Mr President,
Secretary-General, Excellencies, Colleagues
I would like to thank the Permanent Mission of the Co-operative Republic of Guyana to the United Nations, for the invitation to participate in today’s debate as well as the briefers for their stimulating remarks.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
In the contemporary world, there is not a single challenge that does not interact with others. Climate crisis threatens food security, and they jointly threaten stability and social cohesion.
And there is not a single challenge that applies merely to a country or a region. The collapse of the grain initiative in Ukraine threatens the grain chain altogether and the fast ice melting on the Antarctic affects the globe. And this, while more than 600 million people worldwide are projected to face hunger in 2030.
The Mediterranean Sea, the crossroad of 3 continents, is an illustrative example of interaction and spillover of such phenomena. The annual temperature of the sea is 1.54 °C higher than pre-1990 levels and about 0.4 °C more than the global average warming.
Temperature increase has caused serious environmental damage. The Mediterranean basin has become in the last years the hotspot of the climate crisis, with extensive wildfires and catastrophic floods. Further, the rise of the sea level, endangers the quantity and quality of fisheries and fish stocks and in turn peoples’ health and livelihood.
Mitigating global warming, advancing sustainable tourism and green shipping, and reducing microplastics pollution will be in the Agenda of the 9th “Our Ocean Conference”, that we will be hosting in Athens on the 16th and 17th of next April. The conference will be the bridge between cop28 and the UN Conference on Oceans next year, aspiring to produce tangible milestones and credible commitments.
In the same vein, Greece will take the initiative of a nexus between climate, peace and security, setting it as a priority of its candidacy as a non-permanent member of the UΝ Security Council for 2025-26.
However, no conference or a single state intervention may bring astonishing results. This is equivalent to Sisyphus eternally and repeatedly rolling a heavy rock up a hill. The complexity and extraterritoriality of the challenges call for collective reaction of governments and peoples of the world, with a view to the future.
What we need is a different mindset when it comes to environmental protection and food security. Such a cross-cutting policy is WHO’s “OneHealth” project, an integrated, unifying approach to balance and optimize holistically the health of people, animals and the environment. We need this type of new vision of global solidarity and intergenerational sustainability. Through ethical and rule-based global governance and fair burden sharing among states.
This is why we call for a universal alliance for sustainability. And we endorse the proposal for the appointment of a UN special envoy for a sustainable future.
We owe it to the future generations from whom we have admittedly detached a significant portion of their natural dividends.
After all, we must not forget: We are not owners, but merely caretakers on earth.
Thank you.
February 13, 2024