Keynote SpeechAchim Steiner
Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
Opening Ceremony, October 15, 2015

“The Power of Policy and Technology”
Your Imperial Highnesses, honorable Ministers, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, dearcolleagues, I am very honored to have been able to listen to this morning’s remarks of His Imperial
Highness and his Excellency the Prime Minister at such a crucial juncture for both the global
environment, the global economy, and also the nation of Japan. Let me also begin by thanking Juro
Saito-san, the Chairman of the Global Environmental Action, for making this possible at such aperfect moment in time.
Let me also pick up his Excellency, the Prime Minister who made the connection to the Rio
Earth Summit. It was ahead of the historic Summit in 1992, in fact, almost 25 years ago in1991 that the first meeting of the “Eminent Persons’ Meeting on Financing Global Environmentand Development” offered an invaluable insight into how the world could not only addressenvironmental sustainability, sustainable development, but also address the issue of financing.
Since then, this expertise has flourished to become the GEA, which is so well known and respectedtoday. At the same time, the world’s appreciation of the links between environment, economics,
society and technology has also flourished, to create the historic 2030 Agenda laid down last month.
Let me take this moment also to recognize the presence of the co-chair, His Excellency Ambassador
Macharia Kamau who in New York together with his counterpart in many ways was the architect of
this process and it is wonderful to be here with you, Ambassador, this morning and I am sure you willin far greater detail and excitement also be able to present why this agenda is so important to us.
It is also a moment in which the crucial climate change conference is still ahead of us, and Your
Imperial Highness, you addressed the challenge that you all face. A challenge that I will try in mypresentation this morning is to characterize less in the sense of just the threats and the risks that weface, which are very real, more dramatic, and more proven also by science and empirical evidence,in terms of cause and effect than ever before, but also, and this is perhaps the most importantmessage of linking this very special year of 2015 with opportunity. The Prime Minister called it“opportunity for innovation”. It is an opportunity for transformation, economic and ecological, and I
will try to also address this morning why that is linked also to social transformation.
The year 2015, as many of you are aware, has been a very special year. In fact, it began in terms of
the United Nations cycle of conferences here in Japan, with the Sendai Conference on Disaster Risk
Reduction, bringing the world together around. First of all, the realization of the risks we face andthe way we manage them, the precautionary steps we take, and how well we prepare, in large part,
determine how severe the consequences are of disasters that we cannot stop from happening. Sendai
was a very important moment also in the evolution of the concept of disaster risk reduction, but also24

of disaster management.
The prospect of climate change, of global warming that we are already committed to, means that
inevitably extreme weather events will be part of our future, both in terms of greater frequency andgreater strength. And let us also be clear, with another three billion people joining us in the global
population by the year 2050, bringing us to around 10 or 9 to 10 billion people means wherever
we live, we live in greater concentration with greater infrastructure more exposed and, therefore,
again learning to appreciate that the risk and the concept of risk management is perhaps one of thefundamental ways of looking at managing our economies and societies in the twenty-first century.
The year 2015 also saw three other conferences: Addis Ababa on Financing for Development,
the Summit in New York just a few days ago that adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. And then in a few weeks' time in Paris,
perhaps the first test of this new 2030 Agenda, namely the Paris Climate Conference of the Parties.
In speaking to you this morning, I would like to convey to you both the dramatic nature that is theconsequence of having waited for so long to begin to address these challenges. We are today a worldof seven billion people in which we are still in many respects, if you were in business running anegative balance sheet on much of what we have as, what we call, the environment, which to some
may be something that they may visit at the weekend outside the city or a green park, or accessto water. But we are, in the year 2015, much more able to understand the term and measure, thatthe value of nature, of intact and functioning ecosystems of our ecological infrastructure. Isn’t it
fundamental to the future prospect of development? And interesting enough, not withstanding all
the science and technology in progress whether a nation is a developed nation in the year 2015, adeveloping nation or an emerging economy that inextricable linkage with a sustainably-managed
environmental base and infrastructure and the success of future economic development havebecome more obvious than perhaps you would have anticipated 50 years ago, when our notion wasessentially one that, with progress, mankind's ability to become independent of nature was verymuch the vision with which we pursued development.
And yet here we are at the beginning of the twenty-first century and we are confronted with apollution footprint in the atmosphere that is literally threatening the infrastructure, the well-being of
our economies and nations. We are confronted on a more terrestrial sense with a loss of biodiversity
and net loss of arable land to produce food. We have lost somewhere between 50 to 60% of all
wetlands in the hundred years that we can look back to, as well as having halved the amount offorest that is on our planet in the course of modern development. These are perhaps, to some, theresources that we need to develop, but at a certain point, there is something that happens in natureand there is something that happens to the balance also of, for instance, the composition of ourozone layer. Many of you recall that over 35 years ago, it was in Nairobi, Kenya, the headquartersof the United Nations’ Environment Programme, that scientists first convened in order to bring theattention of the world this phenomenon called “a hole in the ozone layer”. And again, the story ofthis ozone layer is fascinating because its story is both the story of human ingenuity in the twentiethcentury, the tragedy of sometimes lack of knowledge and ignorance, and then the capacity toactually succeed if acted collectively on.
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Chlorofluorocarbons, that little substance that was invented by a team of people working for
the Ford Motor Company somewhere in the early part of the twentieth century, was a great
breakthrough. It meant that cooling of car engines could suddenly be done at a far more effective
and cheaper way, opening up the production of engines that would make cars far more accessible.
A fantastic invention. So fantastic that CFCs in the next 50 years became omnipresent in anythingfrom hairsprays to fridges to coolers, and then another 20 years later, we began to discover thatthe cumulative impact of the CFCs in our atmosphere was literally destroying that extraordinary
thin layer of ozone that essentially allows life on this planet to thrive. At first, people would not
believe in this scientific finding, it sounded like science fiction. Then when the evidence becameincontrovertible there was a moment of great fear because the notion that we could repair the ozone
layer seemed so inconceivable at that time, that many people were almost not prepared to try it.
I should mention this in particular with one of my predecessors, Mostafa Tolba, the Executive
Director of UNEP at the time, who played the central role in promoting the development not onlyof the Vienna Convention but also the Montreal Protocol in particular, which allowed science,
international commitments, technology, finance and the private sector to come together andaccomplish what, to this day, is not only the most successful environmental treaty ever brokered by
the United Nations - universal membership - but also, as of this year, we have scientific evidence
that the ozone layer is not only by models recovering, it is actually physically now recovering,making this the most extraordinary ambitious planetary repair job ever undertaken.
But let us, for a moment, put that in the context of what we now face; the transition towards a lowcarbon economy. A world of seven billion people, for instance, on the continent of Africa, where
there is one billion citizens, 700 million of its people in the year 2015 do not yet even have accessto electricity. Our economies are growing, our consumption footprint is growing, and yet we are, by
virtue of the science that the IPCC has presented us, confronted with the challenge of achieving atransformation unprecedented in the modern history of humanity.
Somewhere, by the second half of this century, we need to have decarbonized our economies,
decoupled our economic development from a carbon footprint to the point where we have a zero net
emissions economy, meaning no more emissions than that which this planet can absorb, sequesterand store. To some, again the reaction is “impossible!” Impossible for rich nations because of thecost of reconfiguring industries, the energy sector, the built-up infrastructure, our transport systems
and the agricultural sector. And for poor countries, “ridiculous!” We have not even contributed to thisproblem and now we are supposed to decouple our economic growth with the extra cost from carbon
emissions. But let me say to you today as we meet here in Tokyo, and again I want to thank you,
Sir, for having brought us together at this moment. We are witnessing something quite extraordinary.
History is being made and it is being made because human beings are not willingly ignorant.
Human beings can judge risks and human beings can make wise choices, sometimes choices that arevery difficult ones. And I am very conscious as I stand here before you in Japan how you have beentested by earthquakes, by floods and natural disasters to have to confront not only the destructive
power of these events, but also then the challenge to you as an economy, as a society, as a nation,26

to rise to a challenge of not being defeated by these moments. It is for this reason that I believe mykeynote address in your presence, also your Imperial Highnesses, is extremely meaningful to us in
the United Nations and the United Nations Environment Programme, but hopefully also to people
across the globe, who in a few weeks' time will witness either nations rising to the challenge ofaddressing something that if we do not act now, condemns the next generation, and the generation
thereafter, and many generations thereafter to not having the choice any longer.
That is the extraordinary thing that also binds, as Secretary General Ban Ki-moon referred to it, thechallenge of climate change to the broader challenge of sustainable development. In his words, weare the first generation that can essentially eradicate poverty, and we may be the last generation thatby acting can avoid climate change beyond the limit that we have set ourselves as a goal, a world of
two degrees. Our opportunities to act are growing by the day. In my speech, in my written speechthat I have submitted to GEA, I provided many examples and I do not wish to take up too muchof your time in this morning because citing too many different numbers and figures is not always
the most enticing speech nor keynote address. But let me just dwell for a few moments on a few
examples that illustrate to you the enormous momentum for change that is already under way.
If I take, for just an instance, the sector of energy. What has been happening in the field of energy
is nothing short of an energy revolution in the last 10 to 15 years. In the world that 20 years ago
considered renewable energy technologies, for instance, to be too expensive, maybe a twenty-second
century technology, then technologically not capable of providing us with sufficient power to makeit worthwhile, and then not compatible with the notion of a centralized grid. We now have, in just
10 years, witnessed every prediction from International Energy Agency to the World Bank and theUnited Nations’ family for that matter, having gotten it completely wrong. In the year 2014, close tohalf of all new investments in electricity generating infrastructure around the world were renewableenergy investments. That is, excluding large hydro, solar, wind, geothermal and biofuels to the tuneof 270 billion dollars. Now this is a remarkable shift which demonstrates that the combination oftechnology, public policy, and markets including investment markets, can literally in a decade begin
to change a global energy matrix.
Now renewables, because of obviously only having begun to increase on the scale over the last few
years, are still in total terms, not by any stretch of the imagination, already the majority of energy
generating capacity we rely on. But let me tell you again that those that say, well maybe it can
provide 3 or 4%, there are many economies are already around the world today that produce morethan 20 to 30% of their electricity through renewables, whether it is Denmark, Spain, Portugal,
Germany, but also again in the presence of the Ambassador of Kenya, I want to put a particularemphasis on the story of renewable energy in Kenya.
Nine years ago it was Kenya’s visionary green energy policy that began to change the entire
pathway of Kenya in terms of future investments for its energy and electricity generating sector. In
fact, it was so significant, that despite even international advice to the country, Kenya proceeded toinvest in geothermal power, now in wind power and also in solar. As of this year Kenya has almost
doubled its electricity generating capacity over the last eight years, virtually with renewable energy,
27and over 50% of its electricity is now produced by renewables of the modern energy technology
era. This is a developing economy in the heart of Africa on the equator, providing leadership thatis exemplary, but also immensely empowering in making Kenya more independent from the fossil
fuel markets generating jobs and even a business model of the pay-as-you-go system in the villages,
where investors now install solar panels, villagers buy the charge from the corner shop and canliterally light up their home for the first time in their lives.
These are revolutions that we see happening literally across the globe now. South Africa, again, in2011 introducing a green energy policy and using a different part of the auction system, invested 10
million dollars in putting in place a new market for renewable energy investments. In three auctions,South Africa mobilized more than 14 billion US dollars in investment commitments towards new
renewable infrastructure investment, thereby making it increasingly able to look beyond its very
heavy reliance on coal, some of the dirtiest coal on the planet on which its energy sector was built.
I could go on. There are many examples what I am trying to show to you is that it is no longer
an issue of a developed or an emerging or a developing country. What we are learning is thattechnology is available if public policy creates through right conditions, markets are also able torespond to invest on the scale unthinkable just 10 years ago.
Similar pathways exist for us in the sector of transport and mobility. Many of you are familiar with
the images around the world’s major cities: heavy pollution and heavy traffic jams. We see in mostdeveloping economies again, a trend still being maintained where a largely public transport-based
economy and society is moving towards individualized traffic. We need to largely learn lessons
that in the rapidly growing metropolis of this world, our ability to decouple urbanization and also
increase in income from investing into individualized transfer rather than expanding investing inpublic infrastructure, something that you and Japan have practiced for decades, is fundamental toalso being able to avoid that we add the same population of vehicles that is already on the planet
today in the next 30 years again, because that is the projection.
Much of the urban infrastructure that we will have in 2050 is yet to be built. This is also an
extraordinary realization that as urbanization proceeds and progresses, not only in terms of ruralurban migration and concentration, but also in terms of the net growth of people, we will add halfof the existing urban infrastructure in the world again in the next three to four decades. This isan extraordinary opportunity to build different buildings, to build better, as you refer to it here in
Japan, and to reconceive of our cities as not a model of just concentration, but also of efficiency, ofsustainable consumption, production of innovation, and of new models of providing fundamental
services, be there in terms of mobility, air quality, access to energy.
Climate change and all of that which it implies, which truly speaks to virtually every sector now,of our economy today is increasingly becoming a driver for innovation, for new markets, for
new products, for new ways of living, for new ways of producing, consuming, and yes, perhaps
rediscovering also another of Japan’s great exports in terms of concepts: the 3R concept. Quality ofgrowth is how you refer to the vision with which you wish to pursue both Japan’s own economic
development in the coming years and also its engagement with its partners, neighbors, the global
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community, maybe the African continent also, while the next year in Nairobi TICAD will take place
for the first time outside Tokyo. Let me share with you that both in Japan’s own interest, as much as
in Africa’s interest, but indeed in terms of any country’s interest, it is vital that at this point in time we
begin to redefine the response to climate change in terms of the sustainable development goals haveset out and the Sustainable Development Agenda with its goals towards 2030 has said to demonstrate.
It is quite remarkable that despite all of the challenges we face in our world today, the divisions,the conflicts, the dis-functionality if you want, even with our multilateral system that is meant tobring us together on the things divide us. It is quite remarkable that in this year, all nations on Earthshould in the United Nations General Assembly commit themselves to a common shared vision of
our development, and not just in one paragraph of a rhetorical nature, but in 17 goals. Hundreds oftargets and indicators. This is not an accident.
Your Imperial Highnesses, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a moment in the history
that is quite remarkable because it echoes to something that will either define us as a generation of
success or failure. Sustainable development is not just a notion of abstract horizons and visions any
more. It is a fundamental driver of the future success or lack of success of our nations and ultimatelyof our global economy. What it shows is an alignment of common priorities almost unprecedented,
I would say, in the context of international action. The Sustainable Development Goals provide us,
and provide the private sector and the financial sector, governments, parliaments, civil society withan interpretation of what the future is defining in terms of the actions of the present. It doesn’t mean
every country, every actor, every business will follow these. But let us also be clear in the face ofeverything that lies ahead of us, of the challenges, of what science tells us, of what we can witness
in terms of disruption and conflicts and societies literally collapsing around the issues of inequity,
lack of employment opportunities, lack of perspective, all of this is going to become a fundamental
driver for transformation and for rethinking the way we wish to develop our societies, but also our
so-called global economy.
A few weeks ago, in New York and as the Secretary General called it on that day, the “sacredhall” of the General Assembly, Pope Francis addressed the world and I am sure also in Japan,
you have been struck by the ability of Pope Francis to articulate something that many of us feelat the moment, but not necessarily finding a way to express. A term that has always struck me asparticularly poignant that he uses is that in this age of globalization you often talk about in termsof trade and economics and you know very material things, he coined the phrase of “globalizationof indifference”. Beware of it. Globalization of indifference is what threatens the cohesion of oursocieties, of our nations, and of our global community.
When you in Japan now think about the future pathway in terms of quality of growth, then I
understand that to be the equivalent of what UNEP also referred to inclusive green economy
pathways. A way in which we understand that inequality and inequity would tear societies apart,
economies that cannot offer their youth, the prospect of employment, and we have many countries
today with youth unemployment rates of 30 to 40%, will struggle to provide a development
framework that will take them forward.
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It is, therefore, the ability to bring the social, the economic, and the environmental dimensions
together that allows not only the Sustainable Development Agenda but particularly also thechallenge before us now in Paris to become not an abstract challenge, but a defining moment. I
want to end by just referring also to the fact that in many respects what was in 1991 the topic, andI go back to the “Eminent Persons’ Meeting on Financing Global Environment and Development”,
was prescient by its early understanding how critical finance would be. UNEP has for the better
part of 20 years, and the UN system increasingly also, sought to understand how public finance andprivate finance can be leveraged in support of a development pathway that would require enormous
investments in the years to come.
As you may have just heard in Lima, the World Bank and IMF annual meetings, the term of theday, if you wish, was we are moving from talking about billions to trillions. Now to some, that may
seem esoteric, but in fact we are already planning to invest trillions in our infrastructure, in ourenergy sector and transport sector over the coming decade or so. The questions is, can we begin
to encourage the financial and capital markets to invest not only in the economy of yesterday andtoday, but to begin to invest in the economy of tomorrow? A more low-carbon economy, a moresustainable economy, an economy which will allow us to create more jobs, but also to decouple
economic growth from the pollution footprint in the atmosphere, or indeed from the ecologicaldegradation on the ground and in the oceans.
UNEP’s work with the finance sector is giving us great confidence that something very significant
is happening in the world’s financial institutions and insurance companies, with whom we haveworked with over 20 years to develop responses, both from a public policy point of view, butalso for the sector itself. In Lima, we have just presented a groundbreaking report in the presenceof the governors of the Bank of England, of the Peoples’ Bank of China, and of the governor of
Bangladesh Bank. Just three amongst the growing number of financial regulators, central bankgovernors, who are looking for the first time at the issue of environmental change, whether it isthrough climate change or other perspectives, as being increasingly material to the stability andwell-being of our financial systems and our economies in the future. It is indeed in China where,
in the next five-year plan, there is a massive increase in green finance envisaged that will largely
depend on whether financial and capital markets will rise to this challenge.
But we see similar trends emerging in many different countries. The Central Bank of Bangladesh,just two-three days ago announced that it will now use its foreign exchange reserves by investing
deliberately in green bonds. Using, in a sense, central banks means to also be able to create greater
opportunities, greater markets, and greater finance for investment in this agenda. It is in that context
that I think we are beginning to see perhaps the final piece falling in place that we talked about
in the early nineties. They needed the science to understand what is happening on our planet. We
needed the technology, at least in part, to be able to respond to it. Thirdly, we had to discover andlearn what other public policies, fiscal or planning or sectoral, that would enable these transitions totake place successfully. And perhaps we are reaching in that journey now the critical point where allof this is beginning to fall in place.

30But without being able to address the issue of financing, we have no chance of moving forward. And
that applies, interestingly enough, as much to developed economies as to developing nations; thelatter simply having an even greater barrier to overcome, and thresholds. Our inquiry into the designof a sustainable financial system – and if you are interested in it, please do take a look at the unep.
org website – has studied over the last two years, how central banks, financial regulatory authorities,
have begun to try and incentivize the financial and capital markets in order to rise to this challenge.
Because it is possible.
We have seen it in the economies such as Germany. The 14 billion dollars that I cited in South
Africa, are 80% financed from private sector financial institutions and investors from within South
Africa. There is enormous potential there. But we must make finance part of the overall approachwith which we seek to enable the policies and changes that will allow us to look towards the coming
three to four decades as truly a period of economic transformation, of innovation, and above all, of
a way in which we can take the responsibility seriously that we have and hold today: that we are thegeneration that still has the choice, the means, and the ability to take this direction or that direction.
Your Imperial Highnesses, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, it is this outlook on the future that
I believe many of you in this room share, but that we still have some way to go before we gain
the confidence amongst our public, in our parliaments, and also amongst the financial and capital
markets, that not only is change necessary, it is possible, and it is beginning to happen on a scalethat should make us all have some sense of courage and hope rather than despair. And if you want totake Paris as the litmus test, then let me end by giving you one more fact.
We are literally witnessing history being made with the Climate Change Convention. As of thisweek, over 150 nations have submitted their national climate change plans, the so-called “Intended
Nationally Determined Contributions”, and as always in the U.N., we create these very complicatedterms. What is unprecedented and unique about this moment is that over 150 countries accounting
for over 87% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, have now committed themselves to a
decarbonization pathway. This is something we have worked for since the days of the Climate
Convention being launched, since the days of Kyoto. It is an extraordinary act of faith, particularly
by developing and emerging nations, I want to make that point. A particularly pronounced act offaith in an international community that has for so long argued that it cannot move forward because
others are not willing to commit.
This excuse is gone. It is now, also for industrialized nations, for the richer nations of the world,
to match this act of faith in a global process, that without which, we have no hope of being able
to talk about the 2-degree world achieved through a synchronized and harmonized pathway ofdecarbonizing our economies. That is the challenge, but I hope that some of the examples I haveprovided you, I have also given you a sense of how extraordinary the opportunities are, how real
they have become, and how scalable they are today. Thank you once again for the invitation, yourImperial Highnesses for the honor to address the meeting in your presence, and I wish you a mostsuccessful meeting here under the auspices of GEA, which has always inspired, and often ahead oftime, the kinds of ideas that lead us forward today. Arigato-gozaimasu.
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