UN General Assembly
2020

Esteemed Ladies and Gentlemen, Today marks a strange anniversary. This year, for the first time in the history of the UN we have to hold our regular annual session in a virtual setting. All this because of a virus that — although invisible to the naked eye - has upended our lives completely. COVID-19 has changed the rules regulating our family, social relations and our work in an instant and has created a grave crisis. Within a short period, the health crisis developed into an economic and later a social crisis. Businesses in bankruptcy, jobs lost, drastic restrictive measures and increasing sovereign debt. Who would have imagined this, say at the beginning of this year? More and more people say that today’s situation is the prototype for the anthropocene era. Because by the beginning of the 21st century we humans have become the factor that exercises the biggest impact on changes to the planet.