Nauru, 2013

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.