May I begin by expressing my thanks to the President and people of Azerbaijan for the warm welcome and gracious hospitality bestowed on us.
We wish you peace and prosperity.
Your Excellencies:
This past year has been the hottest in recorded history.
For the first time, for more than 12 months, global temperatures have exceeded the warming threshold of 1.5-degrees Celsius.
We are dangerously close to a line beyond which there is no return—a line that separates the world as we know it from a world unrecognizable.
Our choice today will either be remembered as the moment we stepped forward together or as the instant we allowed the world to slip from our grasp.
How will they judge us? Will they say we were too timid, too divided, to save what we had the power to protect?”
Already the catastrophic climate events witnessed around the world have led to major loss of life, property and infrastructure.
And yet we persist in responding to these events as though they are merely unfortunate, isolated and national.
I ask you to look beyond borders, beyond flags. The fires that devour your forests, the hurricanes that shatter our homes, are not distant misfortunes but shared tragedies.
What we endure, you endure; what we lose, you lose.
And if we fail to act, it will be our children and grand children who bear the burden, their dreams reduced to memories of what we could have saved.
This is the fundamental principle underpinning this United Nations Framework.
None of us can achieve a solution by acting on our own.
And none of us can escape the obligation to act in the best interests of ourselves and each other.
Our survival is in our hands, and hope lies not in waiting, but in moving forward with the fierce determination to secure a future that give humanity the best chance.
In order to protect that shared interest – now and into the future – urgent, serious action is needed to reduce carbon emissions.
We know this.
A continuation of current practices will lead to a catastrophic rise in temperature of up to 3.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The current Nationally Determined Commitments made for 2030 are not being met.
Even if they were, we would still face a rise in temperature of 2.6 to 2.8 degrees Celsius.
It is still technically possible to meet the goal oof 1.5 degree Celsius, but only if there is a G20-led massive global mobilization to cut all greenhouse gas emissions.
As they are responsible for 80% of all carbon emissions, it is possible.
But they would need to act dramatically and decisively.
And action would need to start today.
In the face of all this, we still refuse to give up, refuse to lose hope.
We do not – cannot – accept that our survival is merely an option.
And so, in The Bahamas we continue to play our part.
We continue to preserve and protect the forests of grasses in our seas, which are estimated to absorb more carbon than the Amazon Rainforest.
If the Amazon provides the lungs to the planet, our seagrasses are its “hidden blue heart”.
We will continue our transition to sources of renewable energy.
And we will continue to pioneer the use of blue carbon credits, to support the architecture of international climate finance.
We want to play our part.
But alone, we cannot succeed in any of it.
We simply do not have the resources.
And each hurricane, each climate disaster, leaves us with even less.
Your Excellencies:
We must not forget the historic achievement of The Paris Agreement.
In Article 9, the special circumstances of Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries were addressed in its climate finance provisions.
The numbers paint a clear picture.
Small Island States have spent 18 times more in debt repayments than they have received in climate finance.
Our ‘special circumstances’ require more action, not less.
These provisions must urgently now be fully operationalised, along with the other funding commitments previously made.
Merely describing the special circumstances is not enough.
And even as we now approach the eleventh hour of an agreement, we are deeply concerned that some of the Parties now systematically seek to erase this fundamental provisions of the Paris Agreement.
The greatest challenge we face isn’t just political will—it’s political change.
We’re witnessing governments come to power that are retreating from climate commitments, dismissing the Paris Agreement, and turning inward.
This isn’t a crisis we can afford to address sporadically, nor is it a battle that can be won in isolated chapters, written and erased with every election.
If we leave climate action to the whims of political cycles, our planet’s future becomes precarious. The climate crisis does not pause for elections or accommodate the sway of changing political tides. It demands continuity, commitment, and, most of all, solidarity.
Excellencies, the world has found the ability to finance wars, the ability to mobilize against pandemics, yet when it comes to addressing the most profound crisis of our time—the very survival of nations—where is that same ability?
It is time to turn ambition into action, promises into plans, and plans into survival.
Thank You