Guyana, 2010

I bring to all delegates at this

sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly the warm

greetings of my Government and people.

The United Nations was founded out of the ashes

of war and violence. Its noble ambitions, grounded in

the timeless values of peace, equality and justice, seek

to create a better world for this and future generations.

But if those values are to mean anything, the United

Nations must not be merely about a statement of

aspiration. Instead, we must strive until the United

Nations provides the framework where the timeless

values I speak of can be given life through meaningful

and practical responses to the contemporary challenges

our peoples face.

The challenges are many, but this week has drawn

three of them into particularly sharp focus: first, our

global efforts to halve poverty and achieve the

Millennium Development Goals by 2015; secondly, a

global financial crisis that threatens to undo much of

the progress we have made in lifting people out of

poverty; and thirdly, a climate crisis that carries the

risk of planet-wide disruption that endangers entire

nations and the continuation of much of what we take

for granted today.

Those challenges are all a function of the

dominant characteristic of the modern world: our

interconnectedness as a global community. And we will

meet the challenges only if we adopt an interconnected

response. The notion that we can protect our national

and global interests through inward-looking national

responses is no longer valid. Instead, it is in all of our

interests for the United Nations to provide the platform

that facilitates global, interconnected responses.

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But I think we have some way to go if that

platform is to be created. When it comes to the

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), although

progress has been made, we have not connected the

rhetorical support for their achievement to actual

delivery. When it comes to the financial crisis, we have

not connected the benefits of globally open financial

systems to measures that protect against the risks that

those systems create. And when it comes to the climate

crisis, we have not connected the scientific evidence to

global policy responses that mitigate the worst

extremes of climate change.

We could choose to continue in this vein, but it is

clear where that would lead us. Or we could choose to

ask ourselves if we are prepared to be held accountable

for carrying our share of the responsibility.

My country recognizes that we must deliver our

part. We are on track to meet most of the Millennium

Development Goals, especially in the areas of

education and health. We are doing all we can to

weather the financial crisis with the minimum suffering

for our people. And we recognize that we must do more

than just complain about climate change. We have

created our Low Carbon Development Strategy, which

sets out a long-term path to protect our 16-million-

hectare rainforest and move our entire economy onto a

low carbon trajectory.

But there are times when it feels as though the

international system sets out to put hurdles on the path

to overcoming the challenges. Inconsistencies and a

lack of coherence among aid, trade and climate policies

in the developed world, to name just three areas, often

create difficulties for developing countries who seek to

make progress.

The United Nations can help to change those

realities, and provide the framework for global

responses that match the ambition of the institution.

But at the core of that framework must be an enhanced

understanding of the concept of accountability.

As countries like mine fully embrace our need to

be accountable for the actions we take to support a

global response to the MDGs, financial instability and

climate change, so too developed countries must

recognize their responsibilities and the need to take a

holistic approach to their dealings with the rest of the

world. Aid flows are appreciated and valuable, but they

sometimes pale into insignificance when those

countries that promote how their aid is helping the

achievement of, for example, the Millennium

Development Goals are also pursuing unjust, narrow-

minded trade or climate policies.

I therefore call on the United Nations to establish

a set of global accountability indicators with which we

can transparently monitor whether the members of the

international community are pursuing policies that, in a

holistic sense, help them discharge their global

responsibilities, not just through the provision of aid

but also through the avoidance of unfair trade and

climate policies. Through the Millennium Development

Goals, we have started to develop some of the

indicators we need. As we enhance them further, I

believe we will see that better accountability, properly

understood, can help us rise to the challenges we face.

I would like to highlight the centrality of the need

to protect and preserve our environment. While each of

the issues I have mentioned is a global one requiring a

global response, the environmental challenges we face

mock those who think we still live in a world where

global collective action is somehow a matter of choice.

The destruction of a natural habitat anywhere in

the world removes life forms that could have been the

bedrock of future medical advances for citizens

everywhere. A ton of carbon emitted in Africa or Asia

threatens the citizens of the smallest village in North

America. When those who seek to represent their

citizens deny that that is true, or fail to understand its

consequences, they threaten their own national

interests and the wealth and security of their nation.

Therefore, failure to appreciate the need for an

interconnected, global response to climate change and

loss of biodiversity is not just an abdication of

responsibility to some intangible global good or to

people on the other side of the world. It is a very real,

measurable threat to citizens in every village, hamlet

and city in the world. History will not judge kindly

those who were too blinkered or ignorant to realize

that. So a step change in our efforts to avoid

catastrophic climate change and protect biodiversity is

needed.

When we met here last year, many hoped that the

United Nations would facilitate agreement on global

action to stabilize our planet’s climate at the meeting of

most of the world’s leaders in Copenhagen in

December. Not only did the global community fail to

accomplish that, we are now in real danger of suffering

from a catastrophic drift in ambition, where we no

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longer even try to connect the scientific evidence on

climate change with the necessary global action to

avert it.

This drift in ambition must be stopped. It is a

consequence of choices we make; it is not

predetermined. So we must rededicate ourselves to

crafting a shared response to shared climate threats.

Most progressive countries now realize this, and are

committed to temperature rises of a maximum of 2°

degrees C or lower. They feel that this will require

global economic growth powered by efficient and clean

energy, new green industries, and a new, less carbon-

intensive approach to forestry and agriculture.

But despite knowing this, the international

community continues to fail to put in place the

measures that will enable the economic transformation

that we claim we want. This is in large part due to the

absence of a global agreement that puts a price on

high-carbon activity and rewards low-carbon

innovation. We need this to change. To that end,

Guyana continues to hold that the international

community needs a legally binding global climate

treaty that would first facilitate the emission cuts

needed to stabilize the planet’s climate, and then

enable us to move on from seeing climate change

purely in terms of its costs, while also allowing us to

see how it can catalyse a once-in-a-lifetime global

economic transformation that can benefit people

everywhere. This cannot happen without deep, binding

emission cuts in today’s developed world, which could

stimulate the financial flows that can address

mitigation and adaptation across the developing world.

We recognize that such a global treaty may not be

achievable this year, but we are not powerless to act

now. The international community can do three things

even in the absence of a treaty, and we can achieve

breakthroughs in each when we meet in Cancún.

First, we can hold the developed countries

accountable for the commitments they have made to

the immediate short-term ramping-up of financing for

climate action in the developing world. The existing

commitments of a total of $30 billion by 2012 and

$100 billion per year by 2020 can be agreed to in

Cancún. Secondly, we can solve the vexed issue of an

effective financial transfer mechanism to ensure that

the funds flow both to adaptation and mitigation

actions. Thirdly, we should look at ramping up

meaningful sectoral responses that work in the short

term. Specifically, in Guyana we believe that action on

deforestation and forest degradation is one of the

efforts that can be made quickly and with maximum

impact. I want to emphasize that none of this is about

asking the developed world to provide us with aid.

Instead, it is about ensuring that the capital for

addressing climate change is allocated where it can

have the biggest impact.

In addressing these matters, I want to raise a

sensitive subject: the Copenhagen Accord, which was

the only tangible outcome of last year’s climate

Summit. I know that many countries here today

associated themselves with the Accord reluctantly, and

that some did not associate themselves with it at all.

But I believe that reluctant or no association with the

Copenhagen Accord, and strong support for some of its

provisions, are not mutually exclusive. Even countries

that did not associate themselves with the Accord

should hold the developed world accountable for its

commitments.

We have long said in Guyana that if the

international community is prepared to be held

accountable, we will not be found lacking. Three years

ago, we said that notwithstanding the immense climate

challenges in our country — in 2005 floods caused

damage equivalent to 60 per cent of our gross domestic

product — we were prepared to do our bit. We have

determined that, as a country more than 80 per cent of

whose territory is rainforest, we can make a

disproportionate contribution to solving climate

change. So we have looked at the contribution we can

make in two ways: first, by creating a financial

mechanism whereby we can put our entire rainforest

under protection; and secondly, by using the resources

we receive for the climate services we provide from

our protected forest to reorient our economy on a low-

carbon trajectory.

As a consequence, after one of the most

comprehensive national consultations on climate

change anywhere in the world, we have started to

implement our low-carbon development strategy. We

have identified how we can cumulatively save forest-

based emissions of 1.5 gigatons by 2020. We have a

deal in place with Norway on reducing emissions from

deforestation and forest degradation, and because of

this we are in the process of creating a climate finance

fund that will amount to between $300 million and

$500 million between this year and 2015. We have also

identified how we can use this climate financing to

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invest in education and health care; to catalyse private

finance to move virtually our entire economy to clean

energy; to open up non-forested land for new economic

activities; to invest in climate adaptation needs and to

support our indigenous people in the economic and

social transformation of their communities. We

therefore hope that we are demonstrating the value of

action on the three interlinked financing commitments

I spoke of, and I hope that we are starting to show how

interconnected global responses can deliver globally

valuable results.

The United Nations is, despite its many

limitations, our best hope for the advancement of

humanity. Its universality allows the Organization to

play a central and catalytic role in balancing the

differing interests of Member States and in generating

consensus on the issues that divide us. We must

therefore commit fully to the principles and purposes

of its Charter and to the improvement of its structure.

On behalf of my country and people, I wish to assure

the Assembly of our full support for the Organization

and for strengthening its capacity to better fulfil the

many mandates entrusted to it.