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This will be my 6th High Level week and I look back fondly at some of the highlights – I watched Greta Thunberg admonish leaders of the world with her fiery rage – “How dare you” nestled in between the President of Finland Mr Sauli Niinisto and the President of France Mr Macron at the Climate Summit in 2019. In 2020, as a global pandemic had changed our lives, the diplomatic community in New York sat like dutiful students watching TV screens as leaders delivered their messages on video – and actually it was probably the first and only time we listened to the speeches in detail!

In 2024, conflicts are raging still in several parts of the world. While the agenda of High Level Week is broad, the bread and butter is made up of that core mandate outlined in the charter – to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war. While the UN has not been able to live up to this mandate, it keeps trying. Here, the intense diplomacy of High Level Week is more important than ever.

������ϲʿ�������ֳ�ֱ�� is present with a high level delegation at High Level Week and Climate Week (which takes place alongside it) to remind all stakeholders that humanity cannot make peace with one another until it makes peace with the natural environment.  As the UN Secretary-General often reminds us, we are currently at war with nature, and it is a war we are bound to loose unless we change course and start making amends with the other species and ecosystems that inhabit our planet. 

This year the highlight of the official High Level Week will be the Summit of the Future. For the Summit, ������ϲʿ�������ֳ�ֱ��'s message is simple – there is no future without nature.  It is a simple message but when looking at our patterns of consumption and production, we seem to be acting like the state of nature has no bearing on our future. It is therefore essential that ������ϲʿ�������ֳ�ֱ�� maintains a strong and vocal presence to remind delegations that besides all the lives lost in wars and conflicts, the numbers will dramatically increase through the effects of climate change and environmental degradation unless decisive action is taken. This is the scourge of war that we need to save ourselves from.