A previously unannounced farewell to outgoing Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, held for civil society representatives, took place at 9 am on Thursday at COP22. It was a warm event, during which he said that it was wonderful to hear people speaking nicely to him, since there were so many times during the past ten years that he was criticized for not doing enough about some problem–even about climate change. Ban Ki-Moon told civil society representatives that they were “kings and queens without crowns.” While the Secretary General has to sometimes be careful about what he says, civil society actors don’t have the same restrictions. While civil society activists have been beaten, convicted, and jailed, we should raise our voices forcefully–raise them as high as possible!
Representatives from the Women and Gender Constituency, the Business and Investor Constituency, the Youth Constituency, and Indigenous Peoples’ Constituency were invited to make a few remarks (also acknowledged were state and local authorities, farmers, and research constituencies present). The Women and Gender civil society speaker said that the test of a leader (according to Gandhi) is that s/he leaves behind in other people the will and ability to carry on, and Ban Ki-Moon had earned the title of leader. People pointed to how much work the General Secretary had done on the ground (he has been at COP this week), that he was a people’s representative, that he had from the first demonstrated concern for climate change, that he had vision. He inspired young people, the youth representative from China said, including when he stood at the front of the climate march in New York in 2014.
Moon urged all the civil society groups to continued action. There are many places where your voices and strong commitment can matter, he said. He felt he could not work on other UN development goals if the challenge of climate change was not met. He told representatives that, although he felt like a sprinter approaching the finish line, younger people had a lot of work to do to translate words on paper into action. Without this, they will be just words.