Guyana, 2009

I extend our gratitude to the

Secretary-General for continuing to spearhead the work

of the United Nations at a time when our membership

is beset by historic challenges.

I am told that it is only what one says from the

rostrum that is reflected in the record of the meeting. I

hope that perhaps in the future, we can change the

system. If we do so, we may be able to say more

without spending a lot of time at the rostrum. So I shall

circulate the full text of my speech and focus on only

two areas that I think are important at this point in

time. The first has to do with the financial crisis and its

impact on the Caribbean, and the second concerns the

climate change crisis.

In the case of the prevailing financial crisis, the

small, vulnerable economies of the Caribbean have had

to bear the brunt of global recession. That has

manifested itself both through depressed prices for

primary exported commodities, such as bauxite, and

through depressed demand for services, such as

tourism. The result has been losses in export and

foreign currency earnings, with attendant dislocation of

exchange rates and Government revenues, exacerbating

an already tenuous fiscal and debt situation and

causing the loss of jobs and welfare and a reversal of

gains previously made against poverty.

Even as we seek long-term solutions to bolster

the resilience of our economies, the need for relief and

support is immediate. The capacity of the small

countries of the Caribbean to respond with

09-52425 12

countercyclical measures is virtually non-existent, with

no available fiscal space and levels of indebtedness

that are among the highest in the world. The case is

therefore compelling for the global community to

relieve and restructure the debt of these heavily

indebted vulnerable small countries, including those

that were not previously considered for debt relief

because of their income levels, but whose debt ratios

are clearly unsustainable by any standard.

The case is equally compelling for new additional

flows of development assistance to be delivered to

these countries by both multilateral and bilateral

development partners. Despite injections of large

amounts of additional resources into some of the

multilateral institutions and the approval of new

facilities by those institutions, very little has actually

materialized in terms of additionality in disbursements

to smaller States. This needs to be corrected urgently if

we are to avoid the perception that there is an absence

of concern at the global level for the needs of smaller

countries.

My fear is that, as the crisis abates, so too will

the will to change the global financial architecture.

Therefore, we are advocating urgent action in this area,

and we are also saying that this solution — a new

global financial architecture — must involve smaller

countries in its articulation. Our fear is that, if we

continue along the same path, we will have a new

architecture that caters only to the concerns of the large

countries — now expanded to the Group of 20 — and

that the smaller countries will not see their concerns

reflected in it. That is why, last year, I called for a new

Bretton Woods-type conference at which all the

countries in this Hall would help to create that

architecture.

The second crisis that I wish to mention is that of

climate change. This week, there has been much talk

about the urgency of tackling climate change. Thanks

to the vision exhibited by the Secretary-General and

the work of leaders and citizens from countries across

the world, the level of understanding about the nature

of the climate challenge is increasingly clear.

But we need to move beyond simply

understanding the challenge. We need to work as a

global community to shape a solution that is in the

interests of all countries, and many of the building

blocks that will enable us to do this have been

identified. The challenge for the Copenhagen meeting

is to turn these building blocks into an agreement that

can start to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In doing so, we should be guided by science and

by the need for solutions that treat all countries fairly.

But we also need to recognize that the challenge now is

as much about political will as it is about scientific,

economic and institutional considerations. In

addressing the politics, we need to recognize that in all

countries — developed and developing — there are

concerns about the commitment of others to the long-

term global partnership we need. Many developing

countries question whether the international

community will commit to the scale of financial

transfers that all major analyses agree are needed.

Others are worried that acting on climate change now

will stymie their national development, precisely at a

time when many are poised for historic levels of

economic growth and social advances.

On the other hand, many developed countries are

worried that the financial transfers needed will be an

excessive burden on their budgets during extremely

challenging economic times. Domestic constituencies

in the developed world are also fearful about

transferring significant sums of money abroad, and

they worry that jobs or investment will be driven away

from their economies. There are also fears from

individual countries that they will be expected to carry

a greater burden than other developed nations. These

political concerns could be a recipe for a stalemate that

the world cannot afford. Failure to overcome them now

will mean misery for future generations, and the

eventual costs of tackling climate change will be even

greater than they are now.

We therefore need to find a way through. This

will require leadership from all nations. I welcome the

proposals laid out by Gordon Brown, and subsequently

supported by the European Union, to generate funding

in excess of $100 billion per annum to address climate

change in the developing world. For the first time,

there is a proposal that starts to square up to the

magnitude of funding that is required for adaptation

and mitigation.

Having spoken with many of my fellow leaders

this week, I am confident that, with the right signal

from the developed world, developing countries are

ready to play their part. Of particular urgency will be

finding ways to work together to address the 17 per

cent of greenhouse gas emissions that result from

13 09-52425

tropical deforestation and forest degradation globally.

As with climate change in general, we now have a

large degree of clarity around the nature of this specific

problem. We know that it causes more emissions than

the entire European Union, and we know that this is

because the world economy makes trees worth more

dead than alive. We also know that the only sustainable

way to address the problem is national-scale action in

forest countries coupled with international incentives

that place a value on trees to make them worth more

alive than dead.

We now need to rapidly move from constantly

rearticulating this problem towards putting in place

workable solutions. In Guyana, we remain ready to

play our part, and we have launched our low-carbon

development strategy, which sets out how we can place

our entire forest under long-term protection, not only

to provide the world with badly needed climate

services, but also to move our economy onto a long-

term, sustainable low-carbon development path, where

jobs are created across our country in sectors that do

not threaten our trees.

Thanks to the visionary leadership of the Prime

Minister of Norway, our two countries are also

working together to provide a functioning model of

how low-deforestation and low-carbon economies can

be created in countries such as ours.

In parallel, Guyana continues to play its part in

the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate

Change (UNFCCC) process, which must provide the

long-term framework for combating forest-based

emissions through the United Nations Collaborative

Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation

and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries

(REDD) or the REDD+ Programme. But we also

believe that the world can move quickly to slow down

deforestation starting now, not in 2013. Guyana was

pleased to participate in the April G-20 side meeting

that addressed how this can happen. We support the

proposals made by the informal working group on

interim financing for REDD, which was set up after the

G-20 side meeting. We support its report, which lays

out how the world can achieve a 25 per cent reduction

in global deforestation rates by 2015 with an

investment of less than €25 billion in total.

Using highly conservative estimates of forest

carbon, this could lead to seven gigatons of greenhouse

gas emissions being avoided between now and 2015. If

this occurred, it would be the single biggest

contribution to averting climate catastrophe over this

period. And it can be done. Rainforest countries

representing the vast majority of the world’s tropical

forests have worked with the informal working group

and are willing to act. The question now is: Will the

developed world understand the enormous potential

this offers our world, and will it act to generate the

finances that are needed?

The sum of money needed for this interim period

may seem large, but it does not only represent a very

good value for money abatement solution; it can also

generate significant financial flows for developing

countries, it can create alternative livelihoods for

indigenous peoples and other forest-dependent

communities, and it can preserve the enormous

biodiversity present in the world’s forests.

Twenty-five billion euros over five years

represent less than 1.5 cents per citizen per day in

developed countries. It is a fraction of what the world

has generated to save the financial system from

collapse, it provides a bridge to a long-term REDD+

solution under the UNFCCC, and it buys the world

badly needed time in the race to defeat climate change.

To turn away from making this proposal a reality

would be a mistake of historic proportions.

I have just said to President Chávez Frías that I

wish I could conclude by singing, but I do not have his

wonderful voice. Instead, I will confine myself to

saying that we all have an important role to play in

solving this crisis, but the developed world has a moral

obligation to play a greater part in solving both the

financial crisis and the climate change crisis, because it

is due to its actions that we are in this situation. I hope

that the developed world recognizes this obligation and

the urgency to act upon it now.