SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thanks very a lot. To Minister André, to Minister Peters, we’re grateful to your partnership and your management.
We’re right here for a simple purpose. Local weather change is melting glaciers. It’s inflicting sea ranges to rise. It’s fueling excessive climate like storms, which have develop into much more devastating when mixed with greater seas. Already, in so a lot of our international locations, these patterns are upending lives and livelihoods.
Primarily based on present tendencies, by 2050, sea-level rise might displace tens of thousands and thousands of individuals.
We will nonetheless forestall this, however the time to behave is working out.
That’s why President Biden labored with our Congress to make the one largest funding in clear vitality ever, placing the US on monitor to chop our emissions in half by the top of this decade. President Biden has additionally pledged to supply $11 billion a 12 months in local weather financing to assist our companions as they work towards their very own local weather targets – a pledge that we anticipate to satisfy this 12 months.
The USA helps weak nations handle the challenges that they’re confronting proper now. Right now, NASA launched snapshots of each Pacific Island nation, with info and evaluation to assist them predict and put together for the implications of rising seas.
By means of the President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience, the US helps greater than half a billion individuals in growing international locations regulate to the ways in which local weather change has already reshaped our communities and our coastlines. This contains deploying early warning programs in 80 international locations, so individuals can higher put together for storms and different disasters and get to security.
The USA can also be updating our insurance policies to mirror our altering planet. Our place is that sea-level rise mustn’t diminish a rustic’s maritime zones, together with the fishing grounds and sources below a nation’s jurisdiction. And no nation ought to lose its statehood or membership within the United Nations or different worldwide organizations due to sea-level rise.
Tackling the local weather disaster, slowing sea-level rise – I do know these can really feel like daunting, perhaps even insurmountable, duties. However in terms of international warming, each tenth of a level issues. That implies that each step that we take issues too, for shielding our planet and our shared future.
