Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Chair­man of the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS), Am­bas­sador Fa­tu­mana­va Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, has warned is­lands are in grave dan­ger of falling fur­ther be­hind on sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals as they “grap­ple with a myr­i­ad of chal­lenges.”

His state­ment came mere days be­fore the Fourth In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States, SIDS4, opens in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da.

Dr Luteru said on Fri­day that “the cri­sis” fac­ing SIDS will be at the heart of the con­fer­ence.

The Unit­ed Na­tions and world lead­ers have de­clared SIDS4 will be the most piv­otal sum­mit of this decade for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) as they unite to for­mal­ize anew ac­tion plan for achieve­ment of sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goals for SIDS.

The Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS), which rep­re­sents 39 SIDS from the Caribbean, Pa­cif­ic, At­lantic, In­dia and South Chi­na Seas re­gions will be at the fore of dis­cus­sions and are call­ing for in­creased glob­al sup­port to ad­vance nec­es­sary progress.

Ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions, SIDS’ sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment is in per­il due to threats from the cli­mate cri­sis, in­ter­na­tion­al con­flicts, gloomy glob­al eco­nom­ic out­look, lin­ger­ing COVID-19 ef­fects, and a se­vere debt cri­sis. The to­tal pub­lic debt for SIDS stands at ap­prox­i­mate­ly US$82 bil­lion.

“We are veer­ing dan­ger­ous­ly off-path of our 2030 SDG goals, and our world is not liv­ing up to the promise that we shall leave no one be­hind,” Dr Luteru said.

He added, “SIDS4 will be cru­cial as we will fo­cus the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s at­ten­tion on ef­fec­tive­ly ad­dress­ing the ur­gent needs of SIDS. SIDS can­not be left to drown in crises not of their own mak­ing – this would have cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences for the en­tire world.”

Dr Luteru was adamant in the build-up to the con­fer­ence, “We can­not leave this sum­mit with­out hav­ing made good of every op­por­tu­ni­ty to chart a pro­gres­sive, pros­per­ous new way for­ward for our is­lands – is­lands which are so in­te­gral to main­tain­ing the crit­i­cal ecosys­tems our world de­pends on.”

“SIDS4 must move us bold­ly for­ward to a new era of in­ter­na­tion­al co­op­er­a­tion and in­ter re­gion­al ad­vance­ment,” he con­clud­ed.