P4G Viet Nam Summit - High-level plenary session: Sustainable and people-centered green transition

Your Excellency Pham Minh Chinh, Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam,

Your Excellencies, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is an honour and a pleasure to visit Viet Nam for the first time, and to participate in the P4G Summit. 

In UNCTAD, we are particularly grateful to Viet Nam, and particularly to you Prime Minister for the opportunity of celebrating our sixteenth Conference of UN Trade and Development together with the World Investment Forum, here in Viet Nam in October this year. 

Without a doubt, Viet Nam’s rising economic influence, achievements in regional integration and growing diplomatic leadership make this country an ideal setting to reimagine the future of global trade and development. 

Your Excellencies,

We stand today at the crossroads of a transformation that is reshaping our world with huge opportunities for sustainable and human-centred development.  So, the question isn’t whether transformation will come. The question is: transformation for whom?

Will our green transition leave behind those already left behind? Or will it be like the branches of a banyan tree, giving shelter to all who seek it.  We know!  A transition that is not people-centred is not sustainable. Sustainability is not a technical challenge it is a political and societal one.

Your Excellencies,

The numbers tell a compelling story.  Within a decade, the clean tech market will match today’s entire crude oil market size – already worth over $1 trillion and projected to exceed $2 trillion by 2030.

Yet, the opportunity remains deeply uneven.  Developing countries received just 15% of global clean energy investments despite facing the most severe climate impacts.  In Africa, home to 60% of the world's best solar resources, renewable investments were less than 2% of the global total.

These asymmetries of investment result in asymmetries in value.  The Democratic Republic of Congo supplies 70% of the world’s cobalt yet captures just 3% of the battery value chain.

So, what’s missing?

First, we need the right policy frameworks to foster productive capacity development, technology transfer, support to MSMEs, entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems. 

Second, we need appropriate financial systems. Capital costs for renewable projects in developing countries are three to four times higher than in developed markets – a key factor that multilateral action could address, providing the right guarantees and scaling up financing while crowding in private capital for investments to go where it is most needed.  Our research at UNCTAD shows that when multilateral development banks, governments and private investors collaborate, the cost of capital comes down significantly.

Third, we need communities’ participation.  Because the deeper question before us is not whether we can make our economies green, but whether we can make them just.

Fourth, we need partnerships. The P4G initiative is a very good example to follow. Plurinational and multistakeholder partnerships are key as part of strengthening the multilateral system.

And finally, and especially now that uncertainty and volatility is so high, we need to maintain a long-term view and remember that the short and the long term start at the same time.

At the UNCTAD16 conference in Viet Nam we will confront these questions directly, ensuring trade and investment frameworks serve people and planet alike.

Excellencies, the political viability of climate action depends on its perceived fairness. I said before, a transition that fails to be people-centred will ultimately fail to be sustainable.

Viet Nam’s leadership – both at P4G today and UNCTAD 16 tomorrow – gives me great hope.  The path ahead is clear. Let us walk it together.

I thank you.