Jamaica: SIDS Roundtable - Presentations & Speeches

Statement by
H.E. Mr. Otinielu T Tausi
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs and Rural Development
Government of Tuvalu

Chairman
Colleagues
Distinguished
Ladies and gentlemen:

I am honoured to be part of this process in building partnerships amongst ourselves and the rest of the world in our collective effort to address our vulnerability, and especially in regard to the WSSD process as whole.
Let me start by conveying my heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to the people and the government of Jamaica for the warm hospitality they have provided since the day we arrived in Montego Bay. My thanks as well to UNDP for making this meeting possible.
Tuvalu shares the notion that the WSSD must do justice to the special vulnerability of SIDS and we are most glad that SIDS has captured a chapter in the ongoing WSSD negotiations through the chairman's text.
Our low-lying flat atolls with no more than 2 meters above sea, sets the scene for our environmental vulnerability. Our smallness and geographic isolation in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, together with our minimal poor quality land resources, together with our inability to exploit our vast fisheries resources also sets the scene for our economic and social vulnerability.
Tuvalu acknowledges the importance of the strategic roundtable meetings such as this one, as they ensure intra and inter-regional cooperation among SIDS especially on mechanisms to mitigate our vulnerability.
However, Tuvalu firmly believes that in order to address the inherent vulnerability of SIDS and build on our resilience, we must start from our own backyards. We should first of all set our house on order by instituting national policy frameworks that foster sustainable development, undertake comprehensive planning, provide quality education, and the many more critical enabling yardsticks.
What I am trying to say here Chairman is that we in SIDS should first of all focus on establishing an enabling environment internally before stepping out to the outside world.
Tuvalu would like to impress that the type partnerships ought to focus mainly on national and local agenda in SIDS.
Tuvalu congratulates resource people for the tremendous effort in producing the materials for this meeting. The document under consideration is a step forward for SIDS. Not only does it highlights areas for SIDS cooperation most importantly it has concrete recommendations for which SIDS could base their collaborative efforts in addressing our vulnerability.
In our Pacific region, at the highest level, the Pacific islands leaders forum acknowledges vulnerability which is the basis for the work of our various regional organizations on vulnerability. I note specially the roles of the pacific in preparing the environmental and social vulnerability papers for this roundtable.
Mr. Chairman, it is vital that we understand what constitute our respective vulnerabilities in SIDS and more importantly, how we could manage them to increase our resilience. Our presence in this meeting therefore gives us hope of a real commitment by UNDP to assisting SIDS to effectively manage our vulnerabilities.
As a first step Mr. Chairman, from this roundtable, it is important that a draft partnership statement in the form of type 2 initiative entitled "Managing Vulnerability of SIDS" to be presented for further consideration and development at the WSSD PrepCom 4 in Bali two weeks from now.
Finally Mr. Chairman, a solidarity among SIDS is critical to the success of our combined effort to manage our vulnerabilities, and I call for the cooperation of all to enable us achieve tremendous rewards in our plight to increase our resilience.

Thank you Chairman.

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