UN General Assembly
2019

I realize many of us believe that more needs to be done to protect the environment and that our ambitions should be greater. However, I also believe that the essence of the fight to counter the negative processes taking place in the natural environment lies primarily in building international consensus on the issue, and one cannot transgress its limits. Ambitions must be expressed together because only then can they be realized. Only together can we save our natural environment. The fact that the document crowning COP 24 was adopted unanimously is all the more gratifying. After laborious negotiations, part of this arrangement resulted in the acceptance of the Just Transition Declaration. For me, it is a source of great satisfaction that this concept, coined during the Katowice Conference, is now part of the official language used by the European Union and the Environmental Action Program (EAP) of the newly formed European Commission.