The IUCN Local Action Summit took place on 3 September 2021—the opening day of the IUCN World Conservation Congress—in Marseille, France. Leaders convened to showcase and galvanise conservation efforts in cities and regions, make the case for a nature-based recovery to COVID-19, and announce ambitious action pledges for nature. Here follows a transcript of the speech delivered by President Martine Vassal of Bouches-du-Rhône and Aix Marseille Provence Metropolis.
Thank you very much Chair, Ministers, President of IUCN France and all those who are with us today.
It is interesting to see how many we are because we attach great importance to land and territory. We are very happy to have the IUCN Congress here today because what we want is to share what we are doing.
We also want to hear what you are doing. Today the situation is very serious. I’ve heard people from around the world talking about rising temperatures are extreme weather events. We have heard what Ile de France and Region Sud have done.
Of course, we want to make sure our citizens can live well. The principle is, if you want to protect nature, then you need to know that nature well.
We have a national park, we have the Parc des Calanques and we have various other protected areas. Thus, we are very lucky. We have more 6,000 species but we are aware that some of them are disappearing. Thus we need to take action.
Our group has prepared a plan to preserve nature. We are also looking at public transport and energy sources. We have great potential here using marine, wind and solar energy. Therefore, I think we could become a tremendous laboratory for this. We could experiment in our development. I fear we may have lagged behind but we can catch up. We also need to look at electric vehicles. I think that there is the political will to do something special here. We were elected only recently but we now have a Vice President who will be looking at nature-based solutions.
We have some 50% protected areas and 25% agricultural areas. This of course brings challenges. We need to work with local and state actors to basically ensure that there is biodiversity tomorrow.
Thank you, I have a proposal, we have 255 km of coast, we have a lot of plastic that is impacting on that. We will work with WWF and local authorities to stop this scourge by 2025, which is negatively impacting our shoreline.
Hence, I have two wishes. The first is that when we leave this Congress, we can tell our children that we will keep our promises. The second wish I have is that together with the Ile de France, we and other subnational governments will become more involved in IUCN.