Speech at the Independence and Interdependence Summit “The Role of Cities in Relation to Climate Change”
Croke Park Stadium, Dublin, 22nd April 2016
A Ardmhéara Uí Dhálaigh,
Mayors and Deputy Mayor,
A Dhaoine Uaisle,
Do thug sé sásamh faoi leith dom an cuireadh a ghlacadh labhairt libh ar maidin ag an ócáid tabhachtach seo a thugann deis dúinn macnamh a dhéanamh ar an slí ina bhfuilimid uile ar an bplainéid ag maireachtáil ar scáth a chéile agus, dár ndóidh, ag braith ar a chéile don todhchaí atá amach romhainn.
[I am very pleased to have been asked to participate and to speak at this important Summit, inviting us to reflect on the fundamental interdependence that binds together all of us who dwell on this fragile planet..]
This is a unique gathering of Citizen diplomats and Mayors who are connected through the “Sister Cities” network, and I extend a warm welcome to all of you here who have travelled to Dublin for this occasion, be it from the various parts of Ireland, from North America, or from further afield.
May I salute the Mayor of Guadalajara, Mexico, and the Deputy Mayor of San Jose, California, two cities I have had the privilege to visit as President of Ireland. Indeed, this is also the 30th anniversary of the San Jose–Dublin Sister City Agreement, a symbol of the vibrant friendship that unites our two nations. I also salute the Mayor of Liverpool, a city that has such deep links to Ireland and the Irish, and a city I had the great pleasure of visiting last year.
While I may have spent much of my time over the recent weeks reflecting on the subject of independence and the achievement of freedom, it is the recognition of our global interdependence and its consequences – both the bad practices and the positive possibilities – that presents the greatest challenge at this juncture of the 21st century. A challenge that invites us to creatively investigate new strategies or stretch towards new possibilities, rather than succumb to passivity and pessimism.
In Europe, the question of our solidarity with the wider world is being raised in the most pressing manner by the unfolding refugee crisis – a crisis that is not just regional, but that calls on the responsibility of the entire international community. An ambitious and concerted response on the part of the international is all the more important as the unprecedented wave of displacement and forced migrations we face at present is likely to grow exponentially over the coming decades, should no radical and concerted response be provided at global, regional and local level to the immense challenge posed by climate change.
I very much welcome, therefore, today’s opportunity to discuss the inescapable necessity of uniting our efforts in the fight against global climate change – and to do so in a very practical way, through actions implemented at the level of our cities.
The timing of this Summit it very fitting. Both here in Ireland and in the United States, this year is one of important commemoration and celebration of new beginnings. It is of course the hundredth anniversary of Ireland’s Easter Rising of 1916 and the 240th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. This very day is, furthermore, one of major global significance, as the signing ceremony of the Paris Agreement on climate change is taking place at the UN Headquarters in New York today.
These various anniversaries are a powerful reminder of our new circumstances and of the global dimension that citizenship entails today. As we cherish and enjoy, today, the rights of citizenship bequeathed to us by our national independence, we must realise, tooo, how the fundamental objective of social cohesion cannot be achieved merely behind national borders. We are making our decisions in a context where so many of the structures of our contemporary condition – from climate to telecommunications and migration – point to the need for a fundamental solidarity between all societies across the globe.
In July of last year, I had the pleasure of taking part, at the invitation of President Hollande, in one of the preliminary consultations held in the run-up to the Paris COP21 on Climate Change. At that preliminary conference, entitled “Consciences for Climate,” much of the discussion revolved around the ethical and intergenerational nature of the challenge of climate change, and the revolution in consciousness it calls forth. The need for a reconciliation between ethics, economics and ecology emerged as an essential dimension of any adequate response to climate change. This is indeed both a scholarly and a practical challenge. It calls for a new discourse that is adequate, transparent, public and shared.
For all of us there the questions at Paris were unequivocal. Yes, the scientific reality of climate change is now accepted; but are we genuinely ready to depart from economic models that encourage trade-offs in favour of the present, to the detriment of the future? Are we able, in our individual lives as well as in our collective political choices, to care for a world we shall not see – the world of which we are but the custodians for the generations of tomorrow? Can our generation effectively seize the problems we have inherited and respond to them creatively? What must we do to turn words into achievements?
Part of the response to these questions must involve, all of us here will agree, planning in and for our cities and urban areas. As the Mayor of Rio, Eduardo Paes, put it, “People live in cities, not states or nations.” This bold statement reflects the unprecedented scale of urbanisation in our contemporary world.
While only 50 years ago, just one third of the world’s population lived in cities, the balance has shifted dramatically over the last decade. This was reflected here in Ireland, where the population of the Greater Dublin Area has actually doubled over the last half-century. According to the United Nations, the turning point globally was reached in 2007, when the threshold of 50% of the world’s population living in urban areas was crossed. This proportion is predicted to rise to over 65% by the middle of this century, meaning that an additional 2.5 billion people will be city dwellers.
While such cities produce 75% of the world’s GDP, they are also, unfortunately, responsible for 75% of our global carbon emissions. As the world continues to urbanise, therefore, and as cities continue to grow into mega cities, it is clear that much of the drive towards any mitigation of climate change must come from cities. Before I suggest, with modesty I assure you, how cities, that are a main source of climate change, can be – and have started to be – part of the solution, may I briefly recall for you the scale of the challenge posed by climate change to human life on our planet.
The devastating effects of global warming – in terms of environmental degradation, desertification, temperature increases, droughts, the rise of sea levels, and the multiplication of spells of extreme weather – are now widely acknowledged and accepted by contemporary science. Even more importantly, they are fast becoming a reality experienced on a daily basis, although with differentiated acuity, by all of the inhabitants of the globe. Should the current path of global warming remain unchanged, the prospects for human life are so dreadful that to evoke them would be to describe the nightmares of mass hunger, massive populations’ displacement and increased violence and conflict. An unchecked climate change would, in other words, not only make social cohesion into an impossible dream; it would erode the very foundations of our societies.
The urgency of the problem was recognised by our world leaders when they met in Paris for the COP21, in December 2015. As you know, the ambitious, overall objective of the Paris Agreement is to hold the global average temperature below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with an ambition of keeping the rise below 1.5°C. This is to be implemented through a series of measures taken at national and local level.
Ireland is currently endeavouring to meet its EU target calling for a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by the year 2020. I know that our friends in San Jose are doing likewise through their own Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy. This is a subject I had the pleasure of discussing with the Mayor of San Jose, Sam Liccardo, and Governor of California, Jerry Brown, during my visit to the American West Coast in the autumn of last year. We can learn so much from sharing our respective plans and measures, our responses to our shared challenges.
The struggle against climate change did not, of course, emerge in Paris. The effects of greenhouse gases on our environment have been examined since the late 1800s; but by the 1980s, the need for action had become plainly apparent. Although we have known for several decades that the causes of climate change are primarily human in origin, having come about, in particular, through industrialisation and the exploitation of fossil fuels, there has been for far too long an obdurate refusal to accept the conclusions of good science and change policy or lifestyles. Indeed, a well-funded campaign, underpinned by the lobbying of powerful vested interests, was launched against such science, in an attempt to negate the reality of global warming.
While inaction prevailed, emissions have soared with life-altering implications for many parts of the world. Those least responsible for the effects have been paying the immediate and highest price. The Paris Conference was a turning point, then, in that it built a consensus around the need for concerted action at international level – a consensus that was grounded in the triumph of genuine science over political lassitude and the powers of irresponsible but well funded activity by an unaccountable section of the international and corporate world that sought to continue existing practices.
Recognising that the implementation of globally agreed targets requires local action, the Paris agreement gave cities a central role in achieving our agreed global climate-change aspirations.
City leaders took centre stage at that Paris Conference, with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group making significant pledges to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. This C40 Group, together with the Compact of Mayors, which, I know, included Mayor Liccardo, announced 400 commitments aiming at achieving over half of the global Greenhouse Gas emissions reductions by 2020. This is a compelling illustration of the ability, and above all the willingness, of our cities to tackle climate change. It is also a superb example of how relatively small-scale commitments can, when embraced collectively, yield very significant results. Indeed, some of the largest cities in the world have peaked, or will soon peak, their emissions, and many are already reducing their carbon footprint.
The recognition of the crucial role of cities in tackling climate change extends, however, well beyond the Paris agreement and its associated targets for the limitation of Greenhouse Gases. Cities are not just the heart and centre of global economic activity, they are also key sources and well-springs of social and political change.
Any reflection on the role of cities in this new century must, therefore, look beyond regulations and action plans implemented by urban authorities; it must go further to comprise an examination of lifestyles and political decisions that concern all of our citizens. Indeed any adequate strategy for tackling climate change at city level is one that should, I believe, be predicated upon the needs of citizens, and in particular the most vulnerable amongst them. We should aspire to an urban civilization and culture of sufficiency as an alternative to contemporary exhortations to insatiable consumption.
Compact, connected and coordinated cities are not just more productive economically, they are also more socially inclusive, resilient and healthy. Well-planned cities are cities with enough green public spaces, thus providing essential opportunities to reduce emissions, noise and pollution, while at the same time improving the welfare and recreational life of their citizens.
As we attempt to create cities that are responsible to both their natural environment and their citizens, the crucial decisions to be taken in the coming decades include, then, such crucial sectors as transport, infrastructure, construction and industry, as well as attention to the natural texture of our urban environment – its trees, its gardens, its public parks and its water.
This multi-dimensional quality of cities is one that was harnessed in another milestone Summit convened last September in New York, to define our new international agenda for Sustainable Development. Through Goal number 11, world leaders have agreed to – I quote:
“Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.”
This new Agenda for Sustainable Development recognises cities as key areas through which to link in new ways multiple development goals. Due to their density, urban areas are indeed very appropriate places to identify novel, systematic linkages between economy, energy, environment and social outcomes.
If I may illustrate this point by mentioning but one example, that of urban transports. A sustainable, reliable and adequate system of public urban transport simultaneously facilitates the reduction of air pollution – and, by association, assists in achieving positive health outcomes – as well as sustainable economic activity, through the efficient movement of workers, and increased social interactions and a flourishing social life. Effective public transport systems also allow for more compact cities, thereby limiting the consumption of agricultural land, while imaginative urban design and the provision of green space can enrich both urban biodiversity and human well-being.
A new sustainable urban form, drawing from an imaginative public architecture, science, technology, and a publicly grounded ethic, can come into being. Any new urban form should also take into account, I suggest, the transience of migratory behavior into account. The city dwellers of the future may not be sedentary occupants of fixed space and time as we have known it.
With this in mind, may I point to another crucial dimension of contemporary urban development. While megacities – that is, urban areas with more than 10 million inhabitants – are, as I have already said, due to increase in number, recent scholarship has shown that most urban residents live in smaller, secondary cities, and that it is in those smaller cities that most of the population growth is set to happen in the coming decades.
The implication of this is of tremendous importance. It means that much city building is yet to take place. Given the long lifespan of many pieces of urban infrastructure, we are presented with a historic opportunity to integrate the objective of sustainable development in the very planning of so many cities that are only being born in so many regions of the world, and in particular in the poorer regions of this world.
Those poorer cities in poorer regions, despite all their difficulties, have an advantage in that their shape being still relatively fluid, they can, with adequate political will and financial, but also imaginative, resources, avoid the mistakes made in cities that developed earlier.
Our cities – as incubators of ideas and talents – are so well placed to learn from one another, to exchange technology, ideas and solutions, so as to better tackle the global challenge of climate change. This is why, Deputy Mayor Herrera, the agreement between Dublin and San Jose is of such great value. We need to nurture and expand the space for this dialogue.
The initiatives being undertaken by San Jose in, for example, reducing car travel, promoting walking and cycling and using renewable energy are echoed here in Dublin and in other cities across the globe. However bespoke, local initiatives such as Dublin Bikes, or segregated cycle lanes, can, I believe, pave the way for wider application across cities and continents. I was also very impressed, during my visit to the Tesla factory on my visit to California last year, to witness the potential of such technological innovations as electric cars, that can positively transform our ways of living in the city while reducing our footprint in terms of emissions.
New technologies, then, can be harnessed with so much benefit by municipal administrators to achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency, security, welfare and sustainability in our cities. However, we must be wary not to let the vision of the “smart city” generate the same abstractions, mistakes and misunderstanding that doomed the High Modernist urban planning of the twentieth century. Above all, we must ensure that our “smart cities” are ones that actually offer solutions that improve the livelihoods of citizens, and that they are no mere rhetorical cover for the commercial strategies of, for example, big technology companies.
In a report entitled “Science, technology and innovation for sustainable urbanization”, published in February 2015, the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) have argued that a mix of innovative technology and regulation can indeed help cities become more sustainable. Yet UNCTAD also warn that such efforts will fail if they sideline residents and become hijacked by private interests or technology companies. The report shows, too, that innovative technologies – technologies that challenge the status quo, such as, for example, renewable energy technologies – are always at risk of being blocked by powerful interests, and in particular those tied to the exploitation of fossil fuels.
An awareness of those wider power issues must always complement, I believe, the search for innovative technological and scientific solutions in the service of more sustainable city life.
Equally importantly, we should never forget that it is the poorer inhabitants of the world’s poorer cities who are most vulnerable to the effects of global climate change. One billion people worldwide live in slums, and, according to UN-Habitat, this figure is likely to double over the forthcoming decade, to reach 2 billion by 2030. Those people who live on the edge, physically, economically, and politically – in coastal cities, on riverbanks, in hazard-prone areas, without rights to their land, with little savings, and without proper right of access to their city – those are the people who are on the front lines of climate change.
Financial solidarity with those poorer cities must be an essential component of any ambitious international response to climate change – and the Paris agreement provides important advances in that regard. Yet, it would be highly presumptuous to view this as a one-sided process. The world’s poorer cities must be enabled to follow their own path of development.
Then too, the inhabitants of Western cities have so much to learn from the extraordinary creativity deployed by the people of the shanty towns of India and Egypt, of Peru’s pueblos jóvenes or of Brazil’s favelas. When reflecting on our own lifestyles, we should not overlook the possibilities entailed in those survival strategies based on the recycling of waste and construction material, the growing of food in urban interstices, or the sharing of means of transport. “Smart cities” are not just about science and new technologies. They are about people and livelihoods.
Finally, while this might strike a slightly dissonant note in today’s discussions, may I remark how, in my view, any reflection on the role of cities in curbing global climate change should be mirrored and complemented by an equally important effort at thinking about the future of our rural areas – our villages and our fields, our mountains and our islands. The devastating process of rural emigration and depopulation in so many regions of the world should not be any blind spot in our discussion. Indeed it is my profound conviction that agricultural development and subsistence farming are and will continue to be an essential component of any adequate response to global climate change.
Going back to the title of today’s Summit, may I conclude by saying quite simply that no contemporary challenge more clearly reveals our fundamental interdependence as human beings sharing the same planet as does global climate change. We are invited, in this new century, to unite forces, exchange ideas and technologies, and act in concert, from all of our different cities in order to respond adequately to this greatest of challenges, while respecting the right of every city to follow its own, distinctive path of development, according to its unique social, environmental and cultural composition.
Ar maidin táimid tar éis teacht le chéile ónár gcatharacha agus ónár dtíortha éagsúla leis an tuiscint go bhfuilimid uile mar bhaill d’aon chlann amháin. Agus chun admháil go bhfuil sé mar fhreagracht i gcoiteanna againn aire a thabhairt d’ár bplainéid a chothaíonn muid uilig. Lig dúinn, le chéile, beart à dhéanamh de réir an tuiscint sin tríd teacht ar slíte marachtála in ár gcatharacha atá ar ár maitheas mar chlann domhanda, go h-eiticiúl, go h-eacnamúil agus go h-eiceolaíchta.
This morning, here in Croke Park, we have come together, from all our different cities and countries, anxious to acknowledge that we are one in our common humanity– that we are one humanity in our common responsibility for the fragile Planet that nurtures us.
Let us, together, turn that awareness into reality by making our cities the site of a historic and transformative reconciliation between economy, ethics and ecology.
Thank you.