Without trying to be
melodramatic, I believe that my country, the Pacific
region and the world have reached a crossroads. In
this International Year of Small Island Developing
States, leading up to the climate change negotiations
at the twentieth and twenty-first Conferences of the
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change, the third International Conference
on Financing for Development and the impending
adoption of the post-2015 development agenda, viewed
within the context of our rising oceans, the Ebola crisis
in Africa and the apparent societal inferno in progress
in the Arab world, we find our societies, our cultures
and our economies under serious attack, never before
experienced on so many fronts. We can continue
business as usual along our current course and wait for
the horizons to clear the global haze or we can choose a
different road, one that will give our critical habitats the
chance to recover and thereby ensure their continued
ability to sustain us. Am I a foolish dreamer or a simple
pragmatist? I guess that only time will tell.
However, I will say one thing. My country, small
as it is, will not go down without a fight, using every
available tool, nor will the Pacific region, whose people
comprehend first-hand the real and current impacts
of climate change and recognize that their oceans are
becoming polluted and their fish stocks depleted. That
is why the Pacific leaders at this year’s Pacific Islands
Forum supported the Palau Declaration under the
theme “The ocean: life and future”. Within that theme
and Declaration, the Pacific leaders highlighted the fact
that, in order to survive, we will have to continue to play
a central role in the stewardship of one of the greatest
endowments of the world — the Pacific Ocean. That is
because, in our short lifetime, we have experienced a
dangerous combination of human impacts that threaten
the foundation of our Pacific livelihoods.
That is why we have called on the global community
to support the efforts of the Forum countries to
sustainably use their ocean resources and to conserve
their valuable underwater heritage. That is why Palau,
Kiribati, the Cook Islands, New Caledonia, the United
States of America, the Federated States of Micronesia and
the Republic of the Marshall Islands are currently in the
process of declaring and establishing protected marine
areas of different sizes and requirements to reverse
the current trends of overuse and overexploitation and
thereby ensure a healthy ocean for our children.
That is why we are committed to ensuring the launch
of negotiations by September 2015 for an international
agreement under the United Nations Convention on
the Law of the Sea on the conservation and sustainable
use of marine biological diversity beyond areas of
national jurisdiction. That is why we are calling upon
the United Nations to ensure a stand-alone sustainable
development goal (SDG) on oceans.
However, while we are strongly in favour of that
critical SDG, we are concerned that the post-2015
development dialogue may be too broad. We must
remember that an agenda of everything is effectively
an agenda of nothing. Above all, our goals and targets
must be realistic, practical, simple, transparent and
measurable. In that context, we must continue to focus
on the vulnerable countries and the people most in need.
To accomplish that objective, we must recognize that
one size does not fit all and that we must continue to
concentrate on a common but differentiated response.
Our international community has years of
experience of what does and does not work with our
Millennium Development Goals. It is now time to
complete the work on the remaining half and to continue
to improve both the level and the responsiveness of our
financing mechanisms. We must also ensure that the
bulk of the financing reaches those that need it most
and that their share is not a mere drop in the bucket.
In the Pacific, we believe action must begin
in one’s own backyard. In my country, in the next
several months, we will formalize the establishment
of a national marine sanctuary, which will include a
complete prohibition on purse seine fishing that covers
100 per cent of the exclusive economic zone (EEZ),
a “no-take” marine sanctuary that covers 80 per cent
of the Palau EEZ; a highly regulated fishing zone that
covers approximately 20 per cent of the EEZ and will
provide for Palau’s domestic fishing needs alone; and a
prohibition on commercial fish exports. Through our
global actions and our partnerships between developing
and developed nations and between the private and
the public sectors, we can achieve a transformational
shift in the way we think about the use of our Earth’s
natural assets. By recognizing the ocean as a joint and
primary asset of every citizen on our planet, we can
move towards the global management of our global
ocean exclusive economic zone.
We must never shift from the need for a global
climate change initiative that addresses the threat to
all people of all nations. Climate change is our planet’s
silent war. It must not remain on the back pages of our
minds and our global commitments. We must move it
to the front page, alongside global conflicts, so that it
receives the attention and the financing that it deserves.
And we must understand that, in terms of public health,
climate change is a defining issue for our century.
Climate change affects the air that we breathe,
the food that we eat, the water that we drink and
the infectious diseases that find their way into our
homes. Our world leaders, whether from developed or
developing countries, must overcome the failures of our
own lost generation. As the Secretary-General said, the
race is on, and now is the time for leaders to step up and
steer the world towards a safer future. A temperature
increase of 3.6 degrees is simply not acceptable. If that
is the best objective that our global leaders can agree
on, we may as well throw in the towel and stop having
children, because there will be no future for them.
By the end of 2015, our global leaders must
announce a new direction with new and realistic
commitments and practical actions, supported by
a greatly enhanced financial commitment both to
mitigation and to adaptation. Those commitments must
include the ratification of the second amendment to
the Kyoto Protocol. Within our discussions, migration
should not be an option. As the young mother Kathy
Jetnil-Kijiner from the Marshall Islands put it so
beautifully on Tuesday, “No one is moving. No one is
losing their homeland. No one is becoming a climate
change refugee”.
Our small island nations, which are the first to
feel the impacts of climate change, the first to feel the
impacts of diminished marine resources and the first to
wet our feet in sea-level rise, are ready and willing to
lead. We do not call for action from developed nations
that we are not willing to take ourselves. Last year, my
country committed, under the Majuro Declaration for
Climate Leadership, to a 20 per cent contribution of
renewable energy to the energy mix and a 30 per cent
reduction in energy consumption by 2020. We are well
on the way to achieving those goals.
Since its independence, Palau has been blessed
with strong partnerships. For over 50 years, the United
States has provided its support and friendship. Without
its support to Palau’s transition, revenue independence
and infrastructure development, we would not be where
we are today. Palau stands strongly behind the United
States in its ongoing efforts to guide the international
response to the horrific situation in Syria and Iraq
and its actions to respond to the threat of the Islamic
State in Iraq and Sham. Let us not forget that global
peace and stability are critical if we are to achieve
our development agenda and respond to the issues of
climate change and ocean regeneration.
We wish to give special thanks for President
Obama’s support for oceans and the expressed intent
to set aside 10 per cent of our global oceans as marine
protected areas. Finally, we thank the United States for
past and future technical and financial assistance in our
efforts to implement our National Marine Sanctuary.
We continue to look forward to finally completing our
Compact of Free Association agreement, which reflects
this close and special relationship.
Palau would also like to acknowledge the very
significant economic support that we have received
over the years from our good friend, Japan. We are
hopeful that the Security Council expansion and reform
process will result in Japan’s permanent membership
on the Security Council. We also are hopeful that Japan
will continue to support and enhance public and private
assistance to our exclusive economic zone surveillance
efforts and our continued efforts to develop our National
Marine Sanctuary.
In addition, Palau would like to thank the Republic
of China on Taiwan for its friendship and economic
support in assisting Palau to achieve our Millennium
Development Goals and would urge the United Nations
system to involve Taiwan in the process of developing
and implementing the post-2015 development agenda.
I would also call upon the United Nations to support
Taiwan’s broader participation in the United Nations
specialized agencies and regional economic integration
mechanisms, as its participation in the World
Health Assembly, the International Civil Aviation
Organization, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement
and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership
would demonstrate its ability to contribute to global
and regional initiatives.
We also would like to express our thanks to the
Australian Government for its ongoing partnership,
its annual aid assistance focused on education and
its commitment to providing $2 billion to the Pacific
region to replace its aging marine surveillance fleet.
Finally, we would like to recognize the very broad
list of partners around the globe that make our efforts
to ensure a sustainable future possible, including New
Zealand, the European Union, private organizations,
non-governmental organizations and civil society.
Partnerships such as those are commitments. We would
not be where we are today without them. In the post-
2015 development environment, we must all recognize
that our actions as individuals, States, nations and
regions have an impact on all our partners on planet
Earth. If we are to save our oceans and if we are to stem
the tide of greenhouse gases, we must establish a long-
lasting system of global partnerships and respect.
At the end of the day, we must recognize that some
of us are developed and some of us are not. The means
of implementation in terms of oceans, climate change,
biodiversity and all of the other issues that require global
solutions are therefore a recurring and central issue.
Without effective partnerships, change will simply not
occur, and without legally binding commitments with
respect toour oceans and climate change, we will not
make the transformative changes that we need to make
in the next generation.
As a small island developing State and a member of
the Pacific community, I am ready, willing and able to
commit to doing my share. I am even willing to lead.
But let us not fool ourselves. The only way to make a
difference in this modem global era is to go beyond our
self-centred mentality. By standing together, we can
indeed craft a sustainable future for our children and
for generations to come.