Secretary-General Urges Leaders of Small Island Developing States, at Climate Summit, to Use ‘Moral Authority’ and Demand Action, Leadership, Justice

Following are UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ remarks to the Leaders’ Summit of Small Island Developing States on Climate Change, in Baku today:

You have every right to be angry, and I am, too.  You are on the sharp end of a colossal injustice. An injustice that sees the very future of your islands threatened by rising seas, your people pounded by record hurricanes, your economies torn apart and development gains left in tatters.

This is an injustice perpetrated by the few — the G20 account for around 80 per cent of global emissions — and it is an injustice that must end.  Your nations — the small island developing States — are demonstrating what climate ambition looks like.  You are the first responders.  The world must follow you, and it must support you.

First, by sparing no effort to keep 1.5°C alive.  That means global emissions falling 9 per cent a year to 2030.  And they are still rising.  It means phasing out fossil fuels — fast and fairly — and delivering on the COP28 [twenty-eighth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] outcome.

And it means every country putting forward new, economy-wide national climate action plans by COP30 that align with 1.5°C.  The biggest emitters — the G20 — must lead, and the United Nations is supporting countries to deliver through its Climate Promise initiative.

Second, justice — you deserve support to deal with a crisis you have done next to nothing to create.  We must get serious about loss and damage.  The amount initially pledged is equivalent to the combined annual salaries of the 10 most well-paid footballers in the world.  As I said, we must be serious about loss and damage.

We need significant contributions flowing to the loss and damage fund, so it can have a meaningful impact — and, namely, a meaningful impact — in SIDS [small island developing States] that sometimes are devastated by climate change.

We also need a surge in funds for you to protect your people from climate impacts, which are growing in strength and frequency.  Every one of you must have the chance to build resilience and to seize the benefits of adaptation to drive progress across the Sustainable Development Goals.

Developed countries must honour their commitment to double adaptation finance to at least $40 billion a year by next year.  This is an important step to closing the adaptation finance gap.  But, it will not be enough.  These measures can take us so only so far.  Ultimately, we need more fundamental reform.

And so, third — finance.  Your nations have faced a perfect storm of suffocating debt, high capital costs, rising prices and COVID-19, which paralysed many of your economies.  The result: scant funds for climate action or broader sustainable development.

The Pact for the Future — adopted by consensus in September in the General Assembly of the United Nations — made significant strides forward.  It calls for reform of the international financial architecture, including effective debt relief.  It commits countries to advancing an SDG Stimulus of $500 billion a year.

And it asks multilateral development banks to look at ways to improve access to concessional finance for developing countries and to consider structural vulnerability — including through using the multidimensional vulnerability index.  A middle-income country can have an enormous need of concessional funding because of its vulnerability, and this cannot be forgotten.

It is essential that vulnerable middle-income countries can access funds.  We must push for implementation of these commitments, starting here and now.  We need a new climate finance goal in COP29 that allows the mobilization of the trillions of dollars of finance developing countries need — with a significant increase in concessional public funds made now.

That goal must provide clarity on how money will be mobilized, tap innovative sources — such as levies on aviation, shipping and fossil-fuel extraction — and include an accessibility, transparency and accountability framework to build confidence that funds will be delivered and available.

It must also include major capitalization boosts and reforms of the multilateral development banks, including so they can leverage far more private finance at reasonable costs for the needs of SIDS.

I trust that you will be fully supporting the presidency to make sure that we have a successful COP29 with an ambitious new finance goal that can be at the same time taking into account the particular situation of small island developing States.

At this COP and beyond, I urge you: use your moral authority to demand action, demand leadership and demand your justice.  Time is of the essence.

Together, you are helping us move from anger to action.  And, together, I know we can win.