High-Level Solutions Dialogue on Adaptation - UNGA

Intervention

Delivered by: Honorable Stephanie Ngirchoimei House Representative, Palau National Congress Palau on behalf of AOSIS

High-Level Solutions Dialogue on Adaptation 22 September 2025, UN Headquarters

Excellencies, distinguished delegates,

It is an honor to speak on behalf of the 39 members of the Alliance of Small Island States. We are nations diverse in geography and culture, but united by shared vulnerabilities and a deep commitment to building resilience in the face of climate change.

The latest Adaptation Gap Report underscores a sobering reality: the world is dangerously off track in closing the adaptation gap. Finance needs are up to fourteen times larger than current flows, and implementation lags even where plans exist. For SIDS, this is not an abstract warning but a threat to our very way of life - rising seas, stronger storms, and salt-intruded aquifers threaten our homes, livelihoods, food and water security every day.

Today’s Dialogue on accelerating adaptation implementation and investment is therefore timely. Closing the finance and implementation gaps is essential to protect our lives, livelihoods and ecosystems. But as we have emphasized before, ambition must be supported by practical, country-led implementation. Leadership by those affected is key. For SIDS, any effective adaptation framework, whether called a platform, a package, or a facility, must be country-driven not just in principle, but in practice. That means our governments, individually or through our regional organizations, must set the agenda, determine priorities, and drive design and governance.

We must have the resources to write our own terms of reference, work with people we trust, and coordinate the platform’s day-to-day functions. Anything less risks replicating the fragmentation and inefficiencies we are trying to overcome.

At the same time, we cannot afford to be burdened with additional bureaucracy. Country platforms, or similar initiatives, should build on, not duplicate, existing processes. They must also work to advance a coherent approach to our climate action, implementation of the SDGs and of the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS. For small islands, these tools must accelerate coordinated action, not add hurdles.

On finance, SIDS urgently need predictable, scaled-up, and timely grants-based flows aligned with our national priorities, supported by a global financial system that recognizes our small scale and limited fiscal space. Even highly concessional loans deepen our debt burdens. At the same time, innovative tools, such as resilience and blue bonds, risk pooling and insurance, and pre-arranged financing, can de-risk investment, mobilize private capital, and deliver rapid resources when climate shocks strike, but these tools must be deployed in ways which consider the special circumstances of SIDS, and are not just designed for larger economies.

As we look to COP30, the proposed Adaptation Package can only succeed if it delivers real outcomes for the most vulnerable, predictable finance, country-driven implementation, and platforms that empower rather than encumber.

Thank you.