May I first congratulate Mr. John
Ashe on his election to the presidency at the current
session. I am sure that his wisdom and experience will
guide our deliberations on the many challenges that
the world faces today. Also, allow me to commend His
Excellency Mr. Vuk Jeremi. for his excellent leadership
during the sixty-seventh session.
The President knows better than most the unique
combination of challenges faced by small island
developing States. We are being battered from all sides,
both literally and figuratively. Over the past decade, we
have faced a flood of crises with a genesis far from our
shores that have stretched our capacity to protect and
improve the health and prosperity of our people.
The near collapse of the global financial system
and spikes in food and energy prices have caused
enormous difficulties for our small and vulnerable
economy. A severe drought caused additional hardship
and foreshadowed the much more difficult future we
will face in a warming world. At the same time, the
flow of official development assistance and climate
financing have begun to stagnate.
Thankfully, we are presented with an unprecedented
opportunity over the next few years to transform
how the international system supports sustainable
development. We will be continuing work on a number
of important processes over the next year., They include
the crafting of sustainable development goals and the
post-2015 development agenda, the work of the High-
level Political Forum on Sustainable Development
and — of particular importance to my country — the
proceedings of the third Global Conference on the
Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing
States. In addition, we must make rapid progress
towards a new climate-change agreement in 2015,
which will obviously have enormous implications for
the sustainable development prospects of small islands.
We must work in a coordinated fashion so that those
processes are mutually reinforcing and deliver concrete
results, rather than produce the usual rhetoric. It will be
a challenge, but under the President’s skilled leadership,
I am confident we can succeed.
However, I fear we will come up short of our
ambitions for transformational change if we shy away
from making fundamental reforms in the way the global
economy works. We began a promising conversation
on the matter back in 2008 when the financial crisis
was still fresh in our minds, but as stock prices have
rebounded, our attention has wandered. Let us not
forget that most of the problems that caused the previous
crisis have not been fixed. Those same problems also
undermine sustainable development in many countries
and communities around the world.
In 2009, the Commission of Experts on Reforms
of the International Monetary and Financial System
submitted a report (A/63/838) to this body in which it
indicated that finance, which should be the servant of
the economy, had been promoted to be its master. The
rules of economic governance had been increasingly
written to serve the interests of a shrinking few as they
pursued risky ventures — ventures that often played
havoc with people’s lives and livelihoods. We are
very familiar with some of the results of that system:
stock-market bubbles, currency bubbles and property
bubbles. When they burst, they leave behind enormous
hardship. Even worse, investments in risky activities of
that type compete with more productive investments in
basic infrastructure, renewable energy, health services
and the like — investments that contribute to true
sustainable development.
Our reckless inaction is demonstrated by the
inflation of the latest bubble: the carbon bubble. At
least two thirds of known fossil fuel reserves cannot be
burned if we are to limit the rise in global temperatures
to below two degrees. The cost of renewable energy has
fallen considerably in the past decade. By any measure,
fossil fuels are a very bad long-term investment, yet
that has not prevented trillions of dollars in private
investment and fossil fuel subsidies from pouring into
new infrastructure for the exploration, extraction and
consumption of fossil fuels.
The size of the recent housing bubble has been
estimated at $4 trillion. The carbon bubble could be
more than five times larger. That should be an issue of
serious international concern. How do we allow trillions
of dollars to flow into destructive activities while the
most basic needs of millions go unmet? The reasons are
complicated, but make no mistake that this is a choice.
It is a choice made by international policymakers to
prioritize profits over people.
As the President said earlier this week, “it is
time for us to concede that our efforts at reforming
and revitalizing our Organization need new impetus”
(A/68/PV.5, p. 5). Reclaiming the global economic
system and putting it to work for the good of the people
will be a long and difficult process, but it may be the
only way to reach our sustainable development goals.
The Commission’s 2009 report made many good
recommendations for our consideration, and the first
step must be to bring more transparency and democratic
oversight to economic governance. The most important
decisions are not made in universal bodies, such as the
General Assembly, but rather far away from the small,
the isolated and the vulnerable. Is it any surprise that
the system has failed to meet our needs?To address that
problem, we should start by relaunching the discussion
on global economic governance here in the General
Assembly, as well as by reforming the governance of
the Bretton Woods institutions, so that they are more
inclusive.
The systemic barriers to sustainable development
are formidable, but that has not stopped Nauru
from seeking practical solutions that can be readily
implemented in the short term. An example is the
recently completed Nauru case study on climate change
financing. The study identified a number of steps my
Government and our development partners can take to
make official development assistance more effective.
For example, project-based financing was found to be
markedly less effective than more flexible modalities,
such as general budgetary support.
Another key finding concerned the need for
domestic institution-building. Accessing many sources
of multilateral finance is, quite frankly, beyond the
capacity of my Government, and the traditional
strategy of conducting regional workshops has simply
not worked. We hope to collaborate with development
partners to design sustained programmes with a
significant in-country component, so that there is a
durable transfer of the skills necessary to benefit from
international support mechanisms.
Nauru has also made its best efforts to contribute at
the international level. We have the tremendous honour
of presiding over the Alliance of Small Island States
(AOSlS), a group that has been a leading advocate
for climate action for more than two decades. The
upcoming nineteenth session of the Conference of the
Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention
on Climate Change (COP-19), to be held in Warsaw,
will be important to laying the foundation for an
ambitious agreement in 2015. A key priority for the
COP-19 will be jump-starting near-term mitigation
action through the launch of a process guided by more
technical expertise and focused on energy efficiency
and renewable energy. AOSIS has proposed a very
practical and collaborative approach to rapidly scale
up the implementation of policies and the deployment
of technologies that not only reduce greenhouse gas
emissions but also advance domestic sustainable
development priorities. In the view of AOSIS, that
technical process can prepare the ground for a much
more ambitious post-2020 agreement.
The proposal in no way relieves developed
countries of their international obligation to take the
lead in addressing climate change. They should be held
accountable for fully implementing best practices to
reduce their own emissions, while also providing the
means for implementing adaptation and mitigation
actions in developing countries. The AOSlS proposal
indicates the way to accomplish those objectives.
Establishing an international mechanism to address
loss and damage is also a key priority for AOSlS, as is
mobilizing climate financing and making sure the Green
Climate Fund is ready to accept donor contributions in
2014.
Climate change is the greatest challenge to the
sustainable development of small islands. We must
come to terms with the fact that, owing to our delay,
some grave impacts are now unavoidable. Some will
have security implications. Addressing the security
implications of climate change remains a key priority
for Nauru and the Pacific small island developing
States. I would like to reiterate our proposals for
moving forward.
First, we are calling for the appointment of a
special representative on climate and security to help
expand our understanding of the security dimensions
of climate change. The special representative would
regularly report to the General Assembly and the
Security Council on emerging climate-related security
threats and would facilitate regional cooperation on
cross-border issues. Vulnerable developing countries in
particular could benefit from a special representative
equipped to help them evaluate their security situations
and develop action plans to increase the resilience
of their institutions. At some point in the future, the
special representative could become an invaluable
asset in preventive diplomacy efforts and post-conflict
situations.
Secondly, we are requesting the Secretary-General
to lead a joint task force of all the relevant organs and
specialized agencies to immediately assess the capacity
and resources of the United Nations system to respond
to the anticipated security implications of climate
change. We have heard in countless forums about the
potentially destabilizing effects of climate change, yet
we have only the vaguest idea of what an international
response to those effects would look like. That needs to
change. We must start preparing for the challenges that
lie ahead. As the Secretary-General said at the High-
level Political Forum on Sustainable Development,
“We must strengthen the interface between science and
policy”.
The world’s attention is now focused on the
immense suffering in Syria. On behalf of the people
of Nauru, I would like to offer my condolences to the
millions of people whose lives have been affected by
the Syrian conflict. We are horrified by the scale of
human atrocity there. I am compelled to ask: Do we
always have to wait for well over 100,000 people to
be killed before we can find solutions to restore peace
and security? As the President observed, the mandate
of this body has limitations, and we cannot issue
resolutions that bind countries. The United Nations
invests enormous power in the hands of a tiny minority
of five, which is not so different from global economic
governance being dictated primarily by eight.
Nauru is always striving to improve bilateral
relations. I would like to express my gratitude to
Australia, which has always been an important partner.
We look forward to our continued work with the new
Government as we continue to collaborate on joint
projects that are delivering important benefits in my
country.
Nauru is gratified to note that, with solid
international support and cross-Strait rapprochement,
the Republic of China on Taiwan has increased its
meaningful participation in United Nations specialized
agencies and mechanisms. We continue to encourage
the positive interaction between the two sides of the
Taiwan Strait in the international arena. Furthermore,
I would like to recognize the contributions that Taiwan
has made to helping my country make progress towards
the Millennium Development Goals. We also express
our gratitude to the Governments of New Zealand, the
Russian Federation, Japan, the Republic of Korea and
India; they are all invaluable partners in our joint effort
to bring sustainable development to my island.
As the President of the General Assembly aptly
described in his opening statement, setting the stage
for sustainable development will require introspection,
frank discussion and coming to terms with some hard
truths about the nature of the challenges we face and
the institutions we have at hand to respond. Only by
correctly diagnosing the problems and choosing the
appropriate tools to begin our work will we be able to
reach satisfactory outcomes that benefit us all.