2022 Speech - Bahamas
| Session Number | 77 |
|---|---|
| Year | 2022 |
| Country | Bahamas |
| Country Code | BHS |
| Speech |
Next year we will mark 50 years since the Bahamas became a fully independent sovereign nation. Our accession to full membership of the United Nations in 1973 was inspired by a recognition of the interdependence of this family of nations and by the hope that dialogue and partnership can be a path to shared solutions. I believe that we Bahamians are justifiably proud of what we have accomplished in our 50 years of independence. We are free, democratic, entrepreneurial and resilient, and our small size has not held us back from great achievements at home and on the world stage.
But we are ever more aware that many of our greatest challenges emanate from or are made worse by events and conflicts outside our borders. Hurricane Dorian in 2019 was a category 5 storm that nearly destroyed two of our main islands and wiped out 30 per cent of our national economic activity. The impact on our economy, our infrastructure and our people is still very much present. The scientific consensus is that as ocean temperatures rise, we can expect hurricanes of greater intensity to arrive with increased frequency. Small island nations like mine did not create the emissions that are warming the Earth, but we are nonetheless on the front lines of climate catastrophe. Hurricane Dorian in 2019 was followed by the coronavirus disease in 2020. What happens in industrialized countries does not stay in industrialized countries. Every year we welcome millions of visitors to the Bahamas, drawn by our country’s beauty, culture and people. But for a long while visitors could not come. The health crisis quickly became an economic crisis and an education crisis, too. Now, as we are working to recover, a global inflation crisis stubbornly endures. It is making the basics of life unaffordable for too many and creating more hardships for our people. The same is true for other countries in the Caribbean Community region and around the world. And of course, day in and day out, we must also defend our thousands of miles of ocean borders from trafficking in people, drugs and guns. We are not waiting for others to act — we are doing what we can to be stronger and better prepared. But no one country, large or small, acting alone can stop climate change, nor can we individually reduce the threat of future pandemics, end the policies and conflicts driving global inflation or tackle global criminal networks. Those problems require collective action. It was the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, who was candid about the purpose of this Organization. The United Nations was not created in order to bring us to heaven, he said, but to save us from hell. The United Nations was born out of the ashes of two World Wars. Today we face different threats — ones that require us to mobilize, innovate and above all, collaborate. Of all the risks we face, none require more urgent action than the climate crisis. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the first conference on climate change, was held in 1992, yet despite decades of conferences and meetings featuring warnings from scientists and experts, one sixth of all the carbon emissions ever generated — some 407 billion tons — occurred between 2010 and 2020. I have frequently spoken, as have so many others, about the need for action in terms of climate justice and fairness. Why should small island nations like mine, which have contributed so little to the climate crisis, experience the biggest burdens and risks of climate change? The argument may be straightforward, but it has not been effective. For a long time, decision-makers in both the public and private sectors believed that climate action had to come at the expense of economic growth, but now many are beginning to understand that climate inaction is the most expensive option of all. Taking action is not just in the interests of those of us who are particularly vulnerable. It is in the interests of every country. That enlightened self-interest that should motivate action. The good news is that there are also positive incentives. Transitioning to clean energy is going to create jobs, increase efficiencies and improve living standards. Again, I want to emphasize that other countries should not do it for us, but for themselves. I do not believe in despair. I believe in determination and human ingenuity. We can do this. Countries that disagree on many other issues, including important ones, must cooperate on this issue in their own self-interest. We have roughly 40 days until the twenty-seventh Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is held in Egypt. Let this year be the year that we turn talk into action. Let us roll up our sleeves and get to work. Let those who pledge write the cheque. Countries like mine, already trapped by billions in climate debt, need funding to transition to renewable energy infrastructure. We have begun to install solar microgrids across our islands, but scaling up will require a lot of additional funding. We in the Bahamas are playing our part. In February and July of this year, we hosted the One Young World regional and annual conferences for young people to support the next generation in their efforts to engage with climate-related issues. This was the first climate conference for young people in the region. We recognize the importance and value of the participation of young people. The Bahamas supports the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the provisions on youth engagement in the Secretary- General’s report entitled “Our Common Agenda” (A/75/982). Then in August, the Bahamas took the lead in bringing together the member countries of the Caribbean to agree a consensus position for negotiations at the twenty-seventh session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We are actively defining ways to protect and safeguard our shallow seas, mangroves and seagrasses. All of it acts as a major carbon sink for the world. We urgently need to build capacity. We are now inviting those with potential technological solutions to bring their innovations to the Bahamas. It is time for a new resolve and new cooperation. Last year, I brought the threat to the financial-services industry in the Bahamas and our region to the attention of the General Assembly (see A/76/PV.14). I said then that financial services are a crucial component of the Bahamian economy. We see an indispensable role for the United Nations in leveraging its universal jurisdiction for greater oversight of global anti-money-laundering, de-risking and tax-cooperation matters. Sadly, little to nothing has changed. We continue to struggle to recover from the economic shocks of hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic. We also have the additional battle brought by inflationary pressures created not by us, but by the war in Europe. And now, to top it off, we are yet again the victims of inequitable and unjust measures on the part of major economic actors. All those factors place a stranglehold on our national development and that of other small island developing States. Just yesterday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development issued a statement placing the Bahamas on its blacklist. That action is profoundly unfair. When we look at the countries that are flagged as high risk and blacklisted, several startling commonalities emerge. Why is it that European States that operate frameworks akin to those of blacklisted countries are not even eligible for inclusion on these lists? Why are all the countries targeted — all of them — small and vulnerable, and former colonies of European States? We find it astounding that the $2 trillion to $3 trillion, which is estimated to be laundered each year through the developed countries, are never flagged as causes for concern. And yet my country, which is widely recognized as one of the best regulated countries in the world, and other countries such as the Bahamas, are singled out for such reputational attacks. The robust regulatory regimes of our Central Bank, Securities Commission and Insurance Commission are chastised on minor details of technical process, while much bigger transgressions in the developed world are ignored. The evidence is mounting that the considerations behind these decisions have less to do with compliance and more to do with the darker issues of prejudged discriminatory perceptions. Let me submit that Black-governed countries also matter. We support the call for reforms in the global financial system to make it more relevant to the needs of today. But those reforms need ambition. They need to go beyond the incremental, and they need to apply to all. For example, the community of international financial institutions is in a position to forgive the debt incurred by the economic shutdowns that occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, and they should do so. Every year that we do not do the right thing, the right thing to do becomes more expensive. When my neighbours are in crisis, whether the cause is climate or crime or instability, the Bahamas is affected by the humanitarian and security needs that arise. We repeat once again our opposition to the decades-long embargo and sanctions against Cuba. COVID-19 has exacerbated the situation for the people of Cuba and made existing hardship and deprivation much worse. The people of Haiti continue to suffer. The political vacuum left after the assassination of the country’s president just over a year ago has led to more violence, with the instability fuelling more tragedy and threatening the entire region. Migration is not the only issue with which the Bahamas is grappling. We are also struggling with the proliferation of guns. We do not manufacture guns in our country, and yet they find their way illegally to the Bahamas and within days can be connected to some criminal activity. In an archipelagic nation made up of some 700 islands and cays spread across 100,000 square miles of water, defending our borders is an expensive challenge. We believe more manageable and effective efforts can be made at the source to ensure that a right to bear arms does not so quickly and easily translate into our right to traffic arms. We in the Bahamas believe there is still real purpose in the mission of the United Nations. We will continue to support multilateral efforts aimed at tackling the shared challenges of our time. We congratulate Secretary- General Guterres for his leadership in achieving agreement with Ukraine, Russia and Turkey to get the flow of trade in the Black Sea moving once again. The stabilization in world food markets has served millions of people in the developing world. We see the involvement and participation of women and young people as inherent and central to our process. My Government considers it vital that women play fully active roles in planning and decision-making, both in national and multilateral affairs. We also support the addition of a United Nations Youth Office. The needs and rights of small island developing States cannot be sustained by making policy advances only in times of global shock. We are grateful that the Alliance of Small Island States seized the moment in 2020 to secure the cause of work on the multidimensional vulnerability index. We consider this a critical step forward in ensuring greater equity for countries such as the Bahamas. We are aware that the global community is grossly underprepared in securing protections for the global commons, including water, biodiversity and the digital landscape. In moving forward on this agenda, we also recognize that a more robust and better change-making architecture is needed across the United Nations. In this respect, we hope that members will support the candidature of Bahamian citizen Stephen Bereaux for the post of Director of the Telecommunication Development Bureau of the International Telecommunication Union for the 2023-2026 term. By each of us acting out of our own enlightened self-interest, we acknowledge that we ourselves benefit from doing what is in the best interest of all in meeting the existential challenge posed by the climate crisis. It should be an increasingly self-evident truth that none of us can be safe until we are all safe. |