Foundation President, Mary Robinson, addressed a public event in the World Bank on Friday 1 March 2013 as part of the Sustainable Development Network Forum 2013
Foundation President, Mary Robinson, addressed a public event in the World Bank on Friday 1 March 2013 as part of the Sustainable Development Network Forum 2013: Solutions for a Sustainable Future. The Forum takes places over two weeks and provides World Bank staff and external experts with an opportunity to debate the most pressing development issues across all sectors.
Introducing Ms Robinson, Rachel Kyte, Vice President for the Sustainable Development Network, referred to the 2012 World Bank Report Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided and said that all development must be about building resilience and adaptive capacity to climate change.
She said that World Bank’s journey as an institution had to be about social justice and that we must all raise our level of ambition in order to avoid the devastating consequences that would result from a 4° rise in temperature.
In her address Ms Robinson acknowledged the leadership that World Bank President, Jim Yong Kim, is giving on climate change and said that Turn Down the Heat was ‘a wake-up call in a world that is still too confused and sceptical about the impacts of climate change’.
Ms Robinson said that it was totally unacceptable that, in 2013, 1.3 billion people lack electricity to light their homes or conduct business while twice that number rely on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste to cook their food. She urged the World Bank to give leadership in piloting new models of scaling up affordable, renewable energy through social protection systems.
In closing, Ms Robinson challenged the World Bank to make sustainable development a reality by:
- Championing equity and the protection of human rights as high level principles in its work
- Acting on hunger and under nutrition
- Continuing to prioritise the empowerment of girls and women.