Singapore, 2007

The item at the top of our

agenda is climate change. The upcoming Bali

Conference needs our full support. Climate change is a

challenge that can only be overcome by our collective

efforts. If we fail, the future will be troubled. Small

island countries like Singapore will be in great danger.

People living in the lowlands will have to move to

higher ground. The pressure of migration into spaces

which become more habitable because of global

warming may well become unstoppable. There will be

new conflicts in the world.

We are coming now to understand better the role

of climate change in the conflict in Darfur. It does not

excuse the heinous crimes that have been committed

there, but understanding the water situation in that

region will help us find more durable solutions for the

future. Many historians are now reassessing the role of

climate change in major political events in the past.

We cannot be sure whether our best efforts can

stop global warming. The Earth’s climate has always

gone through cycles. But, even if all we can do is to

slow down the process that will buy us time: time to

accumulate knowledge, to develop new technologies

and to adapt. For example, the cost of recycling or

desalinating water has been steadily coming down and

is becoming completely affordable for us in Singapore.

Improvements in water technology can defuse political

tensions in many parts of the world.

Many problems we face can only be overcome by

the nations of the world acting together. Climate

change is one. Another is the danger of global

pandemics, which must also be kept high on our

agenda. The late Director-General of the World Health

Organization (WHO), Lee Jong-wook, once said that a

new global pandemic was not a question of “whether”

but of “when”. With the mass movement of human

beings, much of it at jet speed, a new bug can spread

quickly.

Only a few years ago, we had the scare of Severe

Acute Respiratory Syndrome. We are still not sure why

that epidemic burned out so quickly, but luckily it did.

During the few months it hit us in Singapore, our

economy was severely affected. Our tourism industry

was devastated. As our economy is so dependent on

external trade, shutting our airport was not an option.

Instead, we hurriedly converted military night-vision

devices into thermal scanners and used them at the

airport so that arriving and departing passengers with

fever could be pulled aside for medical examination.

We knew we could not overcome this problem on our

own. The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian

Nations (ASEAN) convened an emergency meeting to

which the Premier of China, the Chief Executive of

Hong Kong and the Director-General of WHO were

also invited.

Whether it is climate change, global pandemics,

the fight against terrorism, the multilateral trading

system or international finance, we need better global

governance. During the cold war, the world was

divided into two camps with each super-Power taking

the lead in its own sphere. That era is now behind us. A

multipolar world is crystallizing. On no major issue

can one country, however powerful, now act on its

own, completely disregarding the views of others. The

situation in Iraq is a sad example of that. Russia,

China, India and Brazil are emergent or re-emergent

Powers whose interests must increasingly be factored

in. Smaller countries too have become more assertive,

refusing to let bigger countries ride roughshod over

them.

When major international institutions like the

United Nations, the World Bank, and the International

Monetary Fund (IMF) were established many years

ago, after the end of the Second World War, the world

was very different from what it is today. Because of

this, those institutions are not as effective as they ought

to be. However, we have to work with those

institutions as they are and not as we would want them

to be if they were to be newly established today. Unless

there is another global conflagration, the improvement

of global governance can only be achieved through

gradual evolution, not revolution.

We can do that at two levels: at the level of the

major Powers and at the level of small and medium-

sized countries. At the level of the major Powers,

international institutions should increasingly reflect the

multipolar reality. For example, the reform of the

United Nations, including the reform of the Security

Council, should take into account the weight of India,

Japan, Germany and Brazil and the growing

importance of regional organizations. Selection of

heads of the IMF and the World Bank should be

widened. Membership of the Group of Eight (G-8)

should be enlarged to include countries such as China

and India. It is also important that international

organizations be held to the highest standards of

management. We must maintain their moral authority

in the eyes of the world if they are to stay effective.

That Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s recent visit to a

refugee camp in Darfur received so much applause was

because of the prestige of the United Nations and the

hope reposed in the Blue Helmets.

On climate change, it is good that the United

States has convened a meeting in Washington of the

world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases. As the

world’s biggest economy, the United States has to

exercise leadership. But it cannot do it on its own.

Without major emitters achieving a certain common

understanding among themselves, we will not make

much progress at the coming Climate Change

Conference in Bali.

The involvement of small and medium-sized

countries in international institutions has to be

enhanced. It is unhealthy if the only way small and

medium-sized countries can ensure their interests are

taken into account is by threatening to block the

progress of others. Indeed, if every country in

international organizations had the power of veto the

result would be paralysis. As a small country itself,

Singapore takes the view that small and medium-sized

countries have both rights and responsibilities. We too

must have a sense of responsibility for the global

system. A rules-based world gives us more freedom

than one where “might is right”.

Regional groupings can help small and medium-

sized countries strike this balance between rights and

responsibilities. The African Union offers a good

example of how the discipline of a group gives each of

its members a greater say in world affairs than it could

have on its own. Group solidarity enables regional

organizations such as ASEAN to play a bigger role in

the world. ASEAN will soon be strengthened by the

leaders’ adoption of a formal charter next month.

Both formal and informal arrangements have

their uses. For example, the Forum of Small States is a

loose coalition of 100 countries that meet regularly to

exchange views and to give support to one another.

They make up more than half the Members of the

United Nations. Formal and informal groups can play a

constructive role by taking the middle ground and

moderating the excessive demands of radical members.

Let us, through the groupings to which we belong,

encourage each other towards compromise on the

various issues. An example is the Doha Development

Agenda. The positions are not so far apart now and it

would be a great pity to walk away from a Doha deal

because of relatively small differences when the deal

could add hundreds of billions of dollars to global

welfare.

However effective they are, international

institutions cannot stop the natural rivalry among

nation States. The major Powers will still throw their

weight around, but rules can be established for

civilized behaviour and to prevent countries from

taking extreme actions that will endanger the planet we

share and our common heritage.

We are not a union of nations, but we are at the

very least a confederation of nations. There are limits

to the sovereignty we exercise as independent nation-

States. For example, the countries of the world have

not only a legitimate right but also a responsibility to

decry the brutal suppression of demonstrators in

Myanmar. Yesterday the Foreign Ministers of ASEAN

expressed our revulsion through a Chairman’s

statement which also called on the Myanmar

Government to abandon its old ways and take a fresh

approach towards national reconciliation with all

groups in the country. We applauded the initiative of

the United Nations Secretary-General to dispatch

Special Envoy Ibrahim Gambari to Myanmar and urged

the Myanmar Government to work with him for the

good of the people of the country.

Six months before 11 September 2001, the people

of the world watched with shock and horror the

deliberate destruction of the ancient Buddha statues in

Bamiyan by the Taliban. We must never allow such

wanton acts to take place again, whether the injury is

to world heritage sites, to the environment or to human

beings.

Behind such acts is an attitude of hatred and

intolerance that must never be condoned. If this

century is to be one of peace and development, all of

us must internalize a spirit of interfaith understanding

and common humanity. Recently, the Indian

Government announced its intention to revive the

ancient Buddhist university at Nalanda and offered it to

Asian countries as a project to promote cultural and

religious understanding and exchange. For hundreds of

years Nalanda was a great university drawing students

from all over Asia to study not just Buddhism but also

philosophy, science, mathematics and other subjects.

That project deserves our support.

We need many such endeavours in the world

today so as to create a greater awareness of our

common origins, our growing interdependence and our

common future. Without that larger sense, the

challenge of global governance will be difficult to

overcome. Without all countries feeling a sense of

shared responsibility for the Earth’s environment, for

example, climate change will become much worse

before effective measures are taken, by which time it

may be too late for many of us.