Díaz-Canel: Let’s stop compromising human survival with our irrational selfishness

Speech by Miguel Mario Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, President of the Republic of Cuba, at the Virtual Summit on Climate Ambition, December 12, 2020.

Excellencies:

Twenty-eight years ago, in a brief and memorable speech, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz sounded the alarm about the most serious risk to the human species. The global recognition of climate change took years to arrive and is still partial, incomplete and distant from the urgent and articulated actions that the problem demands.

Cuba did not stop. Our State Plan for Confronting Climate Change, with national goals and international commitments, involves all sectors of the economy and society in adaptation and mitigation actions.

Last September we presented the update of Cuba's Nationally Determined Contribution to the UN Framework Convention on the subject, with much more ambitious commitments.

We set ourselves thirteen goals of adaptation, a line prioritized by our condition of small insular State in development, and five goals of mitigation, mainly addressed to Agriculture and Energy, which generate more than 90% of the emissions of greenhouse gases in our archipelago.

The commitment is to achieve by 2030 an energy matrix with 24 % of electricity generation from renewable sources; to reduce to 50 % the use of fossil fuels in land vehicles and to increase forest coverage to 33 %.

The proposed objectives and the progress made, despite the serious limitations imposed by the US government's blockade, which has intensified in recent years and months to extreme levels, confirm Cuba's firm will on this crucial issue.

But it is necessary to insist that the production and consumption patterns of capitalism are irrational and unsustainable.

It is time for the developed countries to assume a leadership of solidarity in reducing emissions and in providing the necessary means of implementation to the developing countries, in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities.

Climate change and the crisis caused by COVID-19 are crying out to us to promote international cooperation. Let us no longer compromise human survival with irrational selfishness. We are all threatened.

Thank you very much.