Stockholm, 1 Jun 2022 (AFP) – World leaders gather this Thursday and Friday in Stockholm, Sweden, for a summit on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on the Environment, whose organizers expect concrete results. .
The United Nations Conference on the Environment held in Stockholm in 1972 was the first high-level world meeting dedicated to the subject.
Participants adopted the Stockholm Declaration which contained 26 principles relating to economic development and environmental protection.
The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, and the US President’s Special Envoy for the Climate, John Kerry, are among the personalities who will attend the event.
At a press conference on Wednesday (1st), Guterres lamented that the war in Ukraine has diminished the spotlight on the urgency of the climate crisis.
“The sense of urgency in the climate debate has been affected by the war in Ukraine,” Guterres said alongside Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson.
“This war shows how vulnerable the world is with its dependence on fossil energies,” he added.
According to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), an organization created on the occasion of the first Stockholm conference, this week’s summit takes place in the context of the crises “of climate change, the loss of biodiversity and resources, pollution and of waste”.
“That’s why in Stockholm we need bold actions […] Fragmentation must be avoided,” said UNEP director Inger Andersen in a statement.
Among the topics addressed are the urgency of action in the face of climate change, the consequences of the covid-19 pandemic and the introduction of environmental criteria in development.
The Swedish minister in charge of European affairs Hans Dahlgren attended the first conference in 1972 as a journalist for Swedish television.
That meeting was “the starting point of the international collaboration that, among other things, led to the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015”, he explained.
Half a century later, the main difference is the sense of “urgency” and the fact that there are already structures in place to tackle the problem, he said.
But advocates of the fight against climate change expressed their frustration at the lack of action by world leaders.
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