Stockholm+50 – what we know so far about the post-COP26 international climate meeting

Energy & Climate Change, Natural Environment

COP26 has been and gone, but the key climate summit is not where the conversation ends on climate change adaptation and mitigation.

As well as COP15, 2022 will also see Sweden hosting Stockholm+50, an international meeting convened by the United Nations General Assembly commemorating 50 years since the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, in country’s capital from 2-3 June 2022.

The tagline/theme for the high-level meeting is ‘a healthy planet for the prosperity of all – our responsibility, our opportunity’, and participants will no doubt enter proceedings with the same level of cautious optimism witnessed at COP26.

Supported by the government of Kenya the meeting hopes to ‘drive action to achieve sustainable development for the well-being of current and future generations’.

Expanding further Sweden’s minister for the environment and climate, and deputy prime minister Per Bolund said: “Our aim is clear, we want Stockholm+50 to make a concrete contribution to accelerating the transformation to a sustainable future. We call this meeting to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the 1972 conference.

“We are running out of time and urgent action is needed. These challenges are global, and we must meet them with a global response that drives action on the ground.”

UNEP executive director and secretary-general of the Stockholm+50 Inger Andersen: “We need to urgently work to transform our economies and societies, but our branches will spread only as far as our roots are deep.

“By remembering Stockholm at 50, we also remember how the world came together to heal the ozone layer in 2013, phase out leaded fuel this year and stop endangered species from going extinct. By convening in Stockholm, we also recommit to human and planetary health, responsibility, prosperity, equality and peace – as we have seen only too clearly in Covid-19.”

Full programme details for the meeting have not been revealed yet, but a concept note for Stockholm+50 gives more information on the three leadership dialogues that will form the centrepiece of the event.

And momentum for the meeting is already gathering. The #Stockholm50 Youth Task Force was launched at C0P26, with the aim of strengthening youth involvement, while a paper entitled Towards Stockholm+50: China’s role in global environmental governance by the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law has just been published.

Watch this space for further details.

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