On behalf of the Government of Tuvalu, I congratulate Mr. Csaba Korosi on his election as President of the General Assembly at its seventy-seventh session. Tuvalu has full confidence in his leadership. Let me also take this opportunity to thank the President of the General Assembly at its seventy-sixth session, the Honourable Minister Abdulla Shahid, for a very successful session under his leadership, despite the challenges arising from the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.
We welcome the pragmatic vision of Mr. Korosi’s presidency of the General Assembly at its current session. We applaud him for the theme of his presidency, “A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges”. Indeed, we must strengthen our commitment to upholding the core principles of the Charter of the United Nations at this watershed moment. We maintain that the Charter is our shared constitutive instrument for maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights. We are indeed encouraged by the priorities of his presidency, and we look forward to working closely with him as we continue to grapple with economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, tackle climate change and strive to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Global crises have become more complex, interlinked and transboundary in their impacts, demanding global cooperation and solidarity to formulate and implement sustainable solutions. That requires all the partnerships we need to bring about positive changes to people’s lives. It is, however, regrettable that the Republic of China on Taiwan, with its notable partnerships on a wide range of development issues, continues to be kept out of the United Nations system. Tuvalu has significantly benefited from our partnerships in agriculture, food security, public health, medicine and clean energy, including our recovery from the economic and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tuvalu strongly supports the readmission of the Republic of China on Taiwan to the United Nations as a founding Member of the Organization, and the restoration of its active participation in United Nations specialized agencies, including the World
Health Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We must not sideline Taiwan, which is a vibrant democracy that has made significant progress on all the Sustainable Development Goals and is ready to contribute more to global efforts to achieve the SDGs.
It is also regrettable that the people of Cuba continue to face the economic burden of long-standing unilateral economic blockades. The economic blockades neglect the human rights and spirit of cooperation espoused in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Keeping those measures in place has deprived Cuba of the international development assistance and partnerships necessary to recover and build back better.
In the same vein, we reiterate the strong concerns of our region about the potential threat of nuclear contamination posed to the health and security of the blue Pacific, its people and prospects, and reaffirm the importance of ensuring international consultations, international law and independent and verifiable scientific assessments. Those principles must govern the deployment and use of nuclear technology and the discharge of nuclear materials and waste into our blue Pacific continent. We maintain that the United Nations decolonization process is critical to the protection of human rights, including the right to self-determination, and urge the meaningful engagement of the United Nations with all relevant partners and stakeholders in the decolonization process.
Let me now speak of an issue that is of the greatest concern to my country. Climate change and its consequential sea-level rise remain the single greatest existential threat my country faces, underscoring the urgent need to limit global warming to 1.5°C through rapid, deep and sustained reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions. With an average land elevation of no more than 2 metres above sea level, my country will succumb to sea-level rise. The report issued last year by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change makes clear that, with the current global-warming trend, we are destined to miss the 1.5°C target of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. That clearly means that Tuvalu will be totally submerged within the century.
The climate crisis is creating an increasingly uncertain future for people in most parts of the world. Paradoxically, in my region, the Pacific, it is making our future increasingly certain, but not in a way that gives us any kind of comfort. During this century, several Pacific island nations will become mostly uninhabitable. For my country, Tuvalu, which sits halfway between Hawaii and Australia, that could happen in the next two to three decades. Other Pacific island countries on the front line of climate change may have a few decades longer, but our final destination is no longer a matter of guesswork. Most societies see climate change as mainly about cutting carbon emissions or mitigating future impacts. We are facing a looming situation far more profound — the near certainty of terminal inundation. Our peoples, in my generation or the next, will be unable to exist on the islands that have nurtured our ancestors for centuries. It is our God-given home.
Tuvalu and its Pacific neighbours have done nothing to cause climate change. Carbon emissions combined across the entirety of the Pacific islands amount to less than 0.03 per cent of the world’s total, and even less if we are speaking of historical emissions. The existential threat we face is not of our making, but it will remake us. How we will negotiate that remaking is a question that the international community must now urgently begin to address. Major economies, which contribute the most to greenhouse gas emissions, cannot be oblivious and do nothing. People everywhere, across all ages and walks of life, are demanding leadership on climate change, especially from those most able to provide it. Tuvalu is an acid test for such leadership because, if the international community allows an entire country to disappear as a result of climate change, what hope will be possible for anyone else?
These are unprecedented times. Science cannot tell us exactly when our homeland will become uninhabitable, but it does tell us how. As the ocean rises, salt water permeates the aquifers that provide our drinking water; now, in many places, our water security is now severely compromised. A rising ocean brings higher tides, and with increasing storm frequency and intensity, our villages and agriculture are devastated. Flooding leaves soil saline, reducing crop yields and severely compromising our food security. Infrastructure, such as homes, roads and power lines, are washed away, and higher land on which to rebuild does not exist.
The precious coral that supports our tourism and nurtures our fish-stock perishes as the ocean warms and acidifies. The cost of eking out an existence and maintaining the status quo increases for individuals and the entire country and, over time, becomes too
much to bear. Such extreme conditions push citizens to leave. The nation itself becomes increasingly inchoate, legally and spiritually rooted to a shoreline that is disappearing under rising tides. That is how a Pacific atoll dies. That is how our islands will cease to exist. This is not about some future scenario — it is what we are living with now.
Inaction entails responsibilities. Tuvalu has not yet reached the end of the process of salination, destruction, degradation and demise, but we are well past the beginning. Despite international agreements and repeated commitments, global greenhouse-gas emissions continue to rise, with many countries still pursuing a future fuelled by coal, oil and gas. This is the first time in history that the collective action of many nations — or, more accurately, the collective inaction of many nations — will be responsible for making sovereign countries uninhabitable. It is an unprecedented crisis requiring radical intervention.
Current international instruments such as the Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness do not cover our situation, nor do the United Nations various efforts to address climate change. Agreements reached at its annual summits, including the twenty- sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Glasgow last year, cover a wide range of issues like targets for cutting emissions or commitments for international finance to address impacts. But, with regard to the looming uninhabitability of sovereign States, they say nothing.
That is why Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands launched the Rising Nations Initiative, two days ago, to fill the current gaps in awareness, legal frameworks and political commitments. The global community must begin a serious and responsible dialogue that acknowledges both the realities and the rights of Pacific island nations like mine and, more fundamentally, of our citizens.
This is about sovereignty, dignity and integrity. We need a global settlement that guarantees nation States, such as Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, a permanent existence beyond the inhabitable lifetime of our atoll homes, irrespective of the onslaught of climate change and sea-level rise. It must recognize and protect our cultural integrity, our human and economic capital and our sovereignty. It must be co-created and enacted with the Governments and the peoples of island nations, not visited upon us by others.
Such a settlement must ultimately include the protection of our rights to our land and ocean and preserves our heritage and sovereign right to govern our citizens. We do not seek to move from our homeland. We seek the fair and amicable treatment of displaced people so that we do not become a burden on others. Equally, however, natural justice also dictates that we not be fobbed off with a wasteland. Economically, we can continue to support ourselves, for example, in the case of Tuvalu, by using the income from the continued sustainable use of the exclusive economic zone around our islands. Finding the right solution will require statesmanship and empathy, beginning with an acknowledgement that a situation globally caused must also have a globally just and equitable solution.
As Pacific peoples, we raise our children to respect the ocean, land and sky as providers of life. Now, through no fault of our own, we will soon have to abandon the oceans, land and sky that have forged our cultures and identities for centuries. We neither castigate nor demand charity, but we do ask for generosity of spirit, support and justice that recognize our reality and our grave concern about the potential eradication of our atoll nations by rising sea levels in our part of the world.