His Excellency Mr António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations,
His Excellency Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of the Arab Republic of Egypt,
President of COP 27, Dr Sameh Shoukry,
Your Excellencies, Heads of State and Government,

We are gathered here for COP 27 on an African continent that is experiencing the worsening effects of climate change.

For the sake of our continent and the world, we need a dramatic increase in global mitigation ambition to keep the world on the 1.5-degree pathway.

Like other vulnerable regions, Africa needs to build adaptive capacity, foster resilience and address loss and damage, as we all agreed at Paris COP 21.

To achieve this, our continent will need  a predictable, appropriate and at-scale funding stream and technological support.

This must support our right to development, international equity and transitions that are just and inclusive.

This places a great responsibility on developed economies to honour their commitments to those countries with the greatest need and that confront the greatest environmental, social and economic effects of climate change.

The multilateral development banks need to be reformed to meet the needs of developing economies for sustainable development and climate resilience.

At present, multilateral support is out of reach of the majority of the world’s population due to lending policies that are risk averse and carry onerous costs and conditionalities.

We need a clear roadmap to deliver on the Glasgow decision to double adaptation financing by 2025.

Our emphasis must be on the health, well-being and food and water security of the most vulnerable.

At a national level, South Africa is fully committed to achieving the most ambitious end of the mitigation range in our updated Nationally Determined Contribution.

As a country, we are guided by a Just Transition Framework and an Investment Plan that outlines the enormous scale and nature of investments needed to achieve our decarbonisation goals over the next five years.

We are already scaling up investment in renewable energy, and are on course to retire several of our ageing coal-fired power plants by the end of 2030.

At COP 26 in Glasgow last year, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union offered support in the form of a Just Energy Transition Partnership.

It is our hope that this partnership will offer a ground-breaking approach to funding by developed countries for the ambitious but necessary mitigation and adaptation goals of developing countries.

South Africa reiterates its support for the Egyptian Presidency and its confidence in the successful outcomes of COP 27.

I thank you.

Source: Government of South Africa