President Pahor’s speech at UN High-Level Meeting on Climate and Sustainable Development or All

At the invitation of the President of the 73rd Session of the UN General Assembly María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Borut Pahor attended the High-Level Meeting on Climate and Sustainable Development for All at UN in New York.

Below is speech by the President of the Republic of Slovenia on high level plenary. The spoken word applies.

"“Where, if not here? Who, if not we? When, if not now?” were the sound words of young student addressing more than 10.000 young people, families with children, and other supporters at the global climate protest on 15th March in my city Ljubljana in Slovenia, which was one of 2.233 cities and towns in 128 countries of the world.

This climate protest proves that young generation fully understands the basic principles of the constitution about the rights for their healthy and climate friendly future in the frame of the sustainable development.

Some think that young people should be at school? But the climate action by the youth is the biggest lesson of all, and visibly demonstrates that education for life and future is much larger than just the classroom.

Young generation clearly understands the Paris agreement and other international agreements. They demand from adults, leaders, governments, businesses and others to follow the science and experts who are telling us that the window of opportunity to save the global climate crisis is closing rapidly. So the urgent global climate action is needed.

So we, the leaders, and all other participants, have to take our responsibility and be there, at the Climate Summit, acting together with the strong message for the urgent global climate action, aiming towards net zero emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050 in accordance with the Paris agreement goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

At the same time we have to balance the 2050 climate target justly between current and future generations according to the basic constitutional principles. This means that all countries of the world need to raise substantially our national climate targets for the period up to 2030 and 2040.

We need a winning global climate story, ambitious global climate policy, pro-active global climate leaders, inventive businesses, climate ambitious countries, cities, villages and fully engaged citizens, who will take the right long-term global action, ending the climate crisis by 2050, among other global problems, on the road towards fully sustainable development."


Photo: Uprs


Photo: Uprs