TUVALU NATIONAL STATEMENT
for the
SUMMIT OF THE FUTURE
Delivered by Prime Minister Honourable Mr. Feleti Penitala Teo, MP OBE
Sunday, 22 September 2024
New York
1. Excellencies, With all protocols being observed.
3. It is with absolute and immense honor that I, as the head of government for Tuvalu, offer my perspectives on the objectives and pursuits of this Summit of the Future.
4. The Summit presents a timely opportunity for the global community to recast and to reform the global architecture on multilateralism and international cooperation.
5. The exercise is essential to assure their relevance and effectiveness in addressing the challenges of today and of years to come.
6. Tuvalu expresses its solid support for the Pact for the Future together with the
Declaration on Future Generations and the Global Digital Compact.
7. The Pact represents a well-crafted and delicately negotiated set of commitments and recommitments by the global community.
8. These commitments, if enacted fully, would provide the requisite prescription to reinvigorating and to enhancing the robustness of international cooperation grounded on the spirit and the letter of the United Nations Charter.
9. Excellencies.
10. The Global Community in adopting the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs acknowledged the reality that sustainable development, the preservation of the environment, the maintenance of peace and stability are all interconnected and intertwined.
11. It is imperative to understand that achieving one goal is dependent on achieving all others.
12. The SDGs which include the eradication of poverty, ensuring quality education and health, and combating climate change to name some are the blueprint for a better and more sustainable and secure future.
13. To achieve these noble goals, it is incumbent on the global community to renew with vigor its commitment to a reinvigorated multilateralism system that is adaptable and resilient to new and emerging challenges.
14. This Summit has been an opportune moment for the global community to take stock and to reflect on the current architecture of multilateralism and the UN system in general.
15. And to ask the hard question.
16. Does the current architecture of multilateralism and international cooperation remain effective?
17. The overwhelming response, with dues respect, has not been in the affirmative.
18. So, the summit has been challenged to provide the necessary and essential reforms and to come up with the requisite prescription to strengthen, to reinvigorate and to reboot multilateralism and international cooperation to foster a spirit of solidarity and collaboration.
19. Excellencies,
20. The world we live in today, is a world that is characterized by the multiple crises that we must endure.
21. Crises that are unfortunately of our own making, be it environmental and climate change, arm conflicts, financial crises and gross social inequities.
22. Tuvalu is a small Pacific atoll island nation and is also a large ocean state.
23. As such, Tuvalu has a strong affinity with the ocean and the environment.
24. Tuvalu carries the firm belief that we are only temporary stewards and caretakers of the ocean and the environment on behalf of future generations.
25. The Summit must therefore recognize the importance of intergenerational responsibility as we approach multiple tipping points.
26. Our decisions today will have profound implications for future generations, and we must act with the utmost respect and care for future generations.
27. For Tuvalu, climate change-induced sea level rise is the greatest and most devastative manifestation of climate change.
28. The ocean that used to define us as a people and as a community and as a nation, will soon engulf us if seal level rise is not halted or the resilience of our land territory to sea level rise is not reinforced.
29. Climate changed-induced sea level rise risks the lives and livelihoods of present and future generations of my people, but Tuvalu contributed negligibly, if at all, to the cause of climate change.
30. That is how grossly unfair and inequitable the world we live in today.
31. Tuvalu and other vulnerable states at the forefront of the devastative impacts of climate change-induced seal level rise suffer first and the worst.
32. Whilst states that benefit the most from fossil fuel extraction continue to accelerate their development and prosperity at the expense of the most vulnerable states which are left, well and truly behind.
33. That is why Tuvalu is leading and supporting the Fossil Fuel Non- Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT) Initiative to garner international support on a binding treaty arrangement that limit the use of fossil fuel with the ultimate objective of total phase out.
34. The world is unfortunately rife with inequities be it international financing, environmental and climate change and pollution, or social inequities.
35. And despite our best efforts, we cannot solve these problems alone.
36. We need international cooperation to respond to those shared and common challenges.
37. So, we need and deserve a multilateralism architecture and system that is responsive, adaptable, resilient, robust and fit for purpose.
38. Excellencies.
39. In closing, Tuvalu commends the co-facilitators and the leads that charted the way forward in steering the Summit to where it is today.
40. Tuvalu renders its support to the Pact for the Future and the accompanying declaration and compact.
41. I express the sincere hope that the commitments in the Pact provide the much- needed reboot to the global multilateralism architecture and the UN systems generally.
42. And the global community must seize this opportunity to reaffirm and recommit to multilateralism and international cooperation, to the SDGs and to the principles of the United Nations Charter.
43. Tuvalu calls the global community to rally behind the Pact for the Future and to build a more equitable global system where no nation is left behind, particularly those frontline nations to the devastative impacts of climate change and climate changed-induced sea level rise, like my country Tuvalu.
44. I thank you, Mr President.
ENDS
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