HE Annika Strandhäll, Minister for Climate and the Environment, Sweden
Mr. Thomas Lindblom, Director, Ministry of the Environment and Secretariat for Stockholm+50
And to the guests of honour – young people!
World Environment Day is a celebration. A celebration of the natural world and what it brings, and a celebration of the activists that fight to keep it healthy. But it is not always easy to celebrate as we look at a future dominated by a triple planetary crisis.
The crisis of climate change. A child born in 2020 will face seven times more heatwaves than a child born in 1960. The crisis of nature and biodiversity loss. When I played in the woods as a child, birdsong filled the air. Children today play in near silence: 600 million birds gone in Europe since 1980. The crisis of pollution and waste. More than 800 million children have blood lead concentrations above safe levels.
The triple crisis is accelerating. Why? Because we consume at the rate of 1.7 planets a year. We have Only One Earth. We have to accept we are not doing enough to protect it.
And so, I stand before you in Stockholm – where the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment launched the modern environmental movement. I stand before you after Stockholm+50, where world leaders met for the last few days and showed new commitment to fixing our mistakes. I stand before you because we have to do better.
We know what to do. End our addiction to fossil fuels. Restore nature to its full glory. Transform our food systems. Make our cities green, liveable and low-carbon – a task Sweden is committed to, from Kiruna to Malmo, from Stockholm to Gothenburg. And we can do it – as one people, living on one Earth.
The world does not belong to a government, which the people elect. It does not belong to a business, which people keep afloat with their money. We shape this world. So, we must consider our current and future choices. The world belongs to young people.
In the meantime, our societies and economies put us on a pathway that is linear. We take from the belly of the earth, and we discard it as garbage. And as we confirmed, we must shift from a linear economy to a circular economy, to an economy that places value on nature, not places value on its destruction. We can choose how we take holidays. We buy fast fashion. We can choose how we consume and throw away. We get our protein from meat-rich diets. How do we drive and what do we buy? We heat our homes and power our industry. It is that consumption – in which we are all participants – that is driving the triple planetary crisis. The climate crisis. The nature loss crisis. And the pollution and waste crisis.
Young people, including those in this room and watching online, are speaking up. Through activism. Through protest movements. Your voices are stronger every day, turning into the roar of a grassroots movement that cannot be ignored.
I ask you to use this roar to fight the erosion of democratic values. To hold leaders to the promises they have made on environmental issues. To protect your civic space. To hold leaders to account. To demand environmental rights because they are yours. To battle disinformation and misinformation with facts and science.
Also, live your lives well. Be brave and bold and happy. Nobody is asking you to limit your dreams or ambitions. But know that success and happiness should not be measured in the accumulation of things, particularly when rampant consumerism is killing our planet. Take personal responsibility. Choose low-emission transport. Choose sustainable diets. Choose green energy. Choose second-hand. Choose a better future.
And know that others have dreams and ambitions, which are just as valid as yours. Africa accounts for only a few per cent of greenhouse gas emissions but is worst impacted by climate change. Is it fair that opportunities should be limited by where somebody is born?
So, I ask you to show solidarity. Work towards a world in which geography doesn’t matter.
We can use the environment to unify, in a time when many of us seem to have forgotten that we are all in this together. We can let the concept of One Earth lead us to the concept of One Humanity. Because this is what we are. Ethnicity, gender, religion and sexual preferences are all, in the end, such small variances: the theme of human beauty. We are different. But we are the same.
We must all show tolerance, wisdom and understanding to protect the Earth, our one home, so we can live together as One Humanity because we have only one Earth.
Thank you.
