What are you most proud of?

When I think of the fate of poor old women, so many of whom have no one to look after them and nothing to live on at the end of their lives, I am glad to have had a hand in all that structure of pensions and insurance which no other country can rival and which is especially a help to them.

I think three things. One is the great advances in auto safety. I mean, there are tens of thousands of people being saved every year because cars are safer, and millions of people over a decade, injuries prevented. I think that’s a good example of the need to make technology more humane. We may benefit from a lot of technologies, but they exact a cost. Emphysema, cancer, soil contamination, contaminated water, death and injury on the highway. We’ve got to put more effort on making them more humane.

A man does not get to write his own epitaph. But if I were to write mine it would say the following: He loved his family, and he loved his troops, and they loved him — period.

One does have to point to the fact that we did achieve an agreement, that we had that agreement endorsed by a majority of the people of Northern Ireland; that despite very considerable political difficulties since then, we have actually managed to implement the greater part of the political agenda of that agreement, and we have restored local parliamentary institutions in Northern Ireland, that we have a local administration in place which is working, maybe not working ideally, but is still actually there. Those are the significant political developments that one’s had a hand in and obviously, one would point to that as being the things that one looks back at with most satisfaction, but I realize that it’s still work in progress.

What makes me proudest about them is that they also don't get cynical about it. They have not assumed because their side didn't win, or because some of the values that they care about don't seem as if they were vindicated, that automatically America has somehow rejected them or rejected their values.

I would like to believe that I have played a role in highlighting the crucial role that youth can play in the transformation of Africa. I would also like to believe that I have played a role in highlighting the central importance of landscape restoration in the continent’s transformation and how we address the climate crisis. I have continued to be a climate action champion, especially climate adaptation.

But since then, I'm happy to report they've been gliding. They've been chairing the sessions. They've being rapporteurs. They've been actively debating on the issues, and I'm very proud of them.

Yes, it's one of the things that I'm most proud of is the Iberian lynx was extinct. It was declared under extinction and with a new project funded by the European Union, Portugal and Spain started the process of recovering the Iberian lynx. And it took maybe 15 years to recover with the lynx being incubated first in a facility. And then finally there was a day where we have to feel sufficiently comfortable to release the first lynx and then to have the normal reproductive path in the environment. And it worked. Can you imagine? Even a species can be recovered. So, if there is a will, there is the way.