The item at the top of our
agenda is climate change. The upcoming Bali
Conference needs our full support. Climate change is a
challenge that can only be overcome by our collective
efforts. If we fail, the future will be troubled. Small
island countries like Singapore will be in great danger.
People living in the lowlands will have to move to
higher ground. The pressure of migration into spaces
which become more habitable because of global
warming may well become unstoppable. There will be
new conflicts in the world.
We are coming now to understand better the role
of climate change in the conflict in Darfur. It does not
excuse the heinous crimes that have been committed
there, but understanding the water situation in that
region will help us find more durable solutions for the
future. Many historians are now reassessing the role of
climate change in major political events in the past.
We cannot be sure whether our best efforts can
stop global warming. The Earth’s climate has always
gone through cycles. But, even if all we can do is to
slow down the process that will buy us time: time to
accumulate knowledge, to develop new technologies
and to adapt. For example, the cost of recycling or
desalinating water has been steadily coming down and
is becoming completely affordable for us in Singapore.
Improvements in water technology can defuse political
tensions in many parts of the world.
Many problems we face can only be overcome by
the nations of the world acting together. Climate
change is one. Another is the danger of global
pandemics, which must also be kept high on our
agenda. The late Director-General of the World Health
Organization (WHO), Lee Jong-wook, once said that a
new global pandemic was not a question of “whether”
but of “when”. With the mass movement of human
beings, much of it at jet speed, a new bug can spread
quickly.
Only a few years ago, we had the scare of Severe
Acute Respiratory Syndrome. We are still not sure why
that epidemic burned out so quickly, but luckily it did.
During the few months it hit us in Singapore, our
economy was severely affected. Our tourism industry
was devastated. As our economy is so dependent on
external trade, shutting our airport was not an option.
Instead, we hurriedly converted military night-vision
devices into thermal scanners and used them at the
airport so that arriving and departing passengers with
fever could be pulled aside for medical examination.
We knew we could not overcome this problem on our
own. The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN) convened an emergency meeting to
which the Premier of China, the Chief Executive of
Hong Kong and the Director-General of WHO were
also invited.
Whether it is climate change, global pandemics,
the fight against terrorism, the multilateral trading
system or international finance, we need better global
governance. During the cold war, the world was
divided into two camps with each super-Power taking
the lead in its own sphere. That era is now behind us. A
multipolar world is crystallizing. On no major issue
can one country, however powerful, now act on its
own, completely disregarding the views of others. The
situation in Iraq is a sad example of that. Russia,
China, India and Brazil are emergent or re-emergent
Powers whose interests must increasingly be factored
in. Smaller countries too have become more assertive,
refusing to let bigger countries ride roughshod over
them.
When major international institutions like the
United Nations, the World Bank, and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) were established many years
ago, after the end of the Second World War, the world
was very different from what it is today. Because of
this, those institutions are not as effective as they ought
to be. However, we have to work with those
institutions as they are and not as we would want them
to be if they were to be newly established today. Unless
there is another global conflagration, the improvement
of global governance can only be achieved through
gradual evolution, not revolution.
We can do that at two levels: at the level of the
major Powers and at the level of small and medium-
sized countries. At the level of the major Powers,
international institutions should increasingly reflect the
multipolar reality. For example, the reform of the
United Nations, including the reform of the Security
Council, should take into account the weight of India,
Japan, Germany and Brazil and the growing
importance of regional organizations. Selection of
heads of the IMF and the World Bank should be
widened. Membership of the Group of Eight (G-8)
should be enlarged to include countries such as China
and India. It is also important that international
organizations be held to the highest standards of
management. We must maintain their moral authority
in the eyes of the world if they are to stay effective.
That Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s recent visit to a
refugee camp in Darfur received so much applause was
because of the prestige of the United Nations and the
hope reposed in the Blue Helmets.
On climate change, it is good that the United
States has convened a meeting in Washington of the
world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. As the
world’s biggest economy, the United States has to
exercise leadership. But it cannot do it on its own.
Without major emitters achieving a certain common
understanding among themselves, we will not make
much progress at the coming Climate Change
Conference in Bali.
The involvement of small and medium-sized
countries in international institutions has to be
enhanced. It is unhealthy if the only way small and
medium-sized countries can ensure their interests are
taken into account is by threatening to block the
progress of others. Indeed, if every country in
international organizations had the power of veto the
result would be paralysis. As a small country itself,
Singapore takes the view that small and medium-sized
countries have both rights and responsibilities. We too
must have a sense of responsibility for the global
system. A rules-based world gives us more freedom
than one where “might is right”.
Regional groupings can help small and medium-
sized countries strike this balance between rights and
responsibilities. The African Union offers a good
example of how the discipline of a group gives each of
its members a greater say in world affairs than it could
have on its own. Group solidarity enables regional
organizations such as ASEAN to play a bigger role in
the world. ASEAN will soon be strengthened by the
leaders’ adoption of a formal charter next month.
Both formal and informal arrangements have
their uses. For example, the Forum of Small States is a
loose coalition of 100 countries that meet regularly to
exchange views and to give support to one another.
They make up more than half the Members of the
United Nations. Formal and informal groups can play a
constructive role by taking the middle ground and
moderating the excessive demands of radical members.
Let us, through the groupings to which we belong,
encourage each other towards compromise on the
various issues. An example is the Doha Development
Agenda. The positions are not so far apart now and it
would be a great pity to walk away from a Doha deal
because of relatively small differences when the deal
could add hundreds of billions of dollars to global
welfare.
However effective they are, international
institutions cannot stop the natural rivalry among
nation States. The major Powers will still throw their
weight around, but rules can be established for
civilized behaviour and to prevent countries from
taking extreme actions that will endanger the planet we
share and our common heritage.
We are not a union of nations, but we are at the
very least a confederation of nations. There are limits
to the sovereignty we exercise as independent nation-
States. For example, the countries of the world have
not only a legitimate right but also a responsibility to
decry the brutal suppression of demonstrators in
Myanmar. Yesterday the Foreign Ministers of ASEAN
expressed our revulsion through a Chairman’s
statement which also called on the Myanmar
Government to abandon its old ways and take a fresh
approach towards national reconciliation with all
groups in the country. We applauded the initiative of
the United Nations Secretary-General to dispatch
Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Myanmar and urged
the Myanmar Government to work with him for the
good of the people of the country.
Six months before 11 September 2001, the people
of the world watched with shock and horror the
deliberate destruction of the ancient Buddha statues in
Bamiyan by the Taliban. We must never allow such
wanton acts to take place again, whether the injury is
to world heritage sites, to the environment or to human
beings.
Behind such acts is an attitude of hatred and
intolerance that must never be condoned. If this
century is to be one of peace and development, all of
us must internalize a spirit of interfaith understanding
and common humanity. Recently, the Indian
Government announced its intention to revive the
ancient Buddhist university at Nalanda and offered it to
Asian countries as a project to promote cultural and
religious understanding and exchange. For hundreds of
years Nalanda was a great university drawing students
from all over Asia to study not just Buddhism but also
philosophy, science, mathematics and other subjects.
That project deserves our support.
We need many such endeavours in the world
today so as to create a greater awareness of our
common origins, our growing interdependence and our
common future. Without that larger sense, the
challenge of global governance will be difficult to
overcome. Without all countries feeling a sense of
shared responsibility for the Earth’s environment, for
example, climate change will become much worse
before effective measures are taken, by which time it
may be too late for many of us.