Spreektekst van de staatssecretaris van Infrastructuur en Milieu, Wilma Mansveld, op de VN-klimaattop, New York
Mister President,
As the minister for the Environment of The Netherlands it’s needless to say that I will do my utmost to negotiate a global climate agreement. It has to be legally binding, ambitious and flexible. And, we will need to make sure that climate measures are financed worldwide. Because without financing we can not achieve our ambitions.
But I want to do more! In my opinion a global climate agreement is not enough. I want to speed up the ambition by getting national governments, businesses, cities and sub-national authorities involved in the search for real world solutions to cut carbon emissions. In close coordination with our friends of the Lima-Paris-Action-Agenda I have chosen to focus on the transport sector.
The Netherlands after all has proven business cases of making the transport sector more sustainable. For the Lima-Paris-Action-Agenda we will help to mobilize low carbon transport initiatives from all over the world. These will be presented in Paris as ‘real world’ solutions to scale down emissions. Let me tell you why, how and when.
A quarter of the yearly green house gasses by fuel combustion comes from transport worldwide. The transport sector is the largest energy consuming sector in 4 out of every 10 countries, and second most in all the other countries. Every year these emissions are growing by an average of 2 percent.
I see many opportunities in transport to cut emissions of green house gasses. It’s not only good for our climate. Innovations in sustainable transport have proven to bring economic added value as well. According to the International Energy Agency, the world can save no less than 70 trillion dollars between now and 2050 when we switch to sustainable transport and mobility.
From now on, until the COP in Paris and beyond, stakeholders, governments, business and transport NGO’s will be involved to bring rock-solid cases of sustainable transport. The Netherlands will supply full support to this process, by collecting these cases, in order to present them as real-world solutions.
Mister President, I will conclude.
At the end of December I want to look back on Paris as a climate summit that brought us (A) a legally binding agreement and (B) an even stronger action agenda.
I call on other countries to also make an extra effort that will contribute to a global ambitious climate agreement.
Thank you Mister President.