Resilience is the cornerstone of our recovery and rebuilding process. These disasters provide an opportunity for our Region to build back better and smarter. It offers the prospect of the affected states becoming the first climate change resilient countries in the world.
But CARICOM cannot achieve that goal alone. Cooperation with partners like Mexico is necessary for us to fulfil them, and continue our path to sustainable development for our people. As we seek to rebuild, CARICOM, with the support of the United Nations is convening a High-Level Donors Conference in New York, next month, on 21 November. Mr. President, we will be most pleased if Mexico accepted our invitation to participate.
Read Secretary-General’s full address to the Opening Ceremony of the CARICOM Mexico Summit in Belize, Wednesday 25 October 2017
I welcome you all to the Fourth Summit of the Heads of State and Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the United Mexican States.
I extend a special welcome to His Excellency President Henrique Peña Nieto and his delegation.
Allow me to take this opportunity to express our sincere appreciation to the Government of Belize for the warm Caribbean welcome that we have received here in Belize City. The cordiality that has been extended to us, and the excellent arrangements which have been put in place augur well for a successful meeting. I have no doubt it will lead to a further strengthening of the already close ties between CARICOM and Mexico.
It was in 1974, that Mexico became a pioneer as the first country to establish a Joint Commission with CARICOM. This heralded the beginning of a mutually beneficial partnership which demonstrated the value of South-South relationships. Though at different stages of development, our co-existence in the same hemisphere, where we share the same Caribbean Sea has created a deeper understanding of each other’s interests and challenges.
It is this understanding that has guided CARICOM and Mexico towards the areas in which we have undertaken cooperation. These include Agriculture, Transportation, Trade and Investment and Tourism, Human Resource Development Disaster Management and Climate Change, to name a few. It has also provided significant infrastructure projects in a number of our Member States under the MesoAmerica project.
Our corresponding agencies such as the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and CENAPRED, the Mexican disaster preparedness and management agency, have developed relations.
The latest example is the proposed Memorandum of Understanding for the establishment of a Permanent Dialogue Mechanism on animal health, between the Caribbean Agency for Agricultural Health and Food Safety (CAHFSA), and the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food of Mexico.
Earlier today, our Foreign Ministers reviewed the Sixth CARICOM-Mexico Technical Cooperation Programme, and discussed ways to improve on the delivery. It is expected that this afternoon’s dialogue will provide further impetus to those efforts.
Excellencies, Heads of State and Government, we meet in the shadow of devastating natural disasters that have affected both our Community and Mexico. Hundreds of lives have been lost. Homes, buildings and critical infrastructure lie in ruins. Estimates of the damage run into billions of dollars. The aftermath of these hurricanes and earthquakes is economic loss, social displacement and environmental degradation.
May I take this opportunity to offer sincere condolences to all those who lost loved ones in the recent hurricanes, and earthquakes and wish a full and speedy recovery to the injured.
The swift occurrence of two category 5 hurricanes within two weeks signals a dangerous change in the intensity and frequency of climate change related events. The unusually heavy rainfalls and widespread flooding in Trinidad and Tobago is yet another example. All this heralds the advent of a new normal. It emphasises that climate change is not a matter to be debated. It is here. It is real. We are living it.
That reality reinforces the need to make the Region more resilient economically, socially, environmentally and technologically. In keeping with the Community’s Five-Year Strategic Plan.
Resilience is the cornerstone of our recovery and rebuilding process. These disasters provide an opportunity for our Region to build back better and smarter. It offers the prospect of the affected states becoming the first climate change resilient countries in the world.
But CARICOM cannot achieve that goal alone. Cooperation with partners like Mexico is necessary for us to fulfil them, and continue our path to sustainable development for our people. As we seek to rebuild, CARICOM, with the support of the United Nations is convening a High-Level Donors Conference in New York, next month, on 21 November. Mr. President, we will be most pleased if Mexico accepted our invitation to participate.
CARICOM greatly appreciates Mexico’s understanding of the challenges facing Small Island and Low-Lying Coastal Developing States (SIDS) such as our Member States. We welcome Mexico’s willingness to advocate on issues of utmost importance to us and to reflect CARICOM’s perspective at the level of the G20 and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
A very significant issue for us in that regard is the need for an urgent change in the criteria for access to concessional development financing. This becomes even more urgent given the increased frequency and intensity of natural disasters. The resulting high levels of recurring reconstruction, require major injections of additional financing. The repeated costs of recovery in the aftermath of successive natural disasters add to indebtedness. This exacerbates debt levels if grant or concessional financing cannot be accessed.
Many CARICOM Member States are classified as Middle Income countries, and are graduated out of such access, due to the use of GDP per capita as a primary criterion. The outmoded use of GDP per capita as a principal measure of development must no longer apply. The criteria must be changed to take into account the economic and environmental vulnerabilities of SIDS.
At the recent Annual Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in Washington, both institutions signaled their willingness to temporarily relax the GDP criteria for our countries to access concessional development financing for reconstruction.
The officials however, stressed that the decision to make that change lay with the board members, particularly the larger shareholders.
Mr. President, we need Mexico’s voice in those fora, as well as, at the level of the OECD, to advocate for that change to become a permanent feature of development financing.
Excellencies, Heads of State and Government, summits such as these enable a dialogue between friends and strengthens our fraternal relationship. CARICOM and Mexico have enjoyed such a relationship for 44 years. Today’s deliberations will surely serve to tighten the ties that bind us.
I thank you.