Palau
25 September 2013
Statement Summary:
TOMMY ESANG REMENGESAU JR,
President of Palau, said his country’s flag bore the image of a yellow moon
against a blue ocean — a metaphor for nature’s balance and harmony through the
consistency of the rising and falling tides. However, floods and “tropical
storm after tropical storm” were now passing through the Pacific islands; the
full moon and the ocean were no longer a metaphor for balance and harmony, but
instead represented imbalance, the world’s past excesses and a lack of harmony.
In responding to the ever-growing challenges of global warming, it was
imperative that the international community do a better job of working together
to solve the serious issues at hand, he stressed.
He went on to say that the vision
established at the 1992 Earth Summit had been sidetracked, and many countries
were frustrated by the failure to move it forward, as well as by slow progress
and the fear that its goals were being diluted. Today, it appeared that the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change had stalled, the Kyoto
Protocol was on life support and the Rio+20 Conference had not done enough to
strengthen the three pillars of sustainable development. World leaders must
re-invigorate efforts to establish real mitigation commitments and identify
immediate, sufficient and long-term implementation financing, he said.
The green economy approach must not
become “business as usual”, he continued. Rather, the international community
must take concrete action on the Monterrey Consensus and the Doha Declaration
on Financing for Development. Only then would the sustainable development goals
have a real chance to address worldwide environmental and development
emergencies. There was a need for leadership, he said, emphasizing that all
nations, large and small, must accept direct and primary responsibility for
global issues threatening the planet’s future. Richer nations must actively
address actions threatening their poorer counterparts, and human resources must
be protected through governing strategies focused on education, health and
employment equality.
The international community’s
“global warming doomsday” was already set in stone if it failed to act, he
warned. A temperature increase of 3° to 5° C would spell the demise of Palau
and other Pacific islands. The Pacific Island Forum’s recent “Majuro Declaration
for Climate Leadership” acknowledged the gross insufficiency of current efforts
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the primary responsibility for which rested
with developed countries, he said. The international community must deal with
global warming-related security issues by appointing a special representative
on climate and security and establish a joint task force, led by the
Secretary-General, to assess and expand the capacity of the United Nations to
respond to the security implications of climate change.
Palau had taken measures to address
climate change issues, and asked other nations to move in a similar direction
by recognizing their unique circumstances in order to protect the planet’s
natural resources. One small example would be to prohibit shark fin soup in
order to protect shark populations, as the world could clearly do without it.
As the United Nations prepared to launch the sustainable development goals, the
present “historic” moment would see the relationship between people and the
planet defined for the coming generations, he said. The international community
must commit itself to a more sustainable use of the oceans covering two thirds
of the earth’s surface, which fed a billion people with their fish, but which
were not mentioned in the Millennium Development Goals.
No comments:
Post a Comment