Event entitled “Caring For Our Common Home” on the Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’

Your Excellency Archbishop Tomasi,
Your Eminence Cardinal Turkson,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen:

I am very pleased to open this important event here in Geneva. It is extremely fitting to hold it in International Geneva – a close-knit community where the idea of “caring for our common home” is put into practice every day. Yet, as a number of challenges continue to threaten our planet, we have to re-double these efforts for the sake of our planet. The last year ended with a historic breakthrough in global climate negotiations at the COP21. The Paris Agreement followed other major breakthroughs in 2015 such as the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development, the Sendai framework on disaster risk reduction and the Addis conference on development financing. This momentum also helped members of the World Trade Organization to overcome some of their long-standing differences and reach important agreements in Nairobi in mid-December.

2016 will be the year that will pave the way for the implementation of these agreements. For that to happen, we need everybody on board. The collaboration with all communities of faith is essential in this endeavour. The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ by His Holiness the Pope is a forceful call to action and today’s event hopefully will help us to embark on a coordinated approach.

The vast majority of people have come to accept the scientific facts about man-made climate change. The writings of religious leaders such as the Encyclical Letter by Pope Francis have been a critical factor in these developments, thereby encouraging civil society participation and activism at an unprecedented level in global negotiations.
As human beings, we have a longing to give meaning to the moments and activities that shape our lives: getting a degree, helping others, launching a business, inventing something new, enjoying our families and caring about the future of our children. But personal moments such as these lose their meaning, if they have unintended effects on the environment that deteriorate the ecosystem and living conditions of our planet. Realizing the negative impacts of our actions is what makes us, as individuals, question our way of life and emphasize the importance of our values. People are increasingly looking for leadership that puts morals and values at the centre.

As we are gathering at the start of the new year, let us learn from our personal, often unfulfilled New Year’s resolutions: if you don’t start exercising in January, you won’t be doing it in February, and you will end up with the same resolution next year. This is not the pattern to follow for the implementation of the Paris Agreement. Quick and effective action is urgent to fight climate change. Consequently, one of the important successes of the COP21 was the declaration of the parties’ “resolve” to “ensure the highest possible mitigation efforts in the pre-2020 period.” But what are the concrete steps that we, as the international community, need to take to implement the Paris Agreement and move ahead to protect our planet?

Two key words come to mind: accountability and flexibility. The Paris Agreement envisages a new global stocktaking mechanism to hold governments accountable for the pledges they are making. At the same time, and very importantly, it leaves room for Governments to make more ambitious commitments at any time. Therefore, multi-stakeholder engagement, including the moral leadership of religious leaders, remains crucial. It will help ensure that the accountability mechanisms maintain their highest level of effect, and that Governments have incentives to make the more ambitious pledges needed to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels”.

At the same time, while financing arrangements for adaptation and mitigation still need to be narrowed down, we need to ensure that the measures and policies that will be put into place translate into change at the local level. Collaboration with parliaments and local governments, especially in major growing industrial cities, will be essential. And we will need to make sure that these steps are integrated into the broader 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

The Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’ includes a range of further important contributions as to what needs to be done. A focus on education to put an end to a “throw-away culture” and to maintain and re-enforce the sense of a shared responsibility, for example, is crucial. And the fact that various other religious declarations, such as the Islamic Declaration, the Rabbinic Letter or the Hindu and Buddhist declarations all agree on the urgency of action, gives us reason for optimism.

The challenges of implementing the ambitious agreements concluded in 2015 are big but not insurmountable. I am optimistic that the international community can make a difference if the instruments at our disposal are intelligently used. In times of doubt, moral leadership including by religious leaders will be needed. His Holiness the Pope has set a powerful example through his address to the General Assembly ahead of the official opening of the UN summit for the adoption of the post-2015 development agenda and through Laudato Si’. In combination with practical new partnerships for the implementation on the ground, we can overcome these challenges. I wish everyone a productive discussion on how best to tackle them.

Thank you very much.