The concluding session in the plenum consisted of reporting back from the three leadership dialogues and a compilation of recommendations from the Stockholm+50 meeting, to the global community.
The 10 environmental ”commandments” in brief:
(The full set was more lengthy formulated and will be available soon)
1. Place human wellbeing at the centre of a healthy planet
2. Recognise and implement the legal right to a healthy and clean environment
3. Adopt systems wide change in how our economic system works. Update GDP as a measure.
4. Strengthen national implementations of existing commitments. Enhance national legislations, budget processes. Enhanced collaboration. Scale up capacity building.
5. Align public and private financial flows with SDG commitments. Remove fossil fuels subsidies.
6. Accelerate systems wide transformations of high impact sectors such as food, energy, water, buildings and construction, manufact and mobility. Adopt frameworks that enhance transparency and accountability by business.
7. Rebuild relationships of trust. Developed countries supporting developing countries.
8. Reinforce the multilateral systems. (The new job of Stefan Löfvén!)
9. Recognise intergenerational responsibilities as a cornerstone of sound policy making
10. Take forward the Stockholm+50 outcome through reinforcing the ongoing international processes.
Point number 9 was very strong on including youth in everything even in financial decisions and processes. This really reflects the discussions from Stockholm+50 (see my earlier blog post on this topic) and the youth delegation were cheering as the Kenyan President read the recommendation.
As always, whether this meeting was a failure or success will be scrutinized in the following days but rest a sure that the overall mood will be melancholic, at best. But, it is in the eye of the beholder and comes down to your expectations. Many argue that the summit could have been better prepared and they certainly have a point there, but a summit like this could never deliver on ”saving the planet”. What it can do is update the discussion, shine a light on important aspects, share best sectorial, national and scientific practice in order to advance the global Environmental Governance. Some will say that the losers are our youth, I would argue that including the youth into global environmental governance might, when we look back on what Stockholm+50 really delivered, prove to be the real game changer.
