Let me begin by congratulating you on ten years of the Principles for Sustainable Insurance Initiative, or PSI. This, the largest collaboration between the United Nations and the insurance industry, is incredibly important.The insurance industry serves as society’s early warning system and risk manager by understanding, reducing, pricing and carrying risk. And the insurance industry and wider financial sector have the power and responsibility to drive progress towards a net-zero economy and a sustainable future.Over the last ten years, we have seen real progress in the industry. Through the PSI, we now have best practice frameworks and guidance designed to embed sustainability in the heart of the insurance business and achieve real-world impact. Recognizing the key role of insurance regulators and supervisors, the PSI also helped establish the Sustainable Insurance Forum in 2016. There is no excuse for any insurer not to have a sustainability strategy for its core business.More recently, an initial group of major insurers embedded net-zero ambitions either in their core insurance business or in their investments – or both. Some major insurers have made promises and commitments that, if delivered, can make a real difference. Today, the PSI encompasses over 220 organizations, including insurers representing one-third of world premium and USD 15 trillion in assets under management. We now have a global community of practice that can drive systemic change.For all of this, and so much more, I thank you.But now I am going to tell you what I told my own organization and member states at the UNEP@50 commemoration in March. I am going to tell you what I told world leaders at Stockholm+50 in June. I am going to tell you what I will tell anybody marking a milestone in environmental action: you have not done enough. None of us have.This is not my opinion. It is a statement of fact. A statement of fact borne out by what science tells us about the accelerating triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature and biodiversity loss, and pollution and waste.The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tell us global warming is causing dangerous disruption to the natural world, human wellbeing and economic prosperity. Deaths and damage from floods, droughts and storms are on the rise.All of this is coming at 1.1°C of global warming. And there is a 50/50 chance we will hit 1.5°C, at least temporarily, in the next five years. The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction recently predicted that one large-scale disaster will occur every day by 2030. The risks posed by global heating are clearly escalating. And yet efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions are still way off track.
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- Kenya
