President William Ruto has urged the United Nations Environment Assembly to turn the COP30 declaration that the green transition is irreversible into practical action capable of confronting the global crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.
Addressing the seventh session of the assembly in Nairobi, he said the world is entering a period shaped by artificial intelligence, digital tools and large scale electrification, and warned that these shifts will entrench inequality unless they are aligned with environmental protection and human dignity.
Ruto said the assembly must set clear environmental parameters for the emerging economic order. He warned that without deliberate safeguards the international community risks building a high tech economy on the familiar foundations of extraction, exclusion and pollution.
He urged delegates to make decisions that produce visible improvements in communities and ecosystems and called for stronger financial backing for the United Nations Environment Programme.
The President said many countries charged with protecting global public goods face poverty and limited fiscal space.
He cited Kenya’s recent declaration of a national drought emergency in twenty counties where delayed rains have left two and a half million people at risk of hunger and water scarcity. He said African countries continue to bear the brunt of climate impacts despite contributing the least to the crisis.
Even so, Ruto said the continent is committed to climate ambition and envisions a green and digital future powered by renewable energy and grounded in resilience. He argued that environmental action and economic transformation must advance together and insisted that the transition has to be fair and affordable for the Global South.
Ruto announced that Kenya will host the eleventh Our Ocean Conference next year along with an International Clean Cooking Summit. He reaffirmed Kenya’s commitment to a global treaty on plastic pollution and said the country is ready to host further negotiations.
In video remarks, the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres called for sustained investment in environmental protection. UNEP head Inger Andersen and assembly president Abdullah Bin Ali Al Amri also pressed delegates to strengthen multilateralism and prioritise ecological stability.
