One extreme weather event can wipe out decades of development progress in a Small Island Developing State - and these events are becoming more frequent.
That’s the sobering perspective from Samoa, whose ambassador to the United Nations, Mr. Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Pa'olelei Luteru, was speaking at a UN-OHRLLS-organised side event to the Ocean Conference.
Photo credit: Renee Capozzola
The Ocean is in trouble. Some 60 per cent of the world’s major marine ecosystems have been degraded or are being used unsustainably. And when life underwater becomes more difficult, there are big implications for life on land.
Source: United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
May 27, 2022, Bali, INDONESIA – More countries must “Think Resilience”, and urgently adopt and improve early warning systems to reduce risks from an increasing number of disasters across the world, a UN forum has concluded.
By Ambassador Peter Thomson, UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean
KOROR, Palau – The seventh Our Ocean Conference closed in Palau with the announcement of 410 commitments to protect the ocean worth $16.35 billion while at the business forum for island nations organised by the UN Office for the Most Vulnerable States (OHRLLS), major announcements were made on renewable energy, post-COVID tourism recovery and zero-emission shipping.
Heidi Schroderus-Fox, Acting High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing States and Small Island Developing States.
13 April, Koror, Palau - As the saying goes, we know more about the surface of the moon than the seafloor of our own ocean. But perhaps not for too much longer.
The crippling cost of debt financing for many developing countries has hamstrung their recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, forced cutbacks in development spending, and constrained their ability to respond to further shocks, according to a new report launched by the United Nations today.
General Assembly resolution 76/203 established a representative high-level panel of experts co-chaired by two eminent persons, one of whom shall be from a small island developing State.
This decision was in response to the Secretary General’s recommendation that the United Nations system develop a multidimensional vulnerability index for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).
All countries are vulnerable in one form or another.
