A message from

Juan Manuel Santos

Member of The Elders

Dear Friends,

It is a pleasure to write to you for the first time in this Newsletter as a member of The Elders.

When I was invited to join this esteemed group in January, I said that The Elders’ work to promote peace and support efforts to end the world’s most intractable conflicts is a “crucial force for good”.

In the following months I have had the privilege of witnessing this at first hand, both at our board meeting in Ethiopia when we met refugees from South Sudan and heard of the plight of internally displaced people, and then at our meetings with the United Nations Security Council in New York.

I believe The Elders can play a critical role in highlighting the linkages between some of the most significant challenges to global peace and justice: climate change, poverty, migration and security.  If the world only treats these issues in isolation, we will never develop appropriate responses that address the root causes at scale.

The Sustainable Development Goals offer a pathway for this sort of collective, holistic and multilateral approach, but only if political leaders show the necessary will and commitment to deliver on the pledges they made back in 2015.

In July, Mary Robinson and Hina Jilani attended the High-Level Political Forum in New York that offered an opportunity to review countries’ progress on SDGs relating to climate and justice, ahead of the Secretary-General’s SDG Summit to be held in September at the UN General Assembly.

As Mary Robinson said in her keynote address:

“We will not overcome the key existential challenges facing our world today, from nuclear weapons to climate change, if we spurn cooperation. Nor when we assert that one particular nation is greater than another and should not be constrained beyond its self-interest.”

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the fight against climate change. In recent weeks we have seen record temperatures across Europe; this time last year the world suffered devastating forest fires from California to the Arctic Circle.

It is no exaggeration to say that without urgent, radical action, we will not bequeath a liveable planet to future generations. This would lead to ever fiercer conflicts and large-scale forced migration as resources become scarce, sea levels rise and droughts destroy farmlands and livelihoods.

As President of Colombia, I re-created the Ministry of Environment and put in place an aggressive policy to protect our biodiversity. Today I am committed to continuing my efforts on a global scale and I know that all of us at The Elders can count on your support to help build a better world for our children and grandchildren.

Juan Manuel Santos