Assalaam Alaikum and a very good morning to you all.
I thank the organizers for inviting me to speak at this Workshop. I gladly accepted the invitation, partly because, like most people, I also like to return to the roots every now and then and get nostalgic about some old memories. As some of you might know I, as a career diplomat, represented the Maldives on some of the key climate change negotiations in the 1980s and early 1990s, including those that resulted in the UNFCCC.
The Maldives was by then showing signs of activism in international politics, especially on issues relating to climate change. Among the early initiatives was the convening of the first ever small states conference in the Maldives in November 1989 to discuss the phenomena of global warming and sea level rise. It was also the first time that the issue of sea level rise was extended from the realm of science to the corridors of diplomacy. The Male’ Declaration helped to galvanise the small states around these issues and eventually formed the Alliance of Small Island States as a negotiating group to promote the interests of the world’s most vulnerable states.
The small states were at a disadvantage in the negotiations not only because they were small and lacked the material power to exert influence; the diplomatic toolbox that we carried with us, lacked the tools required to advance the common interests. The shortcomings were visible in every delegation or group in the negotiations because, traditional diplomacy, both as an instrument and as an institution, was not designed to deal with issues such as climate change.
Traditional diplomacy was designed to promote national interests, defined in narrow, national terms; climate change requires us to define interests more broadly, to include the interests of the humanity.
Traditional diplomacy analyses negotiations in terms of what one’s own country will get in return to what it will give in. The experts in climate negotiations realised that the phenomena that they wish to deal with does not recognise borders, territories, sovereignties, or even national identities.
Climate change requires us to come up with new lexicons and new concepts that can capture the nuances of nature. It requires us to recalibrate diplomacy that can foster multilateralism, not just as a methodology, but as a strategy. This year will mark one hundred years since multilateralism emerged as an important principle in addressing global challenges. The magic formula in multilateralism is that while some countries get a better deal than others, no country is worse off, than they were before.
But not everyone understands that reality. As a result, diplomacy has produced some of the most spectacular failures in climate negotiations, as we observed in the Copenhagen negotiations in 2009, and some of the most iconic successes, such as the Paris Agreement in 2015. That is the message that the Maldives has been carrying for the last three decades. Maldives has been highlighting the dangers of climate change, and on the need to forge partnerships to find solutions. And we don’t spare any efforts in highlighting the danger, as President Nasheed showed in his underwater cabinet meeting in 2009. President Nasheed, since then, is globally recognised as the Island President. He not only continues to highlight the dangers, but most importantly, proposes solutions, common solutions, to overcome the common threat.
The Maldives both in its national capacity and as Chair of AOSIS, is proud to have contributed to the formulation of the Paris Agreement, and the recent negotiations in Katowice where we agreed on the rule book for the implementation of the Agreement. The Maldives will continue its activism in global climate diplomacy. President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih has identified climate change as one of the key foreign policy issues for this Government. Our actions will not be limited to just highlighting the dangers. We will forge new partnership that will foster consensus on key issues. Reducing the global temperature to 1.5°C is possible, and our policies and our actions at national and international levels will seek to achieve that. Climate justice, and compensations on loss and damage, have to be recognised as key principles. Adaptation will need to remain the key strategy. Adaptation to climate change in the Maldives requires significant investments. Investments that are long-term and sustainable, and acceleration of such investments not only by the public sector, but more importantly by the private sector, too.
After we handed over the chairmanship of AOSIS to Belize at the beginning of this year, the Maldives has re-started its international activisms with a renewed enthusiasm. I spoke at the UN Security Council last month with a call for greater attention to the climate driven conflicts as a serious threat to international peace and security. The Maldives is also an active member of the Group of Friends on Climate Security at the United Nations in New York, that seeks to coordinate advocacy on climate security issues. The Maldives diplomats play a key role in shaping international actions on climate and oceans, and proposing solutions that can generate the consensus of the global public.
Climate change requires us, the diplomats, to think, not just outside the box; we have to, in fact, think without a box. It makes one to realise, that the very human instincts of survival is also shared by the entire humanity. The Maldives will be the partner in fostering global consensus on actions to stop and reverse the runaway climate change. The national interests of the Maldives on this issue are the interests of the entire humanity.
I thank you.