Opening Statement by H.E. Mr. Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK, at Climate Adaptation Summit 2021
25 January 2021
英国首相约翰逊首届气候适应峰会视频致辞
2021年1月25日
I know we’re all still wrestling with the huge challenges of COVID-19, but we can’t lose sight of the vital importance of our fight against climate change. The past few weeks have been hugely significant in that fight and more so perhaps than any weeks since the Paris Agreement was reached five years ago. First at December’s UK-hosted Climate Ambition Summit, and then at President Macron’s One Planet Summit, we’ve seen nations coming together to set a clear path to the greener, cleaner, and more sustainable future we all want for our children.
But stopping climate change 10, 20, or however many years from now can’t and must not be the limit of our ambition. Because when we look to Bangladesh and see more powerful and more frequent storms and cyclones, when we look to California, Australia, and see soaring temperatures and raging wildfires, when we look to the island nations of the Pacific and see whole communities submerged by rising seas, we cannot deny the dramatic climate change is already happening, already devastating lives and economies.
And even if by some miracle of science, we were able to flick a switch tonight and wake up tomorrow in a net-zero world, the damage already done is such that it would take time for the effects to slow, to stop, and to go into reverse. And that means we must adapt to our changing climate and we must do so now – because people are already suffering, and because prevention is not only better than cure, it’s cheaper, too.
If we fail to act in 2021, then by 2030, the annual bill for adaptation in developing countries alone will have reached as high as $300 billion. So I fully support the Secretary-General of the UN, António Guterres’s call to increase the amount of climate finance dedicated to adaptation. I’ll be making the need for a more resilient recovery a priority of the UK’s G7 presidency this year.
And to make sure we get not just warm words but real change, I’m today launching an all-new Adaptation Action Coalition, which is a joint effort between the UK, Bangladesh, Egypt, Malawi, the Netherlands, Saint Lucia and the United Nations. This coalition will draw on the expertise of businesses, scientists, civil society, and more, working with the race to resilience and the UN High Level Climate Champions team to build on 2019’s call for action on adaptation and setting the agenda ahead of COP26 later this year.
If climate change were an infectious disease, we would not only seek to deal with the underlying cause by developing a vaccine, in this case, net zero, we would also find every way we could to treat and manage the symptoms.
So let 2021 be the year that we fight back not just against climate change but the effects of climate change that are already being felt. And let’s work together to adapt to become more resilient and to save lives and livelihoods all around the world.