UN Security Council: Intervention by Republic of the Marshall Islands Ambassador Alfred Capelle

My island nation wishes to align itself with the statement delivered by Papua New Guinea on behalf of the Pacific Island developing States.

It is well known to the global community that small island developing States such as the Marshall Islands are already experiencing the earliest ecological impacts of climate change. The fate of my nation is not merely an isolated moral concern, but part of the first chapter of a complex chain of events which will weaken the structure of global peace. In addition to consideration by other forums, the issue of climate change deserves the ongoing attention of this body as a continuing agenda item.

Population relocation due to rising sea levels is already a reality in my region; with limited available land, this issue will quickly reach critical mass. Certain low-lying island nations, including the Marshall Islands, are at serious risk of becoming an entirely new class of global environmental refugees. The vanishing of entire nations is simply without historical precedent; with an average height of only two metres above sea level, my nation is among the most vulnerable in the world. Faced as we are with the foreseeable loss of our islands, our struggle to redefine our Marshallese identity and homeland will compound existing political and social stresses already prevalent in the Pacific region.

The threat of climate change to security is very much a stark reality, not a theoretical possibility. Recent research indicates that two impacts associated with climate change — ocean acidification and increased water temperatures — are already affecting marine ecosystems. While my nation’s land mass and population may be small, our large exclusive economic zone is home to some of the world’s richest fisheries.

As our coral reefs continue to vanish due to bleaching and our marine ecology is altered by increasing greenhouse gas emissions, we must emphasize to the Security Council the severe and growing threat posed by climate change to our fish stocks — a critical global food source. The diminishment of food supplies in the face of rising populations not only threatens our own national subsistence, but will also intensify international competition for increasingly scarce essential resources. Such future rivalries will create an invitation to global conflict.

We have the opportunity still before us to reduce the threat that climate change poses to regional and global security. While much lip service has been paid to climate change, the global community has too often disregarded the severity and broad reach of its impacts. International action in both developing critical adaptation strategies and in successfully implementing greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals has been a sad and grave disappointment.

My nation realizes the complex challenges and costs that face the global community in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in adapting to climate change impacts. However, the challenges and cost of inaction or of inadequate action will be far greater. Climate change will undermine our regional and global stability, in addition to threatening the very survival of certain small island developing States, such as the Marshall Islands.

From UN Security Council Recod, April 17, 2007