The Government has reaffirmed its commitment to the fight against climate change and the 2030 Agenda at the high-level event organised by the Ministry for Ecological Transition, which until tomorrow brings together in the Paraninfo of the Complutense University of Madrid the voices that are setting the global climate change agenda. sustainable development and global economy. Tomorrow, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will defend at the closing of the event his government’s commitment to energy and climate sustainability and the urgency of achieving a decarbonised economy and an ecological transition as soon as possible.

In her speech, the Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, stressed that “climate and environmental risks are the greatest for the world economy”, as demonstrated by the prominence that these issues will have in the debates that will take place throughout the year in major international economic forums. “A budget that despises climate change is throwing money away. The ultimate goal is for 100% of investment and spending to be climate-compatible, just as they should be compatible with human rights,” he added.

Ribera also pointed out that “the most serious, harmful, dangerous and disruptive thing is not paying attention to what we know is happening” with climate change.

The Minister of Economy and Business, Nadia Calviño, also spoke at this event, who closed the first day of this event, stressed that from “the first day we have been working on the agenda of change to lay the foundations for sustainable economic growth, also from an environmental point of view”. In this sense, Calviño stressed the need to turn the challenges of climate change into opportunities. The Minister of Economy and Business has advocated consolidating sustainable economic growth from the agenda of change, which has the ecological transition as one of its most important pillars.

Among the speakers at the event, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and former administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Helen Clark, remarked that “the main objective of the sustainable development agenda is that no one is left behind, especially the most vulnerable people”, among whom she has referred especially to women, the elderly and children, who suffer the most from natural disasters and have the least access to resources and technologies. “The solutions are there, what we need is leadership.”

For his part, WWF’s international director of climate change and former Minister of the Environment of Peru, Manuel Pulgar, defined the just transition as “the implementation of the appropriate measures to manage the possible consequences of the change in the development model, multiplying the positive ones”.

Previously, during the first round table, “Climate change in the framework of the 2030 Agenda”, Cristina Gallach, High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda, stressed that this sustainable development agenda “is at the heart of the Government’s action”, which “in these seven months has adopted more than 110 measures, approved by the Council of Ministers, that directly impact the goals of the Sustainable Development Goals.” Gallach stressed that the Government is working “at cruising speed to comply” with this agenda of sustainable development and fair progress so that it permeates all areas of the Executive. To this end, he stressed that it is vital to weave alliances, mobilise all actors in society and raise awareness.

Among these measures already adopted by the Government are the creation of the High Commissioner for the 2030 Agenda and the Ministry for the Ecological Transition; the re-universalisation of access to healthcare; the reorientation of employment and income policy so that economic growth serves to reduce inequalities, or the return of Spain to the front line of the fight against climate change.

One of the main architects of the Paris Agreement and current director of the European Climate Foundation (ECF), Laurence Tubiana, has said that the growth model “will never be the same as before” so the key will be “to work together in the future we want, and to fix social justice in the change of development model”.

An idea that was echoed by economist Jeffrey D. Sachs, executive director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, who stressed that “although change and mobilization to achieve a fairer and more sustainable development model costs, and societies and companies that act more justly are needed, we will end up doing the obvious, the right thing, which is the transformation towards a different growth.”

Tomorrow, Friday, at 12.30 p.m., the third and final high-level session on Ecological Transition will take place between Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); Nicholas Stern, president of the Centre for Climate Change, Economics and Policy at the London School of Economics (LSE), and Teresa Ribera, minister for the Ecological Transition. The event will be closed by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.