Slashing Greenhouse Gases, Funding Sustainable Development, Closing North-South Divide Key for Lasting Recovery, Secretary-General Tells G20 Parliamentary Speakers Summit

Following is the text of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ video message for the Group of Twenty (G20) Parliamentary Speakers Summit, in Jakarta today:

I am pleased to greet this G20 Parliamentary Speakers’ Summit.  I welcome your focus on “stronger parliaments for a sustainable recovery”.

We have a steep hill to climb.  Instead of recovery, recession looms.  We confront mighty challenges:  soaring inflation, crushing debt, widening inequalities, deepening poverty, raging conflicts and a burning planet.  People are experiencing a cost-of-living crisis, hitting women and young people the hardest.  We need responses that are people-oriented and multilateral in approach, cooperative in nature, and global in scope.

Specifically, sustainable recovery requires three urgent actions.  First, to save our climate we need to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, replace fossil fuels with renewable energy; scale up adaptation finance; and address loss and damage from disasters.

Second, to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we need an SDG Stimulus — and the G20 Summit in Bali is the place to start.  The SDG stimulus should include increased concessional funding to developing countries; greater debt relief; and expanded liquidity.  Countries everywhere need to embed their national budgets in the SDGs and direct greater investments in social protection and digitalization.  And we need G20 Governments to mandate multilateral development banks to overhaul their business models in support of a transition to renewable energy-based, climate-resilient economies.

Third, we need to halt the divergence between developed and developing countries that is stoking tensions and eroding trust.  This means rebalancing power and resources between developed and developing countries.  And it means deep, structural reforms to an unfair global financial system.

Excellencies,

In all of this and more, parliaments are our indispensable partners.  Together, let us do everything in our power to build a more sustainable, resilient, and peaceful world.

Thank you.