Message for UN Business for the Environment Global Summit
Your Excellency, President Lee Myung-bak, Excellencies, Distinguished delegates,
I am pleased to open this year's Business for Environment Global Summit.
I also take pleasure in congratulating this year's winners of the Champions of the Earth award, President Nasheed of the Maldives and President of Jagdeo of Guyana.
Both played a critical part in the important climate change negototiations in Copenhagen.
The theme of this summit ? Powering Green Growth ? is timely.
We need green growth for our economic and environmental well-being.
We also need it to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
For more than a century, the push for economic growth has largely ignored environmental consequences.
Now we are reaping the bitter harvest.
Climate change, desertification and declining biodiversity are themselves a threat to the Millennium Goals.
Thankfully, awareness is growing. But we need action. Innovation. Resolve.
Building a green economy presents tremendous opportunities.
The only risk we face is in not going down this path.
In September, I will convene a summit to review progress towards the Millennium Goals.
My goal is nothing less than an agenda for action from now until the agreed deadline of 2015.
A practical, results-oriented plan, with concrete steps and timelines.
I will look to business to play a major role.
Many of you already support the platforms the United Nations has established to rewrite the bottom line ? to promote corporate responsibility, ethical markets and sustainable growth.
Our challenge is to go further still -- to create a global movement.
I urge you to think big.
The world is full of new ideas ? inspiring examples of what works.
Let us multiply them on a grand scale for the common good.
Let us power green growth.
I wish you a successful and productive meeting.
I am pleased to open this year's Business for Environment Global Summit.
I also take pleasure in congratulating this year's winners of the Champions of the Earth award, President Nasheed of the Maldives and President of Jagdeo of Guyana.
Both played a critical part in the important climate change negototiations in Copenhagen.
The theme of this summit ? Powering Green Growth ? is timely.
We need green growth for our economic and environmental well-being.
We also need it to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
For more than a century, the push for economic growth has largely ignored environmental consequences.
Now we are reaping the bitter harvest.
Climate change, desertification and declining biodiversity are themselves a threat to the Millennium Goals.
Thankfully, awareness is growing. But we need action. Innovation. Resolve.
Building a green economy presents tremendous opportunities.
The only risk we face is in not going down this path.
In September, I will convene a summit to review progress towards the Millennium Goals.
My goal is nothing less than an agenda for action from now until the agreed deadline of 2015.
A practical, results-oriented plan, with concrete steps and timelines.
I will look to business to play a major role.
Many of you already support the platforms the United Nations has established to rewrite the bottom line ? to promote corporate responsibility, ethical markets and sustainable growth.
Our challenge is to go further still -- to create a global movement.
I urge you to think big.
The world is full of new ideas ? inspiring examples of what works.
Let us multiply them on a grand scale for the common good.
Let us power green growth.
I wish you a successful and productive meeting.
Link
http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=4501