AOSIS Intervention on Climate Issues in the Sea Level Rise Declaration

Co-facilitators,

1. AOSIS thanks you, and your teams, for your guidance and hard work through this process. I have the honour to speak on behalf of the 37 member States of AOSIS with respect to the various climate change related issues that remain open in the text.
2. Let us begin by stating the obvious. No group of countries cares more about climate change than small island developing States. We have been the conscience of the climate process for more than three decades. We were the first to call for a 1.5°C limit when others said it was unrealistic. We have fought for common but differentiated responsibilities; for adaptation finance at scale that reaches those who need it; for the reform of an international financial architecture that was not built for our circumstances; and for the recognition and action on loss and damage. These are important priorities for us, and we will continue to pursue them with everything we have.
3. Precisely because these issues matter so deeply to us, we want to be clear about where they belong. This declaration needs to be focused on responding to sea level rise, and clear actions that allow us to deal these serious and irreversible risks. It cannot relitigate the issues that we have such trouble coming to consensus on in the UNFCCC.
4. We note, with respect, that the proposals now being re-introduced – to reaffirm or to exclude common but differentiated responsibilities, to add or to resist temperature-goal and mitigation language, to expand or to constrain finance--are precisely the questions that the climate negotiations exist to address.
5. AOSIS has been disciplined in this regard. In accordance with the mandate of resolution 78/319, we have focused our energy on the issues this Declaration was convened to address: the implications of sea level rise for the law of the sea, for the maritime zones and entitlements of our States, for the continuity of statehood and of membership of the United Nations, and for the people whose lives and territory are most directly affected. These are the matters that have no other home. This Declaration is the place where they can be addressed. As we have said before, this is not about including what we want, but what we need to confront sea level rise.
6. None of this diminishes our climate ambition. Our restraint here is not indifference, it is in fact, the opposite. We are protecting this Declaration so that it can do what only it can do, and we will carry our climate priorities forward, with undiminished determination, in the forums where they belong. We urge all delegations to join us in keeping this Declaration focused on responding to sea level rise, and in bringing it to a successful conclusion.
7. I thank you.