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"Speech by the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean at the high-level segment of COP28 conference."

2023-12-10

Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Allow me, first and foremost, to seize this opportunity, on behalf of the 31 member parliaments of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, to express our deep concern about the current climate emergency. I also want to draw your attention to its unprecedented repercussions on the Mediterranean region and the Gulf.

For instance, we see that temperatures in the Mediterranean Sea are rising 20% faster than the global average, while the Gulf is the warmest sea in the world.

Today, we demand effective outcomes and more ambitious outputs from the COP conference. This requires strong and serious commitment.

To achieve this, efforts must be intensified, and funding allocated to climate action increased. We welcomed the decision to implement the Loss and Damage Fund in this regard. However, much more needs to be done, especially regarding energy transition. We have been clear that we will not accept any non-serious agreement in this regard.

We also welcomed the announcement regarding doubling global nuclear energy capacity by 2050, which was welcomed by many member countries in our parliament. We consider nuclear energy as a sustainable solution to achieve zero emissions goal.

As the President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean, we will work during the second session of the Marrakech Economic Parliamentary Forum for the Mediterranean and Gulf region, which the Kingdom of Morocco is honored to host next June. We will work to establish a parliamentary coalition in the Mediterranean and Gulf region for renewable energies, which was established by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean in 2022.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Parliamentary diplomacy remains imperative on the international stage to contribute to crisis resolution, especially in enhancing tangible measures and intensifying efforts to mitigate climate change.

Together, we will ensure that our governments respect the decisions made, and that our speeches today are not mere ink on paper.

Thank you for your kind attention.