Third Major Economies Meeting on Energy and Climate Change – Speech by M. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the Republic (excerpts)

Third Major Economies Meeting on Energy and Climate Change – Speech by M. Nicolas Sarkozy, President of the Republic (excerpts)

Paris, 18 April 2008

(…) I was keen to address you – the representatives of the Heads of State and Government of the world’s greatest economic powers – at the Paris Major Economies Meeting on Climate Change.

By hosting this meeting, France wishes to mark her commitment to the preservation of the planet. (…) On the evening of my election, I indicated that the combat against global warming would be one of the main priorities of my term of office.

Your work during these two days is fundamental because the international agreement to control greenhouse gases that the world needs can be built only on trust and mutual understanding between the most industrialized countries and the major emerging countries. Your contribution to the success of the negotiations launched in Bali can be essential, decisive even. (…)

UN/INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS/DARFUR/IPPC REPORT

Drawing up the future universal agreement within the framework of the United Nations is, evidently, something that concerns the entire international community. This is moreover why we are for the United Nations doing it and for not excluding anyone at all, because global warming is the problem of all the planet’s inhabitants. And who talks on behalf of all the planet’s inhabitants if not the United Nations?

I want to say straight off that no international agreement will be possible without measures taking into account the impact of climate change on the poorest and most vulnerable people. The battle against poverty and battle against climate change must reinforce each other, complement each other. Public policy in both these spheres must converge and the international institutions must work together. The United Nations, World Bank and other international players must coordinate their activities and strategies, and this means on the ground as well. We see in Darfur this explosive mixture of the consequences of climate change, which is leading to the migration of increasingly poor people, with the consequences on the war, and moreover, what this means a number of us doing in order to prevent the massacres we’re seeing.

But today I would like to pass on a simple message to you (…): the situation is urgent. It’s not a matter for tomorrow, or the day after, it’s for now. And this urgency must prompt each of us to put our defensive reactions behind us, no matter how legitimate they may be. I clearly understand every country defending its interests. If you, government representatives, don’t defend your countries’ interests, no one will do it in your place. But if we all stick to defensive positions protecting our countries’ parochial interests, however legitimate these may be, what will this lead to, in the end? To disaster.

Why disaster? Because the negotiations must be finalized no later than the end of 2009, at the United Nations Conference in Copenhagen. We haven’t got much time. So we have to work together on a cooperative basis and seek just solutions.

On the issue of the urgency, we had the last IPCC report, barely six months ago, bad news continues to flood in. Scientific models and empirical observation tell us that the events unfolding now confirm the experts’ most gloomy scenarios. (…)

Faster-than-expected melting of ice in the polar regions comes as unwelcome proof: the recent disintegration of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica, a gigantic iceberg, four times the size of the City of Paris, has broken off from the continent. And this is just one example – there are many others.

SECURITY/FOOD SECURITY

Yes, the situation is urgent, since climate change already poses a major security challenge. Today, all observers admit that climate disruptions are one of the direct causes of some conflicts. If we continue moving in this direction, climate changes will encourage the migration of populations who no longer have anything at all to territories where the people haven’t got much.

And the Darfur crisis will be just one crisis among dozens of others. This is what we’ve got coming to us.

These changes are, and are increasingly becoming a threat to food security. Dwindling water resources and growing pressure on agricultural and fishing resources are challenges which threaten development, especially in Africa. A billion inhabitants. Together we must immediately grasp the magnitude of the tragedies experienced by the countries of the South, where there is increasing demand for food but shrinking food supplies and worsening health conditions.

So we must act urgently to strengthen food security at a time when 37 countries are experiencing very serious food crises, and sadly this is just the beginning. Is there a single one of you, of us, who could remain indifferent to the rebellion of people in the countries of the South who are going hungry?

GLOBAL PARTNERSHIP FOR FOOD AND AGRICULTURE

(…) And I will shortly be proposing a global partnership for food and agriculture. We need, here too, greater coordination between international players, institutions, States, the private sector and non-governmental organizations. The food crisis calls for immediate responses and an ambitious aid strategy for agriculture. France intends to contribute actively to resolving this crisis. As an emergency measure, she will double her food aid budget as of this year to $60 million, i.e. almost $100 million.

COMMON RESPONSIBILITIES

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is based on a simple principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. The Bali Roadmap was built on compliance with this principle.

The principle of common responsibility means that each party must play its part, starting with the major world economies represented here. Fairness demands that all participate in the effort, even though I readily accept that we, the developed countries, must accept more stringent constraints than those of the developing countries, for whom pursuing swift growth is crucial. It’s said, it’s true. And we have in our time polluted more than you, admittedly. But it isn’t a reason for you to make the same mistakes for which you will pay a higher price than us. And we aren’t going to go on saying to each other, "You were bad in the past, I’m going to be as bad as you". Who will end up the winner? But, once again, I readily recognize that we have to do more.

However, this doesn’t prevent us from acknowledging the facts. What would be the impact on the future of an agreement which included commitments on cutting emissions only by the industrialized countries? If Europe and the United States were suddenly to become carbon neutral, climate change would continue – no doubt less rapidly – but the consequences would be almost as serious. So the necessary effort on a single category of countries.

I am fundamentally committed to this principle of fairness. In the long term, there is no reason why some inhabitants of our planet should emit 10 or 20 times more greenhouse gases than others. For we will all suffer the consequences.

LOWER CARBON GROWTH

This search for fairness must help us define a path of sustainable growth for all our countries, which differ from each other. Per capita emissions in the developed countries must fall and fall fast. In the poorest countries, they can rise as these countries develop. But once they have reached a certain level of development, the carbon content of each additional euro or dollar of wealth created must be reduced.

Already, many countries which have not made any formal commitment, in both the North and South, have put ambitious policies in place to achieve lower-carbon growth. These efforts must be acknowledged. But I stress one point: the degree of commitment made by each country will have to be respected and verified by concrete and quantifiable measures. Carbon emissions must have a cost everywhere since our goal is clearly to reduce the world’s emissions, not transfer them from one country to another. And, moreover, I tell our friends in the developing countries, whom we admire so much: what you are doing is fantastic. But you can’t want the rights of the major economic powers you are in the process of becoming and at the same time exempt yourselves from the duties. It isn’t possible. A great power has rights. But it also has responsibilities. And so duties. And this is a point which can’t be subject to negotiation.

FRANCE/GRENELLE ENVIRONMENT FORUM

Everyone must face up to their responsibilities. This is what France is doing by embarking on an ambitious programme to transform her economy and her society based on the Grenelle Environment Forum approach. (…)

We must summon the ambition to change our production and consumption systems, rethink our cities, our infrastructure and our buildings.

EU/ENERGY AND CLIMATE PACKAGE

Alongside her European Union partners, France has started implementing ambitious measures to comply with the international commitments accepted by all Europeans. (…) I want Europe to stay in the vanguard of the battle against climate change and in fact I have made what is known as the "energy and climate" package one of the priorities of the French European Union presidency. We must stop supporting the post-colonial line of argument consisting in a number of countries telling the others: do what I say, but not what I do. Now we want to tell you: this is what we’re doing, it’s possible, it’s difficult, but we have to do it all together.

The 27 of us in Europe are discussing the "energy and climate package" that will allow the European Union to cut its emissions by at least 20% from 1990 levels by 2020. The European Union is willing to go even further, up to 30% if its international partners make a comparable effort. This is something concrete. To those telling me that they agree about making an effort, but that there mustn’t be any targets, I say it’s true that setting targets doesn’t mean we’ll achieve them, but if we don’t set targets, we certainly won’t achieve them. We have set targets and will ask you to judge us on our targets.

The challenge which Europe is determined to take up will allow the European peoples to stay in the vanguard by gradually building a low-carbon society.

FRENCH SOLIDARITY/BILATERAL COOPERATION

France will show solidarity with the developing countries. She is proposing to make her expertise and technical assistance available to the emerging and least developed countries. She will continue to devote substantial financial resources, since every year she allocates €480 million – or $750 million – to combating climate change in the developing countries, and this is only for solely bilateral cooperation.

GLOBAL ACTION/FUNDING/CDM/CARBON MARKET/SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT/GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT FACILITY

Dialogue between the major economies is essential if we are to arrive at a common understanding of long-term goals. These goals will be the first manifestation of our political will to act. They concern us all. We must listen to each other, talk candidly, and understand each other.

A sector-based approach, the promotion, development and dissemination of technologies that will help reduce our emissions, such as carbon capture and storage, and nuclear energy, and the combat against deforestation are avenues to be explored. (…)

The representatives of Brazil and Indonesia – to take as examples just two of the great forest nations represented here – are more aware than any one of the importance of measures to combat the degradation and destruction of forests, which together account for approximately 20% of carbon emissions in the world. This will be a major pillar of the global package we must adopt (…) in Copenhagen next year.

Substantial funding is required for this radical transformation of our economies and societies. This is why I don’t believe in partial solutions.

We must, first of all, encourage private investment, which will contribute almost 90% of funding for the battle against climate change. We need not only to mobilize some hundreds of millions of euros, but also massively direct financial flows towards this new low-carbon economy.

We can do this only by putting in place public policies which create favourable conditions. So we have started doing this in the framework of the Kyoto Protocol with the clean development mechanism. The carbon market, which must be globalized and regulated, will be a powerful driver of change. But we aren’t telling any country at all to stop growth to safeguard the planet. We’re saying: let’s together invent a new growth: sustainable development.

Public funding will be essential to help the most vulnerable. We must debate the proposals on the table and work to strengthen and improve existing instruments, starting with the Global Environment Facility.

We must therefore give careful consideration, as of today, to the financial component of the global agreement, which will have to guarantee synergy between the United Nations system and the International Financial Institutions.

***

You are here, ladies and gentlemen, to present the contribution of the major economies – we are, all of us together, responsible for 80% of greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Who will dare stand up and say: we are responsible for 80% of the emissions, we can’t be responsible for controlling them. Who will be able say that? Who will dare say that? So we must identify solutions to the challenge of climate change which will be the subject of negotiations according to the timetable set by the Bali Roadmap.

We have a historic responsibility, that of looking to the future. A treaty is not simply the culmination of a historical process – it is also designed to structure our common future.

The question facing us this morning: will we be up to the challenge? Will we act responsibly? Are we capable of taking on the substantial task casting a deep shadow over our generation? Well, it is up to you to make a decisive contribution to the United Nations negotiation process.

If we want to, we can ensure the conclusion of a historic agreement in Copenhagen in December 2009. Basically, what is at stake is nothing less than ensuring the planet’s survival and this is why a few hundred women and men, to whom their fellow citizens have given the responsibility, have to be equal to this task. We can’t say that we don’t know. Now we know. We can’t say blame others, it’s the fault of us in this room. So are we capable of imagination. So can we be equal to the task? This is the question facing us. And I wanted to be with you today and tell you that France will shoulder her responsibilities and that Europe, if it wants to be true to its history, has to set the example. But, please, we can’t afford the luxury of one of you remaining on the outside./.