Tuvalu

It is indeed a great honour and pleasure to participate in this General Assembly debate at its sixty-ninth session on behalf of the Government and people of Tuvalu. I extend my congratulations to Mr. Kutesa on his election to the presidency of the General Assembly at its sixty-ninth session. We wish the Assembly success under his able guidance. I also wish to thank the outgoing President, Ambassador John Ashe, for a successful sixty-eighth session. Likewise, I applaud Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, the Secretariat and all the specialized United Nations agencies and staff for their tireless efforts and energy. Let me also note for the record Tuvalu’s sincere congratulations to the people and the new Government of Fiji under Prime Minister Bainimarama for the successful holding of general elections. In the same vein, we also congratulate New Zealand on its successful elections. Through the United Nations, we have worked diligently to deliver on the noble visions and principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations. Our shared goals are world peace, security and prosperity. Tuvalu celebrates its thirty-sixth anniversary of independence next week on 1 October, and we remain committed and proud to be a Member of this great body. We must applaud the achievements of the United Nations. But we should not be over-congratulatory. Tuvalu also feels the sadness of the loss of lives and the suffering of fellow human beings from crises the world over. The losses resulting from terrorism, poverty, environmental degradation — especially climate change — and Ebola, along with the loss of lives owing to political conflicts in Syria, Israel, Palestine, the Middle East, Ukraine and many other regions of the world, are most disturbing, even for distant countries like my own Tuvalu in the Pacific. Tuvalu shares in the grief of those people. We in the United Nations must work harder to address the root causes of such crises. We support the ongoing reform efforts in the United Nations, and in particular we urge the reform of the Security Council through an expansion of its permanent and non-permanent seats and its agenda, in order to include climate change as a Security Council issue. As we go on, though, one question stares us right in the eyes. Do we leaders really care? And do we mean what we say here at the United Nations, in this great Hall? Recently a kindergarten class in Tuvalu asked me this question: “Do we have a tomorrow, and can you, as Prime Minister, save us?” Reflecting on how this body can help respond to those fundamental questions gives me mixed feelings. We are indeed encouraged by the momentum of some strong leadership on climate change, as was displayed at the Climate Summit earlier this week. But we are also discouraged by the lack of concern displayed most conspicuously by the deniers of climate change, including some of our neighbours in the Pacific. Tuvalu believes that the United Nations must not be distracted by them. We must remain committed to turning the momentum of the political leadership set in motion this week into real action for a more collective, strategic and pragmatic response to world crises. We must walk the walk, as well as talk the talk, on every front of our human crises if we are to ensure global peace and security. We have talked a lot in the United Nations about designing sustainable development goals and a post- 2015 development agenda. The tentative goals and targets identified are reflective of a membership that is seeking the same high aspirations and honourable goals as those enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, namely, a world of peace, security, opportunity and prosperity. The United Nations must remain universal and relevant in bringing the real issues and events into focus and keeping the attention of the global community. It should be more responsive and understanding of the diverse circumstances and needs of its membership and the importance of contextualizing its strategic activities, taking into account the variable and special circumstances of each Member. It must also improve its presence in all countries, particularly in vulnerable States like Tuvalu. We must also heed the lessons of the world financial crisis, which reversed some of our hard- earned development advances related to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Those global realities affect even remote, small island countries like Tuvalu, and can further exacerbate their vulnerabilities. The new sustainable development goals, with better accountability and transparency measures, must provide economies, big or small, with the capacity to address vulnerabilities and ensure sustainability. They must also help to improve the means of implementation and create governance mechanisms that are inclusive and in which the voices of all countries and all stakeholders, including local Governments and authorities, are heard in decision-making. The dedication of 2014 as the International Year of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) is much appreciated. At the beginning of this month we congregated in the beautiful and tranquil island of the independent State of Samoa for the Third International Conference on Small Island Developing States, which concluded with an outcome document outlining the Small Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of Action, or Samoa Pathway, and with the creation of many constructive partnerships aimed at addressing the special needs and circumstances of SIDS. While Tuvalu acknowledges and greatly appreciates the support of the United Nations membership, and the exemplary leadership of the Samoan Government and people, leading to the Conference’s huge success, we also believe that the ultimate measure of success for SIDS is the delivery of tangible action on the ground, reflecting and accommodating their unique, special case. It is urgent that we seriously consider the proper integration of the SAMOA Pathway and a special window for SIDS into the post-2015 sustainable development agenda of the United Nations, and into all other programmes in the United Nations and its specialized agencies, in order to achieve their effective implementation, with particular attention to simplified access to climate change financing for small island developing States. The graduation criteria and their application to least-developed countries (LDCs) require proper scrutiny and review, because they are mostly not relevant to the characteristics of SIDS. A small island developing State may achieve a high per capita gross national income and a high human development index, but it will always be a small island developing State; one cannot graduate from the natural constraints and environmental vulnerabilities of being a small island developing State. Recognizing the call made in the SAMOA Pathway and given the ambiguity surrounding the recommendations for Tuvalu’s LDC graduation, Tuvalu seeks further deferral of that graduation until a thorough assessment and review of the application of LDC graduation is done, taking full account of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s recent Least Developed Countries Report 2013 and other studies dealing with Tuvalu. With Tuvalu’s 24 square kilometres of land juxtaposed against 900,000 square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, the sea has always been our people’s lifeline to food and economic growth. As a custodian of the Pacific Ocean, Tuvalu fully supports a sustainable development goal on oceans, as we do the Palau Declaration on oceans issued by the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum. We call on the United Nations to honour the health of the oceans, because they are the Earth’s life-support system. To that end, we also support the commencement of negotiations towards an implementing agreement under the law of the sea that can better protect the oceans. The seriousness and urgency of the need for action to combat climate change have been reaffirmed, not only by the fifth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change but also by world leaders, and was strongly echoed by youth leaders this week in this very Hall. What more do we need to hear to stop the denial of the need for action against climate change? In Tuvalu, we are experiencing unprecedented, life-threatening effects of climate change. As a low- lying country with an elevation of barely two or three metres above sea level, like our fellow atoll island nations of Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, the Maldives, Tokelau and all other small island developing States, Tuvalu is finding that its security and survival, and the future and human rights of its citizens, are being seriously compromised. We cannot continue along that path. The Secretary-General’s Climate Summit, held earlier this week, which, on behalf of Tuvalu, I was honoured to co-chair with the President of Bolivia, gave us yet another opportunity to hear from young people, women and community leaders on the front line of the impacts of climate change from every region of the world, including my own Pacific region. Their message from the front line is simple, loud and clear: leaders of the world, do it! Save us! Time is running out, and it would be grossly immoral, extremely irresponsible and even illegal to pretend that we did not hear the alarms and voices of those who are suffering at the forefront of climate change. Tuvalu highly commends the Secretary-General for his strong leadership and welcomes the annoucements made by those Heads of State and Government who contributed to actions against climate change during the Summit. We commit to building on that momentum and that of the recent SIDS meeting up to the Lima meeting later this year and onwards in Paris in 2015. Tuvalu fully supports a stand-alone sustainable development goal on climate change. We urgently need a commitment from all countries to supporting a new climate change protocol, to be concluded in Paris in 2015. We must urgently address climate change in a legal and forward-looking manner. Otherwise, our post-2015 agenda will be meaningless and many will be left behind. We therefore urge all parties to work urgently to negotiate a new protocol, to curb greenhouse gas emissions and to keep the average temperature rise well below 1.5°C. The protocol must include loss and damage and insurance mechanisms for SIDS against climate change and must provide adequate and accessible financing for adaptation support to SIDS, such as Tuvalu. There is no time for half-measures, such as we witnessed in Copenhagen in 2009. It is also critical that the new Green Climate Fund and the other existing climate change funds be adequately resourced and that access by SIDS be simplified for expedient action on the ground. We all must step up and commit to reducing our emissions and to supporting those who are vulnerable. As for my own country, despite our negligible greenhouse gas emissions, we are committed to employing 100 per cent renewable energy for our electrification by the year 2020. We are already well on the way to achieving that target, thanks to the generous support of international partners, including the European Union, Japan, New Zealand, Italy, Austria, the United Arab Emirates, the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the International Renewable Energy Agency. Tuvalu is also a party to the Majuro Declaration. Tuvalu has made steady progress towards the achievement of its MDGs, with strategic complementary assistance from the donor community. We have designed a road map for development to move forward from the MDGs, and to the sustainable development goals in general. We have adopted and implemented national policies on financial management, women and gender development, people with disabilities, young people and the protection of families, as well as on other sectors of national priority, such as climate change, energy, food security, fisheries, information technology, health care, education and outer islands development. Much needs to be done in order to properly deliver on those policies. We are committed to doing that. We call for support from our international partners through mutual partnerships with us in Tuvalu. The future we want is one of inclusiveness, where all partnerships are important. The Government of Tuvalu reiterates its position that the economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba runs counter to the need to promote dialogue and to fulfil the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations, which calls for solidarity, cooperation and friendly relations among all nations. Tuvalu also fully supports Taiwan’s meaningful participation in United Nations specialized agencies and mechanisms, including the World Health Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We recognize the cooperative spirit shown by Taiwan in its involvement in the post-2015 development agenda dialogue. We recognize the need to include Taiwan in the global fight against climate change. We also recognize Taiwan’s role as a regional peacemaker. Taiwan supports scholarships and capacity-building for experts, students and officials from Tuvalu and many developing countries. Finally, I want to say the following in clear and unambiguous terms. We are at a turning point for the future of small island nations such as Tuvalu. We can create MDGs and design sustainable development goals but, unless there is a global commitment to those goals, particularly against climate change, we will have failed humankind. Unless we stop greenhouse gas pollution, we will have failed future generations. The future is ours to create. Let us be bold. Let us take heed of the strong and loud message from those on the front line that we have heard here in this very Hall. Let us be seen as the ones that created a future for all — a future that includes saving human beings and saving the children of Tuvalu. For if we save Tuvalu, we save the world.