PRESS STATEMENT 1800
Opening Statement by Cook Islands Prime Minister Hon Terepai
Maoate Pacific Islands Conference on Climate Change, Climate
Variability and Sea-Level Rise,
3-7 April 2000 Rarotonga, Cook Islands
The Pacific has a rich and diverse natural heritage that all its
peoples acknowledge and recognise with pride. That shared
recognition bonds us in a special way as we relate to each
other as Pacific Islanders, and it is inherent in the way we
try to further ourselves as a region. As the inhabitants of
small and scattered islands, those bonds spread deeply, and
widely - to the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, to all the seas and
oceans around the world.
Here in the Cook Islands, the preservation of our natural
heritage is a realisation that our quality of life is
underpinned by the health of our unique ecosystems. From this
volcanic island of Rarotonga to the Outer Islands atolls, from
our land to the lagoons and ocean floor, the web of life
interconnects and produces our food, the materials we use, and
influences the quality of soil and water.
This complex but natural web moderates our climate, and sustains
the ability of the environment to support life. Cook Islanders
want to preserve this proud and healthy heritage. Above all,
they want to ensure that their children inherit and
environmental legacy as clean and plentiful as that enjoyed by
their parents.
Cook Islanders know that clean air, water and soil for our food
are essential to good health. They also know that a sound
economy depends on the responsible, longterm management of our
precious, renewable resources on land, and in the sea. And as
managers of those resources, we know that there comes a heavy
responsibility to investigate and learn from our experiences.
Throughout history in the Pacific, our experiences as island
peoples have often been shaped by the actions and reason of
faraway voices. Voices that increasingly speak of the need to
be tolerant, to understand, and to accept, because we do, after
all, live in an age of accelerating globalisation.
In the past for example, we have lived side by side with the
ravages of world war and the risks of the nuclear age. We have
been asked to accommodate the infrastructure for war. We have
been asked to live with nuclear testing in our atmosphere and
in our sea. We have been asked to live with the destruction of
chemical weapons and we have been asked to live with
the shipment of hazardous wastes and plutonium through our
waters. So much has been asked of the Pacific region over the
years that it should not be surprising to anyone that the
Pacific region has found its own voice and now asks its own
questions.
The marching age of development wrought further influence on our
lives in a manner in which we had no real control, and in a way
that we could not turn back. New afflictions stemmed from the
greenhouse gas phenomenon and we must now live with new
questions over carbon dioxide emissions and global warming, sea
level rise, and climate change.
Still, the requests continue to be made of our region, and to
our larger family of Small Island States around the world. This
time, however, we have our own questions and they are questions
that determine our very existence.
What do I say to a tourism-led business community that is
destroyed by a perception of contamination if a ship carrying
nuclear waste sinks in our waters? What do I say to my people
when they lose their land and their homes under a rising sea?
And what comfort can I give to the families of cyclone
victims when unexplained weather patterns continue to cause
havoc on their small, unprotected communities?
Do I tell them that the developed countries are not yet ready to
acknowledge their welfare by reaching the desired reductions in
gas emissions? Do I tell them that the scientific and political
communities are so at odds that we must continue to live with
the ongoing threats to our very existence? Or do I give them
hope that the global community is acting as one in the search
for answers?
Your work, and the deliberations of this conference, is an
important part of building upon this search, not just for me
and the questions posed by Cook Islanders but for Leaders
everywhere who carry the conscience and well being
of their people. I do not pretend to know the answers, even as a
trained medical doctor one does not always have the answers.
However, I do know my country and I know what my people go
through in their daily lives. And I know that everything
possible must be done to avoid failure and provide a
future.
Political decision-makers and the formulators of policy have an
enormous task, as does the scientific community. What those
tasks must do is converge in a fashion that speaks to the
benefit of those that are marginalised and disadvantaged from
wealth, security and knowledge.
The Cook Islands and other Small Island States must press upon
the need to investigate and collect data and information while
developing the corresponding policy frameworks. Without the two
complementing each other, the world of science and the arena
for policy will simply overshadow the obligations required to
bring security to our lives. We cannot lose sight of
the impacts of our changing climate, the vulnerability of our
ecosystems, and the management of our resources.
These factors must receive the vigilance of concerted
investigation and strategic policy-making for the stewardship
of our environment to result in an inheritance of wealth for
our children.
Forum Secretariat/South Pacific Regional Environment Programme
Rarotonga, Cook Islands
3 April 2000
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