annihilating any chance of meeting our targets. There are already 100 of us – countries with a target to protect 30% of our lands and our seas, an initiative which we launched together at the beginning of 2021 and are promoting together with Costa Rica. I’d like COP15 on biodiversity in less than three weeks’ time to confirm this ambition and enable us to go even further. So we must urgently give these ecosystems special status and propose to the States which are home to them political and financial contracts enabling them to guarantee their conservation.

But the paradox today is that we’re supporting the improvement of [financial] flows but not allowing support for those States that choose to protect these biodiversity treasures and these carbon sinks. That’s why this morning, with several States present here including Colombia, Gabon, Rwanda, several indigenous people’s representatives, the Philippines, China, the United States and the Europeans, I launched an initiative to be inspired by what we’ve done with the emerging emitters and these JETP programmes and establish positive protection programmes. And therefore to draw up contracts, country by country, working with NGOs, in particular Conservation International, and build a method that will enable us to fund the protection of these spaces and have contracts that will develop a legal, political and financial toolbox for protecting those ecosystems. We launched the initiative for those contracts this morning. Gabon, Colombia and the Philippines have already signed up to it. We’re meeting again in Libreville at the beginning of 2023 to adopt very concrete action plans during a One Forest Summit organized jointly with President Bongo, who spoke a few moments ago.

We want to conduct the same type of initiatives to protect the oceans, with one focus: the United Nations conference in 2025. The oceans must be basically what space was a few years ago: a new frontier for cooperation and multilateralism. There too, on this issue, we must do everything to protect climate and biodiversity solutions in our oceans. I want to be very clear here: France will step up to its commitments and be true to what I’ve already said. That’s why France supports the ban on all exploitation of deep seabeds. I take ownership of this position and I’ll uphold it at international forums. More broadly, this morning we launched a high-level group to build a methodology for biodiversity credits and enable us, by the first quarter of 2023, to have a common approach.

The final point – the fourth one I wanted to make – is obviously about climate justice. We made commitments, and trust is currently being eroded – to say the least – between the North and the South. What I said a few weeks ago on the United Nations rostrum, that we must avoid this big division of the world over the war, is just as true when it comes to the climate. Basically, a lot of countries have heard us talking about $100 billion since Copenhagen and are saying to themselves: “we’re not seeing the money coming in”. We must carry through the financial solidarity: we’ve committed $82 billion. In the next few months, we must reach $100 billion and help persuade the last rich countries that haven’t made all their commitments. But above all, we must pay out much faster and find mechanisms, be they bilateral or multilateral, to deliver on these payments to ensure this money reaches the South, otherwise trust will collapse. And so the $100 billion [is needed] very quickly – we’re only at $82 billion – but above all the reality on the ground even more quickly, if we’re to be able to deliver.

The second thing is that under this solidarity, we must deliver on adaptation. France is working on this by investing €6 billion a year, which is our fair share of these efforts in line with our Copenhagen and Paris commitments. Of the €6 billion, we’re dedicating €2 billion to adaptation. Here too, all the rich countries must step up to these commitments, and in the coming weeks, together with several of my comrades here, I’ll try and persuade those who aren’t yet there, because sometimes there are political obstacles. I want to pay tribute to the goodwill of many leaders present here in this hall, who are sometimes blocked in their own countries and can’t move forward as fast as they’d like to.

Beyond these figures, we must have concrete projects with the most affected regions, under a partnership that brings this justice to life/fosters this justice. That’s what we sought to launch with the Great Green Wall, from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa. It’s bringing results. We had a record level of commitment at the beginning of 2021, with nearly €19 billion, but above all we paid out €2.5 billion on the ground, with projects that make it possible not only to mitigate climate change but also to tackle agriculture and agroforestry projects and combat desertification. And therefore to deal with the climate and biodiversity and provide economic opportunities to the most vulnerable countries, by providing food sovereignty and building genuine vegetable-protein industries. There too, what we need is to move faster and build even more effective partnerships with non-governmental organizations on the ground, entrepreneurs on the ground, in order to tackle this climate-justice challenge.

But today we must, as I was saying, go further, further than the $100 billion, further than these initiatives which have already been taken. I’ll finish what I have to say on this point: we need a surge of concessional financing. It’s at the heart of the discussion on loss and damage which many have rightly put on the table. I want to pay tribute to the courage and strength of many African, Caribbean, Pacific and Latin American leaders, who have been promoting this debate by telling us, “we could talk to you about the past, because justice hasn’t always been done. But right now we want to talk to you about the future.” And they’re right. “Because not only have we emitted less than you in the past and not only have you sometimes prevented us from developing as we’d have liked, we’re going to be affected by the consequences of what is happening sometimes more quickly than you’ll be – because we’re small, vulnerable islands, because we’ve got a more disrupted shoreline, because we’ve got geographical realities which make us more fragile and vulnerable than you.” And they’re right. It’s a fair argument. But above all, all the middle-income countries, some emerging ones, the poorest countries – they all saw us, the richest countries, during the pandemic, because we suffered a shock which affected the whole world basically symmetrically, and we did exceptional things. We mobilized exceptional finance. And they’re telling us, “but what’s happening to us is exceptional: no more water on our land, upheavals making life impossible. And now you want to tell us that it’s back to business as usual.” And they’re right, there can’t be business as usual.

So we’ve got to deliver a surge: we started doing this during the pandemic but were already late, now we’re even more so. So we’ve got to do battle if we’re to do what’s necessary on the Special Drawing Rights and on the $100 billion to support the poorest countries, a large part of which will go towards the climate. At the G20 we’ll step up reallocation [of SDRs] from 20% to 30% – at any rate, you can count on me to persuade the last ones who haven’t done their bit, sometimes because of these logjams. But I and the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley – whose courage, ambition and inspirational character, which we saw earlier here at this rostrum, I want to pay tribute to – floated the idea of a high-level panel of experts who will have to make swift recommendations to us about innovative climate financing.

So next spring – not in a year or two’s time; next spring – we have asked the IMF, World Bank and OECD to propose to us very practical solutions for activating these innovative financial mechanisms to enable us to develop access to new liquid assets and new lending capabilities for countries – including middle-income countries – which are being affected by these shocks, and also together propose to us solutions which take into account many countries’ climate vulnerability. To mobilize exceptional private-sector finance, exceptional public- and private-sector finance; and for us all together, in particular, to change our rules, the rules of our major international banks, of our development banks, of the IMF, the World Bank and our major lenders. By saying “we’ve got to suspend and take into account what we ask of you on debt, what we ask of you on repayments, what we ask of you in terms of guarantees, when you suffer the blow of a climate shock, when you’re the victim of a climate accident.” That’s what loss and damage is about. We must work with emerging countries, developing countries and middle-income countries to completely transform our approach, otherwise it will be too late.

The date has been set in partnership with the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley. We’ll promote this initiative so that next spring we’ve got this high-level group putting its proposals to us and bringing a change in our rules, our legislation and our way of operating, as early as the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank and all our major institutional players and our investors. That’s what practical implementation is about. We can’t wait for the next COP: it has to be in six months.

I’ve already taken too long and I apologise for this because the implementation has begun. Let’s not allow ourselves to slow down, because basically all these successive crises tell us the same thing. The injustices of the world in which we live have become intolerable. The crises are aggravating these injustices, so we can come through them only by profoundly reshaping our public-private solidarity mechanisms and our rules. This is what we’ve got to change. Nothing less. And this is what this African COP, hosted by Egypt – which I thank again – must allow us to do.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you very much./.