Discours du Président Emmanuel Macron depuis la Bibliothèque du Congrès.

Thank you very much. Thank you for your time, your presence, and I have to say I'm very happy here with our ministers and ambassadors and our representatives to be here together with you, and I want to say thank you to our senators and representatives to be present. First of all, let me start by trying to apologize for this delay, but I think you're part of the cause of this delay, because it seems that you're having some quite hard discussions on transport on railway, which was the explanation of the vice president. So I urge you to fix it in order to fix afterwards energy, space, environment, and everything we will discuss all together.

But thank you very much for hosting us, and I want to thank you for the good cooperation you have on both sides of the ocean and all the representatives and senators being involved on climate and biodiversity. I would try to be quite direct, because I think what we have to do is to try to deliver together, and I would like us to follow up with theories of concrete actions or to try to convince you that we can have a series of tracks together to work very actively on.

If we start with climate change, COP27 was quite a difficult moment, let's be clear, and I'm very well educated, so I will not be more elaborated on that, but for a series of reasons, I think first, our countries have to deliver their programs. And this is where I think the question is not to reduce our ambitions, the question is how to synchronize our ambition and our action in order to fix climate change and industrialization in our countries and providing jobs. And this is part of, for me, the key elements of my visit, I don't want to be too long on that, but it is key.

But we have to go to carbon neutrality 2050, we have to reduce and respect our commitments for 2030, which means a lot of reforms, a lot of involvement of public and private sectors, and a lot of investment and public money, let's be clear, in order to deliver this big chance.

Second, we need to accelerate our common work vis-à-vis emerging countries, and I want to focus on this issue because, let's be clear, one of the key elements of our strategy as well is to help the emerging countries to get rid of coal and to reduce, like crazy, their exposure to coal, to go to gas, nuclear, renewables, and progressively to get rid of gas and to go to nuclear, renewables, and efficiency, which are the three relevant pillars of our strategy, and I think we are very much aligned on that because this is the only one to save energy with efficiency, to produce low carbon energy with nuclear, without any, I would say, a risk of continuity and quite cheap program, and renewables because this is the way to have, as well, low carbon, even intermittent energy, but we are improving collectively.

But we have to fix the situation with the emerging countries and accelerate our programs vis-à-vis these countries. This is exactly what we launched one year ago with the JET program. We finalized it with South Africa. We launched it with Indonesia. We are working with several other countries. The more we do together with these emerging countries, the more we will reduce, basically, their exposure to coal and the CO2 issue. The third critical point is about solidarity and finance. And I want to be clear.

We should not just, as rich countries, do our jobs in our societies, but we have to deliver what we committed to do in Paris agreement in terms of financing and financing vis-à-vis the South, and we have to pay our fair share, all of us, to help not just emerging, but obviously poor and developing countries to be part of this game and precisely to be helped in order to finance their development and fix climate change issue. And it's very important not to delay our commitments, not to reduce our commitments, but to deliver exactly what we committed to deliver in 2015 in order to do more and be part of this solidarité.

But beyond this point, I think at this very moment, there is what we have to pay as governments and nations. And let's be clear, we are not all done, and the fair share is not today paid by all the rich countries. But we have to reform in depth our common organization and our financial institutions. This is why we want to promote, and it's part of what I definitely want to engage with the United States and work very actively with you for the coming months. But we want to build a new partnership with Global South in order to fix together solidarité and climate change because it's impossible to delink these two issues.

And all the debates we had on loss and damages during COP27 was the best illustration of the fact that they are interconnected. This is why we totally endorsed the Bridgetown agenda, and we will follow up with that, and we'll work very closely with Barbadas and all the others who want to stick on that. But it means that we want now to frame a new common organization in order to address this issue. And what we want to organize is a summit in June in Paris, but not just to have a summit, because now, I mean, I organized several summits, and I'm not – it's not my main incentive. But it's to launch a new concrete agenda to deliver concrete results all together.

But what we have to do is, first, we have to go to the end, and even beyond, regarding the reallocation of the IMF's special drawing rights. Two years ago now, we launched this initiative with Kristalina Georgieva. It was in the Paris Peace Forum. In the Paris summit we had to finance African economy, we took the commitment of this reallocation of 20% of our SDRs. We took this commitment in October 21 at the G20 in Roma. We are not yet done. We have, first, to reallocate all of us 20% of our SDRs in order to be at the rendezvous of this solidarity package.

Probably, we have to do more, because now, the financing gap in Africa, Latin, South, Eastern Asia, and Pacific is even bigger than a few months ago, because of the food and energy crisis in the context of war, on top of the rest. And the consequences they are experiencing because of climate change are already here. So, we have to accelerate, we have to strengthen this agenda. We have to do more and try to go to the 30% leverage. But more than that, we have to reform both IMF and World Bank. And I think this is an extremely important agenda for the U.S. and France.

I think the way, collectively, we allocate our money, the way we design our project and we use money for climate change and solidarities is no more adapted, in terms of magnitude and in terms of technicalities. We are not in the world of the 80s and 90s. We are not in the world of the 80s and 90s. We are not in the world of the 80s and 90s. This world did change. Our rules didn't change. I'm very happy with the triple A of our World Bank. But what does it mean?

When countries are literally collapsing, as we are lagging behind regarding climate change and biodiversity, and as we are speaking about precisely loss and damages for a lot of countries, when they are not held by the relevant program we designed years ago for that. and we have re-adapted our way to take risks, but good risks, meaning risks precisely to face this challenge and avoid long-term consequences for these countries and the whole planet. On top of that, I think climate vulnerability has to be taken into consideration in our collective rules, which is not the case, especially for a lot of countries having made a lot of effort.

and this is why I think we have to address as well in these reforms the effects of climate change and this reform of our financial institution is the best way to have an in-depth and comprehensive approach of loss and damages issue, and not just a new fund we decided which will not be funded, and even if it is funded, it will not be rightly allocated, because this is our good experience during the past years. Let's change the model in depth, and let's change the design of the model itself. A second series of remarks I wanted to share with you is about biodiversity. Biodiversity is obviously completely correlated with climate change. It's impossible to separate these two issues.

And what we want to do since the beginning of 2021, when we organized the One Planet Summit on biodiversity, our perspective was precisely to try to re-synchronize as well as this two agenda, because our planet and our nature is part of the solution, part of what we need in order to fix climate change issue, to capture carbons, but to preserve as well a lot of ecosystem. and obviously it's another collapse we have to face and protecting a lot of species, fighting against the extension is absolutely part of what we have to do to preserve equilibrium and sustainability of our oceans, our seas, and our soil in a lot of countries. in order to do so, to try to be very, very concrete and direct.

Number one, we mentioned that referring to Costa Rica, we launched together with Costa Rica the High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People, whose perspective is to protect 30% of land and seas by 2030. and I want to urge you to share this agenda, I think it's super important, because it's a big change in the way you approach your own seas and territories. And I'm in favor of growth and value creation, I'm business friendly in my approach, I did defend this agenda, we are already at this rendezvous, and it's certainly compatible with a business agenda.

But it's a big game changer for our planet, to completely reset the way we have to think the way we approach our own natural resources as something to be preserved and something to be protected. And this is a very strong signal, so I would like us to work closely together in order to deliver this agenda, to enlarge the number of people to work with us on this one. The second point is obviously regarding financing, to devote 30% of our climate finance to natural friendly actions that tackle a forefront challenge, capturing carbon, adapting fragile ecosystems, conserving natural spaces, and creating momentum for virtuous development in the most vulnerable countries.

This allocation of a third of our climate finance to precisely these natural driven solutions and to these natural friendly actions is absolutely critical. My third point is about forests and conservation. Together with some of you, we launched in the margin of Charles Melcher a new initiative, that based on a lot of initiative launched during the past few years for Amazonia, and you were, thank you again in 2019 with us to better protect Amazonia against deforestation, what we launched for rainforests in Africa.

But now what we want to do is something a little bit bigger, because less than 14% of the surface area of land contains more than 75% of what we call irrecoverable carbon, and 91% of habitats for vertebrate species. So there is a super concentration of, I would say, risks and opportunities on for this primary and rainforests, for these mangroves and so on. What we want to do is to create incentives and concrete help for the critical countries to preserve these areas. And the paradox of our current organization is that you have a lot of incentives to reforest, but there is no incentive to preserve what you have and organize conservation, which is completely crazy.

So what we want to do is to have, obviously, now transparency, a fair and common methodology, and dedicated financing to help this country to preserve this forest and this 14% of our common surfaces, precisely because this makes sense for all of us, both for climate and biodiversity. And we'll launch it with you guys, and probably you will report back much better than I did.

But what we want to do now is, at the end of the first quarter of 2023 in Libreville, because Gabon is obviously very much exposed and has a lot of opportunities in hand, at the end of the first quarter of 2023, we will have this one forest summit, in order to report back on this common methodology and to launch a big initiative with different countries in Africa, LATAM, Asia, in order to deliver together this agenda. Some countries already committed that, and obviously Gabon did it. We worked very hard with Colombia as well, and they are finalizing. Rwanda is to finalize as well a commitment following this method. The Philippines worked closely with us on this method as well.

I mean, it's extremely powerful, and I think if we can work closely with you in the perspective as well of this initiative for biodiversity and protection of our forests, it would be absolutely key. My very last word will be about oceans and poles, and this is the last point of the agenda. Oceans is another treasure to be preserved, because we have a lot of carbon capture solution in our oceans, because as well, this is a place where a lot of spaces are at risk today, and this is a new space of conflictuality, if we are clear, both oceans and poles.

And when we look at our new geopolitics, it's clear that we have, to make an understatement, non-cooperative governments, and the more we accelerate and strengthen the common agenda, the more we will deliver concrete results for all of us. We will have the opportunity in 2025 to have a major United Nations conference on the oceans, and I think we know that we failed a few weeks ago to finalize a very important set of rules beyond our maritime areas, but I think we have to work hard in order to better protect our oceans, obviously through collective regulations and international regulations, but through as well innovations and common commitments and public and private commitments.

I don't want to be longer, I was already too long, I'm sorry for that, but I wanted just to set the agenda of forming concrete actions on climate and biodiversity, but as well concrete actions on how we can decide ourselves with public and private initiatives, and I do believe in this multi-stakeholder approach, a new agenda with very concrete results for our planet and for ourselves. Thank you very much for your patience with me, and thank you very much for your invitation.