Mr. Speaker,
I should like to report to the House on two delegations led by the Right Honourable Prime Minister: one to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta and the other to the Conference of Parties on Climate Change sponsored by the United Nations in Paris.
The delegations in both Malta and Paris included the Right Honourable Prime Minister, the Minister of Tourism, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Minister for International Trade, the Minister for Grand Bahama, the Minister of State for Investments and the Minister for the Environment along with their officials.
The Malta meeting takes place every two years and this is the second one for the Prime Minister in this term. It took place from 27th to 28th November.
The Conference of Parties the so called COP21 is still going on as we speak. The Minister for the Environment is there with other Ministers of the Environment, with a view to settling a binding agreement on curbing climate change and its ill effects on the world.
The Prime Minister gave the country’s position on the Climate Change issue in Paris on 1st and 2nd of December. On the 1st December, he gave the general statement of the country and on 2nd, he spoke as one of the Leaders of the Small Island Developing states of (SIDS).
I wish to summarize the position of The Bahamas on Climate Change matters as follows and I quote in extenso from the address of the Prime Minister:
It is important to note however that The Bahamas is facing growing public and international pressure to adapt to the impacts of climate change, while at the same time we are expected to pursue a low carbon pathway and increase energy security – all very noble yet expensive and resource-intensive pursuits.
We must adopt, at the end of next week, an international legally binding agreement under the Convention that is in the form of a protocol and is applicable to all Parties.
We must also agree a long term goal of keeping the average global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees. The 2 degrees goal which many espouse will lead to the loss of entire countries, Mr. President. And a 1.5 degree goal is not only desirable, it is achievable and feasible. Let us then send a clear message to the world that we will fight for countries like The Bahamas to stay on the map into the next century.
This existential threat to the survival of a number of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) must be explicitly recognised in the Paris Agreement. It should, at its core, acknowledge and make provisions for the special circumstances of SIDS, allowing for the flexibility needed to overcome limited human, financial and technical capacities.
Mr. President,
The Bahamas sees the following as indispensable coming out of Paris. Loss and Damage must be anchored in the Paris Agreement. It is not possible to discuss even 2 degrees, when there is no acceptable process in place to address the inevitable loss and damage that would result from adopting such a goal and the recent experience of The Bahamas with Hurricane Joaquin shows that existing insurance structures are inadequate and often rely on legalisms which deny legitimate claims.
Secondly, we must recognise the 100 billion per year pledge by developed countries, needs to be honoured and built upon in the post-2020 period.
The Bahamas should be able to access these funds. We deplore the continued use of Gross Domestic Product/Gross National Income per capita as the main component in determining the access that The Bahamas and other SIDS have to financial resources for our adaptation needs.
I wish to emphasize here the seriousness of this matter. The experts are telling us that if we do not address this issue and fast, we face the loss of our country as early as the year 2050 and certainly by the year 2100, we shall all be under water. We know that 80 per cent of our country is below five feet. We have just seen what happened in Hurricane Joaquin when the sea took weeks to recede. It promises to get worse.
That is the seriousness of this matter.
This is so serious a matter in the Pacific states that countries are already seeking to negotiate the movement of their entire populations to another country. Some are suggesting that we ought to be doing the same.
The question for us is how to get the world to see our survival as important.
The scientists tell us that it is important to maintain the atmospheric temperature below 1.5 degrees centigrade if we are to stop the current patterns and save our country.
Right now all the voluntary commitments by world states, the world’s temperature will rise by 2.7 degrees centigrade. This is clearly not enough to save us from extinction so we are advised.
Quite apart from that, we have the issue of how to mitigate the results and adapt to the changes that will take place with rising sea waters, the killing of our coral and fish because the water gets warmer and will acidify. This will have disastrous issues for our tourism product.
The storms promise to come that break up the roads and sea defences, destroy homes with floods and rain.
Money is required and funds are being made available but because The Bahamas is considered a rich country, with a high GDP per capita, the money is beyond our reach. Part of what our minister will be trying to do in Paris is to make some of that concessionary money available to The Bahamas for adaptation and mitigation.
It is our hope and expectation that there will be a binding agreement come 11th December and we wish our Minister well in his work.
I now turn to the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in Malta:
Mr. Speaker, this meeting brings together every two years 53 countries from across the former British Empire.
For The Bahamas we continue as members because it is an efficient form of diplomacy. We get the opportunity over a few days and for a relatively small cost to interact at a heads level with 52 other countries that we would not ordinarily have an opportunity to interact with them and to develop relations for the benefit of ourselves and for the world and the region.
At the last CHOGM, the Prime Minister connected with the Prime Minister of New Zealand which led to a helpful delegation of New Zealanders to come to The Bahamas to assist in the launch of Value Added Tax (VAT).
This time, we were in the midst of a campaign for the reelection to the seat of the International Maritime Organization and we won with the highest margin ever and CHOGM providing an interface directly with Foreign Ministers of countries or their Prime Ministers who were immediately able to lend us their support.
Coming out of the Heads of Government meeting was a strong statement on climate change, and the reaffirmation of the principles of civil society participation in governance. There was a Bahamian delegation in Malta who participated in the Business forum and the Civil Society Fora.
I consider however an important triumph the success of the election of Baroness Patricia Scotland as the new Secretary General of the Commonwealth. She is both an Antiguan and a Dominican citizen. She is also British, not unlike other Caribbean people who moved to Britain with their parents. She was the first female Attorney general of England and Wales and the first person of African and Caribbean descent to hold the post.
She was nominated by Dominica and was opposed by another Caribbean Candidate Sir Ronald Saunders when consensus could not be struck on a single candidate.
I wish to interject here my personal advice given to the government on this matter.
The countries that provide the funding for the Commonwealth are the so called ABCS: Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. Their governments have been disengaging from the Commonwealth, dissatisfied over the state of its programmes and restructuring.
Given the eminent background of Baroness Scotland, I pledged my personal support some two years ago and indicated that I would do my best to convince the Prime Minister and the Government. I made it clear however that it was not my decision as some troublemakers in this country are suggesting. In the end, the decision of the Government was to seek a consensus candidate and that is the decision that was taken in Malta which led to her election. I acted at all times in what I considered to be the best interests of The Bahamas.
Unfortunately this has become a matter of some political football in the country, with an irresponsible and defamatory letter written by a political coward in the newspaper suggesting that there was a personal motive involved in Baroness Scotland’s election to office on my part.
This is absolutely false and patently foolish.
As the Foreign Minister of this country, I was bound to support who I thought would have provided for best interests of The Bahamas. That in my view was Baroness Scotland. She in my view has the ability to increase the complement of Bahamian and Caribbean persons at the Commonwealth in London and to ensure that the ABCS reengage.
In fact Justin Trudeau, the new Prime Minister of Canada, has announced that Canada will reengage, reversing a policy of withdrawal by Canada over the last ten years. We hope that this will inure to the benefit of the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Cooperation on which The Bahamas relies for support on a number of programmes that it wishes to introduce.
In the letter written to the press about this matter, there was a foolish statement about my supporting the Baroness because I wanted to have tea and crumpets in the House of Lords and that in siding with the Baroness I was supporting the former apartheid forces in South Africa.
My colleagues and I laughed heartily when we read the letter. It was so foolish but so laughable. It is for all that a serious matter however and cannot go unchallenged.
That suggestion about siding with the forces of apartheid sir is beyond the Pale. It is offensive. It is silly. It is a falsehood. It is a libel.
Another website running a campaign for one of the candidates claimed that I was supporting the Baroness because of a personal relationship.
What is often done do to win an office. Shameful!
I am convinced that The Bahamas did the right thing.
Here is what the Foreign Minister of Antigua and Barbuda said with regard to the election. Remember their candidate was Sir Ronald Saunders:
He told the Antigua Observer on 27 November the following:
“After the first round, Sir Ron received the least votes. For the second round, Antigua & Barbuda put its support behind Baroness Scotland because we felt we’d be supporting the candidate from another Caribbean country.”
Mr. Speaker, we did the right thing and no amount of ex post facto nastiness can change that fact that the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Bahamas discharged his duty to The Bahamas in our best interest.
I congratulate Baroness Scotland and I believe she will work for the benefit of the region.
Finally, I address generally the subject of the doom and gloom that is again pervading the country about the future; one public comment or the next.
One of our senior statesmen was in the press recently to say that he saw no future in either side or no possible successor in our own party.
Each man or woman is entitled to their opinion, but wouldn’t that be a sad commentary on the generation who went before us if those words are in fact true.
I think it is unfortunate hyperbole. I understand despair but I understand hope much better.
I wish to assure this country that there is no need to despair at all. We have problems to be sure. Difficult problems but despair is not helpful.
What we have is a two party system. It is working well and the Bahamian people in their wisdom will choose who will lead them in a short time.
For good or ill we are all, we, all of us – FNM, PLP, UDP, DNA – are what we have in this House or outside for good or ill. There is no point in complaining about the air when air is all there is to breathe.
Whoever runs the country, I assure the critics, will run and be accountable to the Bahamian people.
As for succession in leadership, this is not a messianic business we are talking about.
Nature shows us that it abhors a vacuum and in the natural progress of things there will be succession.
The Pindling generation has faded away. We can dream all we want that one day it will return but the wind has passed over and it is gone. He did his job. Right now is what and where we are. I will do my job. We will all do our jobs.
Whoever takes over, whoever emerges, nature tells us again someone will emerge. They will not descend from the clouds. There is no need to despair about that either. We may not know who it is or see who it is but one day surely there will be succession.
You cannot therefore wash your hands and say a pox on both your houses.
While we live we must continue to work, to pray and to preach hope. I preach hope. I believe in hope. I say to myself each morning: “Forward ever! Backward never!”
I thank you Mr. Speaker.
