EU Statement – UN High Level Political Forum: Strengthening alliances for SDG implementation: stakeholder engagement for the 2030 Agenda

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I want to take you on a time travel to the year 2100, through the eyes of my grandson.

Today my grandparents came to visit and gave me a small jar of something I did not recognise. They told me it was called honey, and when I asked how it is made, my grandpa said ‘this is not made anymore, this was made’. ‘Bees made this’, my grandma added, ‘animals as small as your fingertips. I couldn’t believe a small animal could make something so magical, but my grandpa said: That something is small, doesn’t mean it cannot create the greatest things’. 

‘If only people had realised this earlier. If only they had moved on with inviting the smallest persons to the biggest tables. When I was young we were already so far… we spoke in meetings with all countries in the world.

‘But did they not listen to you?’ I asked. 

No they did, but what they didn’t do was look beyond the safe rooms they were in… to the real world! They had to understand that their plans were meaningless without young people championing them. To not see youth as beneficiaries of their work, but as drivers of it. 

But above all, to understand that they were building your life; here in 2100!

‘You know what’, my grandma said, ‘most of them weren’t even here anymore when the bees became extinct. Let alone to see how the world looks today. I wish we could go back in time, to prevent it all.’ I asked her to what year we would have to go, and without a doubt she said 2026. 

2026 was the year we should have realised: we are building the future today, together.