Guyana

I extend our gratitude to the Secretary-General for continuing to spearhead the work of the United Nations at a time when our membership is beset by historic challenges. I am told that it is only what one says from the rostrum that is reflected in the record of the meeting. I hope that perhaps in the future, we can change the system. If we do so, we may be able to say more without spending a lot of time at the rostrum. So I shall circulate the full text of my speech and focus on only two areas that I think are important at this point in time. The first has to do with the financial crisis and its impact on the Caribbean, and the second concerns the climate change crisis. In the case of the prevailing financial crisis, the small, vulnerable economies of the Caribbean have had to bear the brunt of global recession. That has manifested itself both through depressed prices for primary exported commodities, such as bauxite, and through depressed demand for services, such as tourism. The result has been losses in export and foreign currency earnings, with attendant dislocation of exchange rates and Government revenues, exacerbating an already tenuous fiscal and debt situation and causing the loss of jobs and welfare and a reversal of gains previously made against poverty. Even as we seek long-term solutions to bolster the resilience of our economies, the need for relief and support is immediate. The capacity of the small countries of the Caribbean to respond with 09-52425 12 countercyclical measures is virtually non-existent, with no available fiscal space and levels of indebtedness that are among the highest in the world. The case is therefore compelling for the global community to relieve and restructure the debt of these heavily indebted vulnerable small countries, including those that were not previously considered for debt relief because of their income levels, but whose debt ratios are clearly unsustainable by any standard. The case is equally compelling for new additional flows of development assistance to be delivered to these countries by both multilateral and bilateral development partners. Despite injections of large amounts of additional resources into some of the multilateral institutions and the approval of new facilities by those institutions, very little has actually materialized in terms of additionality in disbursements to smaller States. This needs to be corrected urgently if we are to avoid the perception that there is an absence of concern at the global level for the needs of smaller countries. My fear is that, as the crisis abates, so too will the will to change the global financial architecture. Therefore, we are advocating urgent action in this area, and we are also saying that this solution — a new global financial architecture — must involve smaller countries in its articulation. Our fear is that, if we continue along the same path, we will have a new architecture that caters only to the concerns of the large countries — now expanded to the Group of 20 — and that the smaller countries will not see their concerns reflected in it. That is why, last year, I called for a new Bretton Woods-type conference at which all the countries in this Hall would help to create that architecture. The second crisis that I wish to mention is that of climate change. This week, there has been much talk about the urgency of tackling climate change. Thanks to the vision exhibited by the Secretary-General and the work of leaders and citizens from countries across the world, the level of understanding about the nature of the climate challenge is increasingly clear. But we need to move beyond simply understanding the challenge. We need to work as a global community to shape a solution that is in the interests of all countries, and many of the building blocks that will enable us to do this have been identified. The challenge for the Copenhagen meeting is to turn these building blocks into an agreement that can start to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In doing so, we should be guided by science and by the need for solutions that treat all countries fairly. But we also need to recognize that the challenge now is as much about political will as it is about scientific, economic and institutional considerations. In addressing the politics, we need to recognize that in all countries — developed and developing — there are concerns about the commitment of others to the long- term global partnership we need. Many developing countries question whether the international community will commit to the scale of financial transfers that all major analyses agree are needed. Others are worried that acting on climate change now will stymie their national development, precisely at a time when many are poised for historic levels of economic growth and social advances. On the other hand, many developed countries are worried that the financial transfers needed will be an excessive burden on their budgets during extremely challenging economic times. Domestic constituencies in the developed world are also fearful about transferring significant sums of money abroad, and they worry that jobs or investment will be driven away from their economies. There are also fears from individual countries that they will be expected to carry a greater burden than other developed nations. These political concerns could be a recipe for a stalemate that the world cannot afford. Failure to overcome them now will mean misery for future generations, and the eventual costs of tackling climate change will be even greater than they are now. We therefore need to find a way through. This will require leadership from all nations. I welcome the proposals laid out by Gordon Brown, and subsequently supported by the European Union, to generate funding in excess of $100 billion per annum to address climate change in the developing world. For the first time, there is a proposal that starts to square up to the magnitude of funding that is required for adaptation and mitigation. Having spoken with many of my fellow leaders this week, I am confident that, with the right signal from the developed world, developing countries are ready to play their part. Of particular urgency will be finding ways to work together to address the 17 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions that result from 13 09-52425 tropical deforestation and forest degradation globally. As with climate change in general, we now have a large degree of clarity around the nature of this specific problem. We know that it causes more emissions than the entire European Union, and we know that this is because the world economy makes trees worth more dead than alive. We also know that the only sustainable way to address the problem is national-scale action in forest countries coupled with international incentives that place a value on trees to make them worth more alive than dead. We now need to rapidly move from constantly rearticulating this problem towards putting in place workable solutions. In Guyana, we remain ready to play our part, and we have launched our low-carbon development strategy, which sets out how we can place our entire forest under long-term protection, not only to provide the world with badly needed climate services, but also to move our economy onto a long- term, sustainable low-carbon development path, where jobs are created across our country in sectors that do not threaten our trees. Thanks to the visionary leadership of the Prime Minister of Norway, our two countries are also working together to provide a functioning model of how low-deforestation and low-carbon economies can be created in countries such as ours. In parallel, Guyana continues to play its part in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, which must provide the long-term framework for combating forest-based emissions through the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD) or the REDD+ Programme. But we also believe that the world can move quickly to slow down deforestation starting now, not in 2013. Guyana was pleased to participate in the April G-20 side meeting that addressed how this can happen. We support the proposals made by the informal working group on interim financing for REDD, which was set up after the G-20 side meeting. We support its report, which lays out how the world can achieve a 25 per cent reduction in global deforestation rates by 2015 with an investment of less than €25 billion in total. Using highly conservative estimates of forest carbon, this could lead to seven gigatons of greenhouse gas emissions being avoided between now and 2015. If this occurred, it would be the single biggest contribution to averting climate catastrophe over this period. And it can be done. Rainforest countries representing the vast majority of the world’s tropical forests have worked with the informal working group and are willing to act. The question now is: Will the developed world understand the enormous potential this offers our world, and will it act to generate the finances that are needed? The sum of money needed for this interim period may seem large, but it does not only represent a very good value for money abatement solution; it can also generate significant financial flows for developing countries, it can create alternative livelihoods for indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent communities, and it can preserve the enormous biodiversity present in the world’s forests. Twenty-five billion euros over five years represent less than 1.5 cents per citizen per day in developed countries. It is a fraction of what the world has generated to save the financial system from collapse, it provides a bridge to a long-term REDD+ solution under the UNFCCC, and it buys the world badly needed time in the race to defeat climate change. To turn away from making this proposal a reality would be a mistake of historic proportions. I have just said to President Chávez Frías that I wish I could conclude by singing, but I do not have his wonderful voice. Instead, I will confine myself to saying that we all have an important role to play in solving this crisis, but the developed world has a moral obligation to play a greater part in solving both the financial crisis and the climate change crisis, because it is due to its actions that we are in this situation. I hope that the developed world recognizes this obligation and the urgency to act upon it now.