session of the United Nations' General Assembly, New York
25 September 2007
Your Excellency, the President of the General Assembly, Sergjan Kerim
Your Excellency, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon
Your Excellencies
Distinguished Guests
Ladies and Gentlemen:
Let me begin by adding my voice to the many salutations directed to His
Excellency, Ban Ki-Moon for being elected as the Secretary-General of the
United Nations and wish you, Your Excellency, a fruitful tenure, trusting that
through your work the poor of the world would have good reason to increase
their confidence in this organisation of the nations of the world.
Again, I reiterate the many thanks to Her Excellency, Sheikha Haya Rashed Al
Khalifa, for the good work she did as the President of the 61st Session of the
General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA). Equally, my congratulations go
to His Excellency, Sergjan Kerim on his election as the President of the 62nd
Session of the General Assembly.
We meet here today under the theme: 'Responding to Climate Change', during
the United Nations (UN) Session that would mark the half-way point towards the
freely-agreed period in which the nations of the world committed themselves to
work, individually and collectively, so as to achieve the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs).
Billions of people of the world know as a matter of fact that the
consequences of climate change â be it droughts, floods or unpredictable and
extreme weather patterns; undermine our common efforts to achieve the MDGs.
Today, we all understand that the costs of doing nothing about climate change
far outweigh those of taking concrete measures to address this challenge. It is
clear that delaying action on this matter of climate change will hit poor
countries and communities hardest. Yet the pace of climate change negotiations
is out of step with the urgency indicated by science.
I would therefore urge that we collectively aim for a significant advance in
the multilateral negotiations when our negotiators meet in Bali in December
this year. Together, we must ensure that we build a fair, effective, flexible
and inclusive climate regime under the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change and its Kyoto Protocol and we must agree to this as a matter of urgency.
Though we have different responsibilities, and developed countries clearly have
an obligation to take the lead, we all have a common duty to do more and act
within our respective capabilities and in accordance with our national
circumstances.
The UN World Summit on Sustainable Development correctly reaffirmed
sustainable development as a central element of the global action against
poverty and the protection of the environment and identified important linkages
between poverty, the environment and the use of natural resources.
To billions of the poor these linkages are real, the combination of their
empty bellies, their degraded environment and their exploited natural
resources, for which they benefit nothing, defines a hopeless and
heart-wrenching existence.
Many of these who are the wretched of the earth, know from their bitter
experience how their resource-rich areas were transformed into arid,
uninhabitable and desolate areas forcing migration to better-endowed regions
thus exacerbating conflicts and struggles for scarce resources.
Gathered here as representatives of the people of the world we know very
well that climate change, poverty and underdevelopment are not acts of God but
human-made.
Clearly, the starting point for a future climate regime must be equity. A
core balance between sustainable development and climate imperatives will have
to be the basis of any agreement on a strengthened climate regime. Any deal on
the "fair use of the ecological space" will have to be balanced by a deal on
giving all countries a "fair chance in the development space".
Under the United Nations, but also within our regional bodies, we have
adopted many programmes and declarations, with clear implementation targets
aimed at addressing the challenges of climate change, poverty and
underdevelopment.
As this esteemed conclave knows very well, the many lofty agreements include
among others those adopted at:
* The Rio Earth Summit
* Copenhagen Social Summit
* Millennium Summit
* World Summit on Sustainable Development and
* Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development.
In all these and other summits we adopted declarations using moving and
solemn words that express our profound understanding of the gravity of the
challenges facing the modern world and unequivocally committing ourselves to
defeat all and any miserable and dehumanising conditions facing large parts of
humanity.
Indeed, this collective asserted in the Millennium Declaration that:
"We will spare no effort to free our fellow men, women and children from the
abject and dehumanising conditions of extreme poverty. We are committed to
making the right to development a reality for everyone and to freeing the
entire human race from want."
Yet, the poor whose hopes have been raised many times as we make declaration
after declaration against poverty and underdevelopment and as we are doing
today on climate change can be forgiven for thinking that this important global
leadership many a times sounds like an empty vessel.
That this collective is able, always eloquently to express the dire
circumstances characterising the poor is without doubt. However, this
organisation, which should pride itself with visible actions and results in the
fight against climate change and poverty, would find it difficult to
demonstrate decisive progress in this regard.
The reasons for this are not hard to find. Although the concepts of freedom,
justice and equality are universal and fully embraced by the United Nations,
this global organisation has not itself transformed and designed the necessary
institutions of governance consistent with the noble ideals that drive modern
democratic societies.
Because the nations of the world are defined by the dominant and the
dominated, the dominant have also become the decision makers in the important
global forums, including at this seat of global governance.
Accordingly, the skewed distribution of power in the world, political,
economic, military, technological and social, replicates itself in multilateral
institutions, much to the disadvantage of the majority of the poor people of
the world.
Indeed, even as we agree on the important programmes that should bring a
better life to billions of the poor, the rich and the powerful have
consistently sought to ensure that whatever happens, the existing power
relations are not altered and therefore the status quo remains.
The results of this situation are that the United Nations can and does
correctly identify problems and appropriate solutions necessary to make the
world a better place for all of humanity. Naturally, the dominant and the
powerful very often respond positively to agreed programmes if these would
advance their own narrow interests.
At the same time, the poor will continue to strive for the improvement of
their wretched conditions. They therefore see the UN as the natural instrument
that would help accelerate the process of change for the better. Hence, they
correctly see implementation of all UN programmes as being central to the
efforts around climate change and the struggle against poverty and
underdevelopment.
Yet, the cold reality is that it will be difficult for the UN in its present
form fully to implement its own decisions and therefore help the poor achieve
urgently the MDGs.
Indeed, until the ideals of freedom, justice and equality characterise this
premier world body, the dominant will forever dictate to the dominated and the
interests of the dominated, which are those of the majority of humanity, would
be deferred in perpetuity.
Thus, noble statements would continue to be uttered on all matters facing
the majority of the people of the world such as the need to successfully
conclude the Doha Development Round, while little is done to implement this and
the many critical agreements necessary to pull the poor out of the morass of
poverty and underdevelopment.
President,
We are of the firm belief, in my country, that we will achieve the
development goals. Having emerged from more than three centuries of colonialism
and apartheid, we inherited two inter-linked economies that we characterise as
the First and Second economies.
The two economies, one developed and globally connected and another
localised and informal, display many features of a global system of
apartheid.
As South Africans, we sought to strengthen the First economy and use it as a
base to transfer resources to strengthen and modernise the Second economy and
thus embark on the process to change the lives of those who subsist in this
Second economy.
Indeed, without the requisite resource transfers it would not be possible to
achieve the MDGs because on its own, the Second economy in our country cannot
generate the resources needed to bring a better life to millions of poor South
Africans.
I am mentioning this because, as we all accept, central to the attainment of
MDGs globally, is the critical matter of resource transfers from the rich
countries of the North to poor countries of the South.
Many developing countries, especially those from my own continent, Africa,
do not have the material base from which to address and attain the MDGs on
their own. Accordingly, there is an urgent need for massive resource transfers
through development assistance, investment, trade, technology transfers and
human resource development to these poor countries if we are to achieve the
development goals and successfully adapt to the devastating impacts of climate
change.
If we do not succeed in building a climate change regime that balances
adaptation and mitigation, underpinned by the transfer of technology and
financial resources, we will place an unmanageable burden on future
generations.
In this regard, given Africa's specific and dire challenges, we believe it
is important to enter into a partnership with Africa using the African Union's
programme of New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD), which this
assembly has adopted, so that the measures that the continent has undertaken,
with limited resources for the regeneration of all the African countries, are
strengthened by support from the international community guided by the
programmes of UN.
As history teaches us, it was because of the massive resource transfers in
the aftermath of the World War II that Western Europe recovered and was set on
its development path. A similar intervention helped put a number of Asian
countries onto their own development trajectory.
The question we should ask is why is there an absence of the same resolve to
assist poor nations today?
The global village to which we constantly refer should encourage us to
expand human solidarity. Thus would we build a durable bridge over the river
that has divided our common global village and ensured that one human being
lives a fulfilling life while another experiences a miserable existence.
Representing the citizens of the world, we have set for ourselves programmes
that are central to all of us working together to create better living
conditions for humanity and ensure that we achieve that which is necessary for
our mutual prosperity.
Together, rich and poor, developed and developing, North and South can and
must truly hold hands and address the challenges of climate change and
sustainable development; work together to defeat poverty and underdevelopment
and ensure that every human being is saved from the indecencies and
humiliations that are attached to the poor.
But to do that, we need first and foremost, to implement the decisions that
we have adopted freely in this eminent house of the representatives of the
global community. And so let our actions speak louder than our words.
Thank you.
Issued by: Department of Foreign Affairs
25 September 2007
