Costa Rica President Carlos Alvarado participated virtually this Saturday in the Munich Security Conference. The primary focus of the conference was the potential for war in Ukraine.
In attendance was the United States presidential envoy for Climate, John Kerry; the President of the COP26, Alok Sharma; the foreign ministers of Germany, Annalena Baerbock, and of Egypt, Sameh Shoukry. The panel discussion was moderated by Patricia Espinosa, Executive Secretary of UN Climate Change.
President Alvarado acknowledged that the most pressing concern focused on the potential of war between Russia and Ukraine, it cannot ignore that the greatest common challenge is climate change.
President Alvarado indicated that the world, in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), may be getting richer, but if we think about biodiversity and the biosphere, our world is getting poorer. “We are perhaps the generation in human history facing annihilation due to the climate and environmental crisis.”
The President also mentioned how the Costa Rican initiative together with France and the United Kingdom “High Ambition Coalition for Nature and People (HAC)” is an example of how work can be done in this line “uniting more than 80 countries to protect more of 30% of its territory in the oceans in order to reverse this situation”.
Given the current international tensions about the prospect of war in Europe it is unclear if President Alvarado’s message received the attention he may have hoped for.
Hopefully, war in Ukraine can be averted and the world can get back to addressing issues that concern us all.
