BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – The world’s small island developing States (SIDS) are among the most vulnerable countries on the planet. And they are in trouble. Some of them are sinking. Or, to be more exact, the waters surrounding them are inching higher, threatening to swallow them up.
Those same waters, which for millennia have been their source of food and their channel for transport, are also getting warmer and more acidic, killing fish and coral and becoming more chaotic in their movements.
SIDS are, in fact, large ocean states: Only 3.5 percent of the area they control is land, while 96.5 percent is ocean. The deteriorating condition of oceans represents an existential threat to the entire planet, and SIDS is at the front line of this war. If we do not help them turn the tide, the battle for our future on this planet will be lost.
Island nations face unique challenges due to their small size, remoteness, exposure to natural disasters, and dependence on faraway markets and resources.
These challenges are compounded by climate change, volatile global markets, and the ongoing repercussions of the pandemic further. The cumulative impact of these challenges undermines SIDS’ capacity to cope with current challenges, future shocks and crises, and their efforts to build equitable societies.
Next year in Antigua and Barbuda, the United Nations will convene an international conference on the small island developing states. The agenda gives a sense of the urgency of the problem. It will tackle climate change, sea-level rise, and biodiversity loss alongside the global debt crisis and rising inequality.
The result will be a new 10-year plan of action for SIDS, one agreed between the small island nations and international partners.
We must use the opportunity of the fourth International Conference on SIDs to help these nations overcome the barriers that hinder their progress and potential. Our responsibility is to help them survive this existential crisis thrust upon them by climate change and outdated global-level systems.
That is why this week in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, we are gathering with the governments from 16 Caribbean States to hear firsthand an assessment of regional progress and their priorities for the new plan.
These assessments will be the foundation for a more ambitious, coherent, and effective global response that recognizes these countries’ unique needs and circumstances and provides them with adequate means of implementation, including access to finance, data, technology, capacity-building, and trade.
The United Nations is committed to supporting SIDS in its quest for a more resilient and sustainable future. To most of us, these small islands may seem distant and set apart, tiny dots on an expansive globe, but we must remember that the problems that SIDS faces today are the ones that the rest of the world must confront tomorrow.
*Li Jinhua is the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs.
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