By: Spokesman Newsroom
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts (Tuesday 28th September 2022) — Newly-elected Prime Minister Dr. Terrance Drew, while speaking at the United Nations 77th General Assembly in New York on Friday 23rd September 2022, gave his position that the forum must be used for resolute recommitment to multilateral cooperation. “The United Nations finds itself at a crossroads in our reckoning with history’s judgment. Do we want to be the body that abdicated our responsibility to protect the planet? Or the body that debates and postures as the world around us submerges beneath cascading crises? It is my hope that we choose instead to be the body that met the moment and responded to the fierce urgency of now. We must therefore use this 77th General Assembly — not merely for political posturing — but for resolute recommitment to multilateral cooperation. For Small Island Developing States, and indeed vulnerable peoples everywhere, there can be no international security without climate security,” he stated.
PM Drew highlighted the peculiar vulnerability of Caribbean nations: “All countries are environmentally vulnerable; all are socially and economically exposed to exogenous shock, but in the climate-challenged, tourism-dependent countries in the Caribbean Sea, during several consecutive months of every year, we run the real risk of a wipe-out event. Surely, this warrants special consideration. Caribbean nations are on the ‘bullet end’ of a climate fight we did not cause, do not want, and cannot afford, but are unable to escape.” He urged countries to honour the financial commitments made following COP26 to double contributions to adaptation financing by 2025, and called for the development of a multidimensional vulnerability index (MVI) for small island developing states: “Saint Kitts and Nevis will use this index in its advocacy for a more appropriate redistribution of development assistance and access to concessional financing.”