Grenada, 2014

I would like, first of all,

to thank the outgoing President, Mr. John Ashe, for

his sterling efforts in presiding over the sixty-eighth

session of the General Assembly in a year that was

dedicated to island States around the world. Let me

also congratulate Mr. Sam Kutesa and welcome him

as the incoming President of the General Assembly

at its sixty-ninth session. He can count on Grenada’s

support to contribute to the deliberations in a positive

and meaningful way.

As we gather here in New York yet again, we can

celebrate the remarkable history of our institution in this

beautifully refurbished United Nations Headquarters.

I wish to put on record Grenada’s appreciation to the

donors who contributed and to the Secretary-General

for his leadership on this project. With its large open

spaces and glass façade, the building’s design speaks

to our ideals of transparency, openness and dialogue.

The building’s mid-twentieth-century features recall

the spirit of an age when space was the new frontier.

The space age has given way to a new and

exciting information age. Today, a young girl armed

with a smartphone in Gujarat, India, can Google the

same satellite images of our planet as a child in Great

Britain. Exposed to the right ideas on the Internet,

children — whether in Greensboro in the United

States, or Grenoble in France, or Grenada in the

Caribbean — can have the same seeds of hope, the

same aspirations for happiness and personal growth,

and the same sense of duty towards neighbourhood and

planet. For aspiring young people everywhere, coming

of age is symbolized by ownership, not of a car, but of

a mobile phone or a computer tablet. Those are today’s

vehicles on the information highway for the world’s

youth seeking ideas, identity and connectedness.

We come to the United Nations today to feel that

sense of connectedness amid the chaos of today’s

challenges. We come to these refurbished Headquarters

to renew our commitment to peace and security and

to revitalize our mission, not to the stars, but to work

for a safer planet with shared prosperity for all. Today,

in this iconic Hall, it is too soon to say “mission

accomplished”, but for the most part, our original

mission for dialogue and the rule of law among abiding

nations has been accomplished.

Sitting here among ourselves, we are, for the most

part, preaching to the converted. The long-standing

conflict between Israel and Palestine has given way to a

realization that the only viable solution is the two-State

solution. Moreover, sworn enemies in this Hall now

confer on how to tackle much more sinister enemies

of peace.

Those new enemies have no flags fluttering

proudly outside, nor electronic nameplates inside.

They are not here in our space-age Hall; they are out

there in cyberspace, a place where violence and hate

in isolated corners can spread like wildfire across the

globe. Captured on mobile phones and uploaded to the

Internet, gruesome images from a remote backstreet

can inflict fear in the hearts of ordinary citizens on

Main Street everywhere.

The shocking beheadings we see in the media are

the weeping ooze from the cancerous underbelly of our

world today. They are the symptoms of an insidious and

pervasive unease eating away at the very foundations

on which this great institution was built. And with each

new escalation of violence, we feel a sense of horror

not only at the acts themselves but perhaps more at our

inability to act.

War and insecurity in the information age have

mutated so much that neither our resolutions, our

agencies nor our armies are enough to break the fever

of this viral menace of transnational actors. And so,

looking beyond our Capital Master Plan that reimagines

our twentieth-century beginnings, let us build a new

Information Master Plan fit for the twenty-first century

with electronic highways that will one day connect this

Hall to every child in every village.

The information age is a new season in the arc of our

institution’s history — a new season in which everyone

has a voice, be they the youths of the Arab Spring or the

Occupiers of Wall Street’s winter of discontent. Today’s

information age brings a new transparency between

the haves and the have-nots — between the 1 per cent

and the 99 per cent. Whether segmented by class, race,

religion or political affiliation, inequality is the disease

of our times, contributing to the political eruptions all

over the world.

We now have — for the first time — documented

evidence of the root causes of the growing inequalities

in society. A new economic treatise, entitled Capital in

the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas Piketty, analyses

over a century of economic data and concludes that

the rich are getting richer, faster than everyone else.

But there are two things that reduce income inequality.

The first is the distribution of knowledge that promotes

growth. The second is war, which destroys capital. The

first option is a rising tide that lifts all ships; the second

is a sinking stone that drowns all hope — the very

antithesis of this Organization.

We must focus more of our global policy on proactive

interventions that promote sustainable growth. We must

encourage economic growth by distributing knowledge

through education, information and communication

technology, as well as through skills and technology

transfers. We do indeed need an Information Master

Plan if we are to proactively confront threats in the

twenty-first century.

The World Development Report 2011: Conflict,

Security and Development, published by the World Bank,

acknowledges that development agencies have not yet

fully adapted to the needs of the twenty-first century

and that they do not yet have the capacity to adequately

help fragile States. It finds that unemployment is the

number-one reason for youths to join criminal gangs

and contending armies. It reminds us that investing in

citizen security, justice and jobs is essential to reducing

violence. We know that once mass violence takes root

in a society, it can take a generation or more to recover.

As we look around at the violence in the world

today, I ask the question: can our twentieth-century

institutions cope with twenty-first-century shocks?

Do we have the courage to be proactive in fostering

jobs and growth, or will we wait until violence erupts?

This year’s World Development Report 2014 is all about

managing opportunity and managing risk, from the

level of the household to the level of the international

community. The essence of the report is that the

benefits of proactive preparation can outweigh the

costs of responding retroactively.

The risks from climate shocks are among the

most terrifying for Grenada and for islands around

the world. Grenada places on record its appreciation

for the Secretary-General’s leadership in calling for a

Climate Summit. In the last four years alone, we have

seen floods raging across the world. With the hottest

temperatures on record in recent years, forest fires have

raged across almost all continents, devouring millions

of acres of forest land, causing damages in the tens of

billions of dollars. Glacial retreats from the Andes to

the Himalayas and from Greenland to Antarctica are

moving at record speeds. We are seeing hurricanes and

cyclones as never before.

Two years ago, right here in New York, Hurricane

Sandy struck and disabled the economic engine of the

United States. It caused $68 billion worth of damage.

But this represents less than 1 per cent of the gross

domestic product (GDP) of the United States in contrast

with the island States, where damages of between

10 per cent and 50 per cent of GDP are common, and, in

the case of Grenada, where damages occurred totalling

200 per cent of GDP from Hurricane Ivan alone. Even

as we speak, this week Grenada was plagued with

unseasonably high rains that have caused numerous

landslides. The value of the damage is yet to be

determined. Like our neighbours Saint Lucia and Saint

Vincent and the Grenadines in 2013, we are forced to

dedicate already scarce financial resources to repair

and mitigate this.

There is a link between these events and the high

indebtedness of small Caribbean islands. To paraphrase

the World Bank’s country assistance strategy for the

Eastern Caribbean, the years when fiscal policy failed

to explain increases in debt-to-GDP ratios were the

same years when natural disasters occurred. Given

these risks, island States need concessionary financing.

This is critical to ensuring growth, jobs and economic

development. For small island developing States (SIDS),

a robust economy, combined with risk-management

policies and instruments, is the best combination for

resilience.

When our current Administration was elected

16 months ago, the indebtedness of our country was

unsustainable. But the Grenadian people came together

under the leadership of Prime Minister Mitchell.

Unions, churches, non-governmental organizations,

political parties and businesses all rallied to form a

social compact to put Grenada on a firm fiscal footing.

We tightened our belts and asked the Grenadian people

to contribute more as we undertook our home-grown

fiscal reform. The indebtedness of the SIDS must

be counted among the many challenges of our time.

The annual cry of the small island States to make

concessionary funding available is the early-warning

system for the international community. Let us settle

the least developed countries graduation issue in

favour of the SIDS, rather than use it as a parallel

climate-negotiation tool against the SIDS.

One country that is singled out for its stellar

management of disasters is Cuba. We all have much

to learn from Cuba on areas as diverse as disaster risk

management and public-health management. Cuba

sends its engineers, teachers and doctors around the

world to improve the lives of others. Is it not time to fully

recognize the contributions of Cuba to the international

community — and if not now, then when? Is it not time

to end the Cold War attitudes to Cuba — and if not now,

then when? Is it not time to end the embargo against

Cuba — and if not now, then when?

The explosion of violence that we see in today’s

trouble spots is driven by the flawed principle of

disrespect for international law and the territorial

integrity of Member States. There comes a time when

old enemies must turn swords into ploughshares and

look to a future with dignity and with hope.

Just as climate change is the challenge of our time,

it can also be said that climate change is possibly one

of the greatest opportunities for wealth creation and

shared prosperity that this generation has seen. Today,

the renewable energy market is estimated to be in

the order of $16 trillion, including $12 billion in the

Caribbean alone. In 2012, there were some 6 million jobs

in renewable energy and the International Renewable

Energy Agency (IRENA) expects 17 million jobs

by 2030. Today, pension funds with collective assets

exceeding $12 trillion are focusing on climate risk,

renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Island States like Grenada are seized not only of

climate challenge, but also with climate solutions. For

us, a robust economy, combined with sound disaster

risk-management policies and instruments, is the most

sustainable form of adaptation to climate change.

But in Grenada, we cannot educate our people if our

schoolchildren have no access to electricity. Due

to the high import costs of fossil fuels, electricity in

Grenada costs four to five times higher than it does in

developed countries. But countries with low electricity

prices have to subsidize renewables; not so in the

islands. Islands like Grenada come to the climate table,

not like hapless victims cap-in-hand, but offering the

international community 100 per cent renewables that

can be introduced with zero subsidies.

If we are to limit global carbon dioxide concentrations

to 450 parts per million, then, according to the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth

assessment report, our electricity sector needs a total

transformation. While island States are the least of the

emitters, they are the most cost-effective places for

renewables. I congratulate the Small Island Developing

States Sustainable Energy Initiative (SIDS DOCK),

IRENA and Sustainable Energy For All for acting on

this.

Grenada is working to transform its electricity

sector. Solving the energy challenge for islands like

Grenada will remove a drag on our economies and

better position us to withstand environmental shocks.

This is adaptation with prospects for jobs, growth and

shared prosperity for all. I am delighted to announce

that, in addition to working with Germany, the World

Bank, SIDS DOCK and IRENA, Grenada has signed

a groundbreaking memorandum of understanding

with the United States to assist us in transforming our

energy mix, as we announced in Samoa. We have also

signed an memorandum of understanding with New

Zealand to help us better understand our geothermal

resources. Grenada will serve as the pilot country for

the regional energy initiative of the United States and

will work with New Zealand on geothermal energy.

We welcome others to join this partnership and this

unfolding success story that is Green Grenada.

As we have said before, we wish to recommend

the following actions. Let us operationalize the

Green Climate Fund with a window for islands.

Let us implement 100 per cent renewable energy in

island States. Let us put a price on carbon and stop

subsidizing fossil fuels. Let us decarbonize food

security. Agriculture, forestry and other land use

contribute 25 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions. Let

us have greater support for climate-smart agriculture

that can deliver a triple win of increasing productivity

and incomes, increasing resilience to climate change,

and reducing or removing carbon emissions. Grenada

is pleased to be working with the Government of the

Netherlands on a climate-smart agricultural alliance

and on Global Blue Growth and Food Security Initiative.

Blue growth is vital for the economies of island

States around the world, and our tri-island State

of Grenada, Carriacou and Petite Martinique sees

itself as an Ocean State, given that our exclusive

economic zone in the sea is over 70 times larger than

our land mass. Our tri-island State is pleased to host

the secretariat of the Caribbean Challenge Initiative

(CCI), which is supported by Germany and others.

The CCI promotes an enhanced marine environment,

and Grenada is committed to conserving its near-shore

marine environment. Through reports like the Sunken

Billions, the World Bank and the Food and Agriculture

Organization have shown that conservation efforts

are critical to ensuring maximum economic yield in

fisheries.

In the past 30 years, we have lost 30 per cent of our

corals and mangroves. This is why Grenada welcomes

efforts such as the Global Blue Growth Initiative and

the Global Partnership for Oceans, and the efforts of

The Economist and United States Secretary of State

John Kerry to bring renewed attention to the oceans. We

look forward to welcoming our partners to Grenada in

January 2015 for the launch of the Global Blue Growth

and Food Security initiatives.

In closing, Grenada acknowledges the successes

of the 2014 Third International Conference on Small

Island Development States, held in Samoa, and, building

on the momentum of Samoa, we look forward to the

successful conclusion to the sustainable development

goals process leading into the twenty-first session of

the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations

Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris

next year.

As we move forward, let us remember that a number

of the Millennium Development Goals have not been

achieved. We have a duty, therefore, to re-examine our

approach to peace, security and shared prosperity. We

need collective action on a global consensus. We need

to act now before it is too late. We must shed the old

ways and adopt twenty-first-century approaches for

this millennium generation if we are to bequeath to

them and future generations the bounty we inherited

and the bounty that they deserve.