EU Statement – UN General Assembly: Interactive Dialogue to Commemorate International Mother Earth Day

Mr. President,

I have the honour of delivering this statement on behalf of the European Union and its Member States. The Candidate Countries Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova align themselves with this statement.

Human societies always have and always will depend on the services and fundamental value that nature provides.

However, climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, three interdependent human-inflicted planetary crises, put the survival and well-being of current and future generations at unprecedented risk.

Our unsustainable relationship with nature is also pushing the achievement of the SDGs increasingly out of reach.

We need to decouple growth from resource use through Circular Economy – actions that keep resources in the economy and limit the depletion of natural capital. And we need to work with nature rather than against it through Nature-based solutions that deliver multiple benefits for nature, people and climate.

We are meeting today precisely four months after the adoption of a historic deal for nature: the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), which embraces the vision of a world living in harmony with nature The framework was a breakthrough for nature conservation, restoration and its sustainable use.

The GBF complements the Paris Agreement and both must be implemented with the same level of political urgency. Jointly, they form a global roadmap towards a true reconciliation with nature. Getting there will mean transformative change of our society and economy within a very short time.

We must jump start implementation if we are to meet the 2030 targets and ensure that we are well under way towards the 2050 Goals.

We welcome that the GBF contains specific targets to ensure the participation of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, as essential right-holders. They have a vital role in implementing the GBF, including through their traditional knowledge and practices, and through greater control over their land and the management of their resources.

The targets for resource mobilisation are ambitious and encompassing. They address financing from all sources: domestic and international, public and private. They also provide for the elimination, phase out or reform of incentives harmful to biodiversity, as well as the alignment of financial flows with the Global Biodiversity Framework.

The EU and its MS are the main provider of international biodiversity funding. The EU has announced a doubling of its international biodiversity financing to reach 7 billion euros of investments worldwide until 2027, and EU Member States have made similar and significant pledges, but the Kunming-Montreal Framework will require stepping-up efforts even further. We urge all parties who are able to contribute to do the same.

We should broaden the donor-basis and ensure that a larger share of our financing goes to LDCs and SIDS. We also need to get multilateral development banks, international financial institutions and philanthropy on board for the implementation of the GBF.

The EU has started the implementation of the GBF domestically as well as in our external action, on the basis of the European Green Deal. The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 provides for the protection of 30% of European land and seas by 2030, aligned with the GBF. Our Nature legislation, the proposed Nature Restoration Law and other initiatives will contribute significantly to global nature protection and restoration efforts.

Mr. President,

We welcome the opportunity to discuss Harmony with Nature. The Interactive Dialogues have been valuable to address non-anthropocentric paradigms and the rights of nature. However, many UN processes already allow for discussions on biodiversity in the framework of the 2030 Agenda. We do not see the benefit of upgrading Harmony with Nature to a High Level Meeting, with budgetary consequences, until its contribution to SDG targets has been further demonstrated.

We also wish to recall that the United Nations Environment Assembly remains the UN’s universal decision-making body on the environment. We could not support a meeting called Earth Assembly. “Assembly” carries a specific meaning in the UN system as a decision-making body of the Member States and could not be applied to the proposal we have been asked to discuss today.

However, the EU and its Member States strongly support efforts for more discussions on biodiversity, within the General Assembly and ECOSOC, to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

I thank you.