Toespraak van staatssecretaris Dijksma bij de ondertekening van het Klimaatakkoord van Parijs

Toespraak | 22-04-2016

Mr. Chair,

12 December 2015 was a historic and remarkable day. As UNFCCC executive secretary Christiane Figueres stated: 'The world is ready for change'. The day that the world came together in Paris to take up the challenge of climate change head on! I was very proud of the agreement we reached. And I still am!

We came to a universal agreement to transform the global economy. The transition to a climate-neutral and climate resilient world is now irreversible.

Let me make absolutely clear that the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the European Union will do their part. Over the years we have taken strong climate action and we will continue to do so. Since 1990 we have successfully decoupled emissions and economic growth. We look forward to sharing our experiences of that process.

The EU will double its current 20 per cent reduction target to at least 40 per cent by 2030 and we are already putting in place the domestically binding legislation for that.

For the longer term, the EU will prepare a mid-century low emissions development strategy.

Paris calls for ambitious measures in all economic sectors and that includes international aviation and maritime transport. Considering the expected future growth of these sectors this is a challenge and a big responsibility. I call upon all governments and the industry to take up that challenge and accept responsibility.

An early opportunity to show collective progress on implementing the Paris Agreement is to collectively reduce emissions through phasing down HFC"s. This can be achieved at a relatively low cost and can start before 2020.

Consequently, I call on all countries to work towards an ambitious  amendment to the Montreal Protocol; the Netherlands and the European Union remain ready to work to find a solution that appeals to all countries by taking their needs into account. Implementing the Paris agreement calls for strong action on carbon pricing. We need to make financial flows consistent with a pathway towards climate neutrality and climate-resilient development and for that we need clear price signals.

These signals will help us to realize our NDC’s over time progressively. They will help us profit from innovation opportunities. And they will help us to make a smooth and orderly transition to low carbon and climate resilient development. To advance this issue I will host a High Level Dialogue on carbon pricing in the fall of this year.

Today, a great number of countries will sign the Paris Agreement. The next step is ratification and a timely entry into force. We have already started our domestic ratification procedure. We will deposit our instruments of ratification with the EU and the other 27 member states as soon as possible.

But we will not wait for that. Now we have start that race to the top, driving global ambition in order to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees and pursue efforts towards 1,5 degrees.

The groundswell of action shown under the Lima-Paris Action Agenda gives us confidence that the sense of urgency needed is present in all sectors of society. And that we will preserve that sense of urgency for as long as it takes.

As one of my all time heroes, former UN secretary Kofi Annan, stated: 'We all know that Paris marks the beginning, not the end of the road.' I couldn’t agree more. So we call upon every nation: let's implement the Paris Agreement, let’s get down to work.