At the Global Citizen Now climate session in New York on Thursday 21 September, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, highlighted the EU’s commitment to the fight against climate change.
Highlighting the already visible impact, from Greece to Slovenia and from the Philippines to Libya, she urged the adoption of strong measures: “If we want to limit the rise in temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius, we need to accelerate the global clean energy transition”.
The President of the Commission also insisted that climate action and economic growth could coexist, citing the success of the ‘European Green Deal’. She also spoke of the EU’s success in carbon pricing. “Since (2005), the economy has grown by 65%, but CO2 emissions have fallen by 35% in the industries covered”, she noted.
The day before this speech, at the Climate Ambition summit, the President of the European Investment Bank (EIB), Werner Hoyer, had also called for more ambitious climate action, describing it as “a major development accelerator for the years to come”. However, he warned against what he called “colonialism 2.0”, stressing the need for a respectful and balanced approach to investment and aid for developing countries.
Responding to calls for reform of the global financial architecture arising from the Bridgetown Initiative, he reaffirmed the EIB's commitment to achieving global development goals. “It is vital that the aid given to the countries of the South is genuinely beneficial and not imposed”, he stressed.
These statements, made at the 78th United Nations General Assembly, echo the calls for international collaboration to tackle the current climate challenges, less than 2 months before COP28. (Original version in French by Nithya Paquiry)