Mr. Secretary-General forgive me for my bluntness as I am constrained by the hundred and eighty seconds to speak on the fate and needs of 20 percent of the United Nations membership as we seek to save our countries and our people from the ravages of devastating hurricanes droughts and fires and the insidious slow onset of ocean acidification and sea-level rise.
The science is clear, and the evidence is even clearer. That the lives of our people have been lost and properties abandoned, and these tell the story far better than any speech we can make in this great hall. The AOSIS, the Alliance of Small Island States, needs to keep temperatures increases in this global community to less than one point five to stay alive, not to thrive, but to stay alive. In other words, two degrees needs to be taken off the table once and for all.
And let us be clear, the increase in one degree in temperature has already brought us to where we are today, has already brought us this unacceptable high level of catastrophic damage and loss of life. Within less than a decade or two, it will be virtually impossible to contain the temperature increases to 1.5 degrees unless we act now and with absolute dispatch. Make no mistake there will be mass migration by climate refugees that will destabilize the countries of the world that are not on the front line of this climate crisis.
No country can stand up to it alone. For us our best practice traditionally was to share the risks before disaster strikes. And just over a decade ago we established a Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility. But the devastation of Hurricane Dorian marks a new chapter for us because as an international community will find out, the CCRIF as we call it will not meet the needs of climate refugees or indeed will it be sufficient to meet the needs of rebuilding.
No longer can we, therefore, consider this as an appropriate mechanism. We have as well to look at how best we can blend our public resources and to that extent our country has introduced natural disaster clauses in our bonds as have other countries in the region. Barbados, therefore, recognizes the urgency of hosting an insurance colloquium for interested leaders at the national and state levels of independent nations and dependent territories to confront what we believe will be a growing crisis with respect to the affordability of insurance in our countries.
Similarly, we believe Mr. Secretary-General, that the real solution is for us not to keep asking people to make commitments that are small in the hope that we reach there, but the global community must accept that it is within our power to halt and reverse climate change. If the world can make it possible to have driverless cars then we surely can find it possible to be able to find the technology to halt and reverse this climate crisis. We must also at the same time urge those to contain the net emissions and to reduce them. Indeed, this simply can be no [new] more coal power plants after 2020 if we are serious about our future.
Each AOSIS member has committed to the SIDS ambition package which means that we’ll be submitting aggressive NDCs by 2020. But we also commit to the long-term goal of net zero emission by 2050. We are fully and have always been committed to the Paris Agreement. In our own case in Barbados we will lead by example.
First, we have set the goal of becoming a fossil fuel free country by 2030. We have to change out all of our transport systems and how we generate electricity. But this is a mammoth undertaking because the costs of electric buses, is almost more than double what the costs of diesel buses are. And similarly, the transitioning to clean renewable energy for our electricity requires significant investments in solar and wind which we are planning now.
Secondly, we will launch a most comprehensive climate resilience initiative by a small state; from roofs to reefs where we seek to protect our homes and the roofs which cover our people our freshwater resources and our vital coral reefs. In short, we have now all to change how we build, and we must protect our existing reefs and rebuild the ones that we have lost. Thirdly we are about to conclude a debt for nature swap arrangement in support of our blue economy because at the end of the day our maritime jurisdiction is 400 times that of our land jurisdiction.
We have also committed to planting more than a million trees next year when we have invited barbarians from wherever they live across the world to come home and join us in this mammoth undertaking on 166 square miles.
Fourthly, we have also embarked already on an ambitious mapping of the vulnerability of our critical infrastructure and key assets like housing, roads, utilities and reefs because we have limited resources to apply and they must be efficiently allocated. This national coastal risk information and planning platform is the guide for us as it should be for all members of AOSIS.
We all know the difficulties of small states and I will not avoid the elephant in the room. Under the current official development assistance rules which focus on GDP, The Bahamas, despite its extreme vulnerability to climate change and despite the passage of Hurricane Dorian will not have access to either grant or concessional resources as they begin the difficult task of rebuilding lives and livelihoods. These rules were not developed for such a time as this and we need to change these rules that deny access to successful small countries and we need to remove the bureaucracy attached there too.
But then again if Dominica and Barbuda remain today without any meaningful assistance after Hurricanes Irma and Maria passed two years ago, we must ask ourselves if small states continue to remain invisible and dispensable to the global community. Indeed, the pledges made for Barbuda represented less than 10 percent of the money they needed to rebuild Barbuda and even then, they have not collected those pledges.
Similarly, Dominica in the first 12 months after the catastrophe was only able to access less than 10 percent of the pledged funds. So, Madam Chair and Mr. Secretary-General, that is why we are committed to speaking to the young people of the world today whose actions across 150 countries last Friday made it clear that we will die of old age and they will die of climate change.
As small states of the world, we will work with these young people and we will continue to work with our influences globally like Rihanna, to urge that the resources must be found to halt and reverse climate change in our time for small states to stay alive. How the world’s resources are applied within the global community of nations is within our power.
As I said in Geneva last week, as I said in Geneva last week, the world finds it possible to apply resources to get rid of male baldness while it cannot find resources to cure malaria. These misplaced priorities will lose us the battle. If it was up to us I say, and I will finish soon, I really will, but I’m speaking on behalf of 20 percent of the community of nations of this body.
If it was up to our community of small nations to solve the problem of climate change it would have been solved three decades ago when we raised it. We refuse to be relegated to the footnotes of history and to be collateral damage for the greed of others. For we have contributed less than 1 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. We have brought our plans as small nations. We are implementing them. And we have fully embraced the responsibility to act. The young people of the world demand climate justice as do we.
We thank Norway, Germany and all others for the contributions that they have made yesterday and today to double their contributions to the Green Climate Fund. And we thank Qatar for their contribution today for the SIDS and landlocked countries. Others must now follow if we are to be fair to our children. The nations of the world are not fighting a losing battle but the nations of the world are losing this battle today. It is within our power to win it. The only question is. Will it be too late for the small nations of the world.
Thank you.
* Note for editors: This statement took place on Monday, September 23, 2019 at the General Assembly Hall at the United Nations in New York.