Good morning, and welcome to Yerevan.

A city’s future is often decided long before the sirens sound: in the floodplain we build on, the wetland we protect or fill, and p0the homes we make safe – or leave exposed.

That is why urban nature belongs at the center of our conversation. Nature is the life-support system of every city. Soils hold water; wetlands absorb floods; trees cool streets. When these systems weaken, risk enters homes and public budgets.

Urban choices travel outward, then return as risk.

This is also why the three Rio Conventions meet in the city’s domain. It is where climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss converge.

We must be candid about the climate we are preparing for. The future includes risk of warming beyond 1.5 degrees, potentially for years, and perhaps decades. The IPCC warns that higher and longer overshoot increases risks, including some irreversible impacts. Adaptation has limits. Every fraction of warming we avoid still matters.

UNEP’s Global Environment Outlook 7, A Future We Choose, is a global assessment. But its title is also an instruction: a future is chosen in the budgets, land-use plans and public services we shape now.

That calls for a clear order of priorities. Cut emissions and drivers of nature loss. Protect what remains intact. Restore and reconnect ecosystems. Make nature and climate risk part of decisions shaping cities for generations.

Good nature-based action is rooted in local ecology, sustained over time and shaped with the people who live with its consequences. A park that displaces the people who need its shade has failed a basic test of fairness.

Whose homes flood first? Local and urban communities must help define what recovery and a thriving city mean.

Local and regional governments are where these choices become real. They connect national promises to the places where people live, yet are too often expected to deliver without the authority, finance, data or place in national decision-making that implementation requires.

After decades working between global negotiation and local practice, I have come to see the implementation gap as a design problem. Our task is to align responsibility, authority, knowledge and finance around the places where consequences meet – and let local experience shape commitments.

The mandate is already clear. In Montreal, Parties adopted Decision 15/4, the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, including Target 12 on urban green and blue spaces, and Decision 15/12, the 2023–2030 Plan of Action on Subnational Governments, Cities and Other Local Authorities for Biodiversity.

At this stocktake COP, let us be honest: commitments and action remain far from the ambition Parties agreed in Montreal. To our national government partners: let us design and deliver this agenda together. National governments shape policy and finance; local and regional governments know the territories where decisions must work. Bring us in early, align national strategies with subnational plans, and equip implementation with clear mandates and predictable finance.

To mayors, governors and local leaders: make the living systems of your territory visible in plans and budgets. Protect first; then restore and reconnect. Set priorities with communities and move from isolated projects to investments that shape growth.

To business, finance, science and civil society: help make this shift possible and lasting. Direct capital toward ecosystem recovery and community resilience. Judge success by whether nature is recovering and people’s lives are improving.

There is reason for resolve. Local governments and communities are already restoring rivers, protecting urban forests and strengthening water security and equitable access to clean, reliable and affordable water and related services. A better urban future is within reach when mandates match responsibility, finance follows the plan and partnerships endure.

Let our measure of success be the life a city can sustain, not only the shocks it can absorb. At this COP, let us change the conditions of delivery: share authority, align finance and restore nature where people live. That is how a global framework becomes a living reality – in cities, regions and the landscapes that sustain them.

Thank you.