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 Bruno Oberle, Director General of IUCN.
It’s a pleasure to be here. I hope I am in the right room in the right Summit! I have been running from one summit to another and this, is in a way, is part of the message. We are in a really challenging situation. The planet on which we live, the only planet we have, is sending us very clear messages around the world.
We have seen in the last months floods from Germany to China, we have seen huge fires in Eastern Siberia in California. This is climate change in action. This is the consequence of our behaviour. At the same time, we are losing biodiversity, at a speed that is 1,000 times greater than what is natural. And both these effects are the consequences of our behaviour, our economies, our societal rules.
We have a plan.
We know that all the States have agreed on development goals that want to have a fair, just, decent world where every one of us can have a good life.
And we know, at the same time, the way to get there is to take into account that the planet is imposing boundaries on us. We have to walk inside the boundary if we don’t want to mess up the planet.
This trade-off can be solved only if we radically change our behaviour. It is not a small change that is needed, it is not adding something to what we are doing now, it is a transformational change that is needed.
We need different products. We need different infrastructures. We need different services. We need different investments. We need different behaviour.
It is, it is a global change that has to happen in the next couple of decades. We can do it.
Science is ringing the alarm bells but at the same time it’s telling us, it is possible. If you use the knowledge that we all have, if we transform our society, it can be done. We can have 10 billion humans on the planet, living a decent life and at the same time, on a healthy planet.
We need an alliance. We need a broad alliance to deliver transformational change. And this is the reason why I was jumping from one Summit to the other: because we need, for example, the wisdom of the indigenous people. They have a different approach and a different relationship with nature. We can learn from them.
We need business CEOs that have knowledge on how to use scarce resources, money, skilled persons, and time, in a way that produce value.
We need the next generations, of course, because we need their energy, we need their hope and that coming leadership to bring about change.
And we need people in the organization with boots on the ground. We need local communities, urban entities, local governments, because where the transformation is happening, day by day, where you switch from gasoline car to bicycle, where you go from an oil heating system into better insulation: it is at the local level.
This is the reason because the local authorities, cities, villages, the regional government are of big importance for us, for the Union. And this is the reason why we want you as partners as close as possible, working with all the others in the alliance to create this future sustainable world.
Thank you for engaging with us. Thank you for supporting us further. Thank you for spreading the voice, so that next time we will have a full room of local authorities, discussing these topics.
Thank you very much.