Tale: Regnskogmøte med Prins Charles

Your Royal Highness, ministers, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you for inviting me and for putting the issue of deforestation so high on our common agenda.

Three of the most important points made in the New Climate Economy Report from last year were:

We can protect the world’s remaining natural tropical forests.

We can start the agricultural revolution that will be necessary to eliminate poverty and feed two billion more people by 2050.

We can restore forests and agricultural areas throughout the tropics.

The benefits from doing this would be immense.

We could achieve both strong and sustainable economic growth.

We could help deliver a quarter of the climate change mitigation the world needs to stay on a two degrees warming pathway towards 2030.

Last September, the New York Declaration on Forests set out the goals we are striving to achieve and the commitments we must make to do so.

It is now time for this partnership to come alive. 

We must act together. The benefits for all of us are immense. But none of us can succeed on our own.

The private sector has provided inspiring leadership.

The soy moratorium in Brazil is one impressive example.

Commitments to deforestation-free palm oil is another.

Now – in 2015 – those pledges must be implemented and broadened.

Deforestation-free supply chains must be extended to all relevant commodities.

The financial sector must join our coalition and scale-up investments in deforestation-free development.

Indigenous peoples must continue to be the best guardians of the forests. And civil society needs to hold us all accountable.

 Most important: The right public policies must be put in place. So that the economic playing field favours sustainable over non-sustainable activities.

It is in the self interest of tropical forest countries to take stronger political leadership.  

However: Doing so will have significant political and financial costs in the short term.

This burden has to be shared. Finance must be provided to support the necessary reforms.

That is why the Lima Challenge from December last year is so encouraging.

In this document, a number of tropical forest countries make two important commitments:

First, to reduce deforestation through their own efforts.

Second, to do even moreif the international community steps forward with large-scale financial support.

This is a remarkable challenge, which deserves a determined response.

Governments in partner countries need to commit to large-scale payments for reduced emissions from deforestation at the national level.

Indeed, a key recommendation in the New Climate Economy report is to scale up such payments to at least 5 billion US dollars per year for the period until 2030.

Norway is willing to consider scaling up our contributions from the current 500 million US dollars a year – if others do the same.

The Climate Change Summit in Paris in December will be the time and place to deliver concrete and predictable commitments on climate and forest finance through partnerships in Southeast Asia, in Africa, and in Latin America.

Multi-partner dialogues are essential to achieve this. And Norway will help. Under the leadership of and in partnership with tropical forest countries. Working with other committed partner countries.

With the private sector.

With civil society and indigenous peoples’ groups.

Let us make 2015 the year we really make it happen. Together. 

Thank you.