Some people, including here in this Hall, are pessimistic about the state of the world today. I beg to differ. There are good reasons for optimism. Since the start of the new millennium, we have made tremendous progress in the Sustainable Development Goals. Today there is more universal access to education than ever before. Eighty-five per cent of young children worldwide are in primary education. Since the start of the century, an additional 2 billion people have had access to safe drinking water. It shows that if we put our minds to it. and if promises are followed by investments, we can make global progress.
Of course, the picture is not rosy across the board. Our changing climate is reason for concern. This year we have witnessed some extreme climate events — forest fires in Greece. Spain. Canada and Hawaii, floods in Libya and Hong Kong and long periods of drought and water stress in my own country.
But. in that regard too. let us look at the trends rather than the events. Let us look at our recent climate track record, and we will see that there is reason for grounded optimism. A record-breaking €340 billion has been invested in renewable energy globally this year. Prices of renewables keep on going down year after year.
Many climate analysts believe that carbon emissions will peak as soon as 2025. and will keep going down afterwards, provided that we keep up the investment pace in renewables. The Executive Director of the International Energy Agency called it the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era. He said that it shows that our climate policies work. We should therefore stop listening to the alarmists who proclaim that all is lost and that we are on a road to nowhere. How can we expect public opinion to rally behind the climate cause with such blatant defeatism?
We should not despair; we should organize. We should speed up the green transition instead of talking ourselves down and. in order to do that, we need to include our industry through a new industrial deal. We will not build a climate paradise on an industrial wasteland. We need our industry for its innovation capacity to come up with tomorrow’s climate solutions.
That is why Europe not only should be a continent of industrial innovation, but also should remain a continent of industrial production — clean technology, for sure, but also green chemistry, green steel production and green construction sites. All are needed to build our net zero future.
That new industrial deal will be one of the major priorities of the Belgian presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU). starting on 1 January 2024. But. to make that industrial deal a success, we should look beyond Europe. We need partnerships, especially between Europe and Africa. The foundation stones are there. Belgium has partnered with countries such as Namibia. Morocco and Egypt to accelerate the green transition in wind, in solar and in hydrogen. Investments are pouring in. creating local employment, building up local expertise and soon exporting clean molecules from the shores of Africa to our North Sea ports.
We work at home as well. Together with Germany. France, the Netherlands. Luxembourg. Denmark. Norway. Ireland and the United Kingdom, we are turning the North Sea into a big green power plant for Europe. By 2030. we will reach 120 gigawatts of wind energy at sea — the equivalent of more than 50 nuclear plants and enough to provide more than 100 million households with clean, affordable power.
We are making progress on the nuclear front as well. Belgium has reached an agreement with its nuclear operator to prolong the lifespan of its two biggest power plants. We will remain a nuclear nation, and we will seek renewed close cooperation with other nuclear nations because, to achieve climate neutrality, we will need both renewables and nuclear.
It is vital to win the fight against climate change, since it is the single-biggest disruptor of our societies today. It causes young people to flee their home country en masse. That increased irregular migration deprives the South of its most important economic resource and its most vital potential — young people.
At the same time, the host countries in Europe are faced with an influx that they can barely handle. We are facing an uphill battle to accommodate all migrants and integrate them into our society. The heart of the problem is that migration, as we know it today, depends on sheer luck. The current model gives all the control and power to human smugglers. They decide on life or death. They decide on who enters a country and who does not. That is simply unacceptable, unsustainable and immoral. It is a lose-lose situation for everyone involved.
We need to rebuild the current migration model. That is why. during the Belgian EU presidency, we hope to conclude a new European migration pact — a pact that makes sure that every EU country does its part of the work, enforcing solidarity, standardizing and fast- tracking procedures and working on common European readmission and return policies, and. last but not least, a pact to strengthen our common borders.
But a new EU migration pact is only part of the answer. We should also work on one of the biggest root causes of migration, and that is poverty and the lack of economic opportunities. In that regard too. as with climate change, partnerships are the answer — partnerships between Europe and the countries of transit and origin and partnerships that build solid, inclusive institutions to create equal rights and equal opportunities for all. not just for a small ruling class.
Fixing migration also means creating legal channels to Europe through education and talent programmes to strengthen societies in the home countries, turning a lose-lose situation into a win-win one so that young Africans can pursue the African dream and not have to risk their lives at sea for the European dream or the American dream.
To empower people also means holding the powerful to account. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which more and more strongmen come to power. Take the Sahel region, faced with a major security crisis and gripped by a perfect storm of terrorism, poverty and climate change. That triple threat is undermining societies in Burkina Faso. Mali and the Niger. We need to stop the territorial and institutional disintegration of the Sahel. Our track record in the Sahel should be a reason for humility, but it should not lead to indifference. The only way forward is to restore the rule of law. Without it. self-government will never be possible. Without the rule of law. the Sahel will always be a potential playground for foreign bullies, wherever they come from.
It must be said that the clear and current danger is coming from a permanent member of the Security Council — from Russia, which decided to throw all international rules overboard and to invade its neighbour; from Russia, which is executing its opponents. Russia created the Wagner Group to bring death and destruction to Africa, plundering that continent, while increasing the price of grain for the most vulnerable. In fact, what the Wagner Group and Putin are doing to Africa is exactly the same as in Ukraine — preventing Africa from flourishing, denying African countries their sovereignty and. ultimately, as in Ukraine, colonizing. Putin and the Wagner Group want to turn the clock back. They want to restore the old world order, as it was dominated by colonial Powers.
The decolonization and emancipation of African. Asian and South American countries are the most important achievements of our post-World War order. We should protect that legacy and shield it from new forms of imperialism. Each of us has a choice to make as to whose side to pick — the side of the colonizer or the side of the victim. When we make those choices, the best guiding principle that I can think of is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We celebrate its seventy-fifth birthday this year.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights remains the spinal cord of all human rights treaties and instruments. In fact, the rights defined in the treaty are much older than 75 years. The West African Mandinka nation, in what is nowadays Mali, had a Constitution as early as the year 1200. It spoke of the sanctity of human life, women’s rights and the right to an education, food security and even self-expression. When the freed slaves of Haiti, at the start of the nineteenth century, finally had the freedom to choose their own destiny, they defined living in dignity as living in liberty and equality. Let us therefore remember such stories and recognize the true universality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Let us also remember the progress that we have made as a common humankind and. when we look back on our achievements, know that they were always the result of hard work and of collaboration. Now more than ever, we need the United Nations and the world to come together to secure progress that works for everyone.