UN General Assembly
2018

Spain is therefore moving forward along the path carved out by the United Nations in the 2030 Agenda. Spain has done that before, in fact, when we championed the Millennium Development Goals, with the largest contribution from any single donor in the United Nations system, as well as being the first to the Sustainable Development Goals project. Furthermore, Spain also created the Water and Sanitation Cooperation Fund in Latin America and the Caribbean some years ago, in which we have invested more than €800 million. However, none of those efforts make any sense unless we tackle the greatest threat of our generation: the impact of climate change. I come from a country where 40 per cent of our surface area is threatened by desertification. We must fight that battle at every level, which means not only addressing its most immediate effects but also addressing the underlying structural causes that exacerbate the changes in our climate that we are witnessing. This is why we are keenly aware of the need to undertake a controlled decarbonization of our economy.