2023-12-02
Your Majesties,
Your Royal Highnesses,
Secretary General,
Your Excellences Presidents and Prime Ministers,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,
It is a great honor and privilege for me to address you all on behalf of the Government and people of Georgia. I would like to express profound gratitude to His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the President of the UAE, for generous hospitality and for hosting this important summit in Dubai.
The United Arab Emirates is indeed a global role-model of technological innovation and modernization, creativity and progress. And, it is now championing the climate resilience efforts as well.
Dear Colleagues, visible impacts of climate change that become increasingly severe and have devastating effects on both people and environment, require expedited progress towards climate resilience. It is my strong belief, therefore, that several major international efforts must be maintained to manage the climate crises worldwide. These include:
• reducing the global emissions by half by 2030 and maintaining the threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with the Paris Agreement;
• contributing consistently to the loss and damage fund;
• adopting a framework to reach the global goal of climate adaptation.
The promise of 100 billion USD a year in climate finance should be kept as well, as must be the commitment towards doubling the climate action finance for adaptation.
We take our role in addressing the climate crisis seriously in Georgia and have already taken significant steps towards this end. Over 500 million USD was allocated for the climate mitigation and adaptation measures from the State Budget of Georgia this year. Moreover, development of the national infrastructure is already taking into account the low-carbon and climate adaptation measures, equaling to over 300 million USD a year.
My Government supports the idea of making Europe the first continent to reach a net-zero emissions balance. With this in mind, we have adopted the long-term low emissions development strategy, declaring "carbon neutrality" as an important goal by 2050. Georgia also commits to presenting a new and more ambitious Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) in 2025.
In addition, I am delighted to note that up to 85% of electricity comes from renewable sources in Georgia. However, further enhancement of our share of renewable energy remains a strategic priority for us and I am pleased to announce that Georgia is joining the COP28 Global Renewables and Energy Efficiency Pledge.
Dear Colleagues, I strongly support the vision of the COP28's Presidency for scaling up renewable energy to phase out the unabated fossil fuels. We believe that the formally negotiated outcome should include a commitment to triple renewable energy and double energy efficiency by 2030, along with an equitable phase-out of unabated fossil fuels.
In conclusion, I am hopeful that during COP28, we will be able to live up to the unique moment together and deliver on our promise to shape a brighter, healthier and greener future for the generations to come.
Thank you very much!