Excellencies

Fellow Ministers

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen

I would like to express my appreciation to the governments of Chile and Spain for presiding over and hosting this 25th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

I also thank the people of Spain for the warm welcome and hospitality shown to all delegates.

Climate change is an unprecedented planetary emergency.

Through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s scientists have sounded the alarm. Climate change is creating complex and interlinked risks to the natural, social and economic systems we all depend on.

In Rwanda, we have seen the impacts first-hand. The wet season now brings unusually heavy rains which trigger extreme flooding and landslides.

The resulting loss of life and destruction are undermining our efforts to achieve sustainable development and reversing hard-fought gains.

The early entry into force of the Paris Agreement four years ago, and the adoption of the Katowice Package last year, demonstrates what is possible when we come together in common purpose and gives hope that we can limit the warming of our planet.

Today our challenge is to bring that same spirit of multilateralism to unlock the full potential of the Paris Agreement.

We believe that this 25th conference of the parties will address the remaining issues to complete the full implementation framework of Paris Agreement including adaptation, finance, loss and damage as well as the carbon market and non-market mechanisms.

Doing so will allow countries like Rwanda to continuously raise our ambition and meet the transparency requirements under the Agreement.

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

Rwanda is committed to playing its part to realise the aspirations of the Paris Agreement and the target of limiting average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

We are reviewing our Nationally Determined Contributions to enhance our national climate action plan to make it more ambitious and investing in innovative solutions to increase our adaptive capacity.

With the impacts of climate change already affecting us today, we simply have no other choice.

We look forward to working with nations around the world to ensure our ambitious plans have the resources to be fully implemented.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all nations that have ratified the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, and encourage all parties to do the same.

Implementation of the Kigali Amendment could avoid up to 0.4 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of the century. Paired with energy efficiency, the benefit could increase to almost one degree Celsius.

The Kigali Amendment is just one example of the many actions we can take right now to limit warming and protect the health and wellbeing of all living things.

We owe it to future generations to take bold and decisive action and I am confident we will do so here in Madrid.

Thank you for your kind attention.