Honorable Ministers and Senior Representatives of Government; Members of the Diplomatic Corps; Distinguished Panel of Presenters; Ladies and Gentlemen:

 

I am honoured that the United Nations has been invited by the Pacific Island Forum Secretariat and the Australian Government to organise a side-event on Climate Change at this year’s Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. This side-event relates directly to the agenda of the UN Secretary-General’s meeting on Climate Change during the upcoming UN General Assembly in September and the new UNDP Administrator’s focus on climate change. Furthermore, we hope that this meeting will inform senior officials from the region as they prepare for the global COP 15 meeting in Copenhagen later this year.

 

We recognize climate change to be a critical development challenge with enormous implications for the entire range of development concerns: poverty, livelihoods, food security, conflict and social cohesion, to name a few. For the Pacific Small Island Developing States, in addition to all of these, climate change may even prove to be an existential threat. At the very least, it is becoming increasingly apparent that climate change has significant impacts in this sub-region. At a time of global economic crisis, climate change has the potential to reverse hard-won development gains in the region, which could compromise our collective ability to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the objectives of the Pacific Plan for a prosperous, peaceful and secure region.

 

At the global level, we commend the Pacific leadership that led to the successful adoption of the June UN General Assembly Resolution on Climate Change and Security. We also take guidance from the 2008 Niue Declaration where Pacific Islands Forum Leaders explicitly noted the threat that climate change poses to economic growth, sustainable development, governance and security in the region.

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