NEW YORK–Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) coun­tries have ex­pressed con­cerns over the widen­ing gap be­tween rich and poor coun­tries and warn that they may con­tin­ue to lag be­hind in pur­suit of the Mil­len­ni­um De­vel­op­ment Goals (MDGs).Haiti's Am­bas­sador to the Unit­ed Na­tions, Astride Nazaire, told the UN's Sec­ond Com­mit­tee that it was im­por­tant for mem­ber states to step up their am­bi­tions as they forged the post-2015 de­vel­op­ment agen­da.

"The fo­cus must be on im­prov­ing its rel­e­vance and co­her­ence," she said, call­ing for im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Bar­ba­dos Pro­gramme of Ac­tion and the Mau­ri­tius Strat­e­gy for the Fur­ther Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Bar­ba­dos Pro­gramme.Nazaire said the chal­lenges fac­ing small is­land de­vel­op­ing states in agri­cul­ture, food se­cu­ri­ty and fair trade were ex­ac­er­bat­ed by glob­al mar­ket tur­bu­lence and the ef­fects of cli­mate change.

"Par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion should be paid to the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of moun­tains," she said, point­ing out that two thirds of Haiti was cov­ered by moun­tains. Ex­press­ing dis­ap­point­ment over the ab­sence of mi­gra­tion and de­vel­op­ment from the Com­mit­tee's cur­rent agen­da, the Hait­ian diplo­mat said a sub­stan­tial res­o­lu­tion would be help­ful in rec­og­niz­ing the rights of mi­grant work­ers, "which con­tin­ue to be breached".

Sev­er­al del­e­gates em­pha­sised the need for de­vel­oped coun­tries to de­liv­er on their aid pledges, urg­ing that de­vel­oped coun­tries en­der 0.7 per cent of their gross na­tion­al in­come as of­fi­cial de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance (ODA) to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries and 0.15-0.20 per cent to least de­vel­oped coun­tries.Del­e­gates al­so said just as im­por­tant were col­lec­tive ef­forts to mo­bilise do­mes­tic re­sources, es­pe­cial­ly since pri­vate in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal flows in the form of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment (FDI) tend to fade in most de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

Ja­maican diplo­mat Courte­nay Rat­tray not­ed that the glob­al eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery con­tin­ued to be "slow and un­bal­anced and com­pound­ed chal­lenges faced by small, open economies such as Ja­maica's"."The chal­lenges faced by mid­dle in­come coun­tries, such as per­sis­tent pover­ty and in­equal­i­ty, are of great con­cern, as are the high debt bur­dens of many de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, in­clud­ing the small, vul­ner­a­ble, is­land economies of the Caribbean," she said.

Rat­tray said cli­mate change was al­so a mat­ter of "press­ing con­cern," adding that Ja­maica looked for­ward to the up­com­ing con­fer­ence on the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change, hop­ing it would re­sult in a new agree­ment in 2015."We must re­main mind­ful of the fact that we are not en­gaged in ab­stract dis­cus­sions but, rather, are cre­at­ing the nor­ma­tive frame­work for ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress­ing mat­ters of sur­vival for our peo­ple," she said.

George Tal­bot, Guyana's Charge d'Af­faires to the UN, said that steps had al­ready been tak­en to im­ple­ment the out­come doc­u­ment of Rio+20, that in­clud­ed the "uni­ver­sal­i­sa­tion of mem­ber­ship" to the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme (UN­EP) and the strength­en­ing of the Eco­nom­ic and So­cial Coun­cil."The ar­chi­tec­ture of a new de­vel­op­ment agen­da must be co­her­ent, in­te­grat­ed, in­clu­sive and dy­nam­ic," he said.

On cli­mate change, Tal­bot urged gov­ern­ments to ac­cel­er­ate ef­forts in ad­dress­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion, stat­ing that Guyana had adopt­ed a low-car­bon de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy.He urged that ex­tra fo­cus be giv­en to SIDS in grap­pling with high lev­els of debt and the ef­fects of cli­mate change.

CMC