Mr. President
Mr. Secretary General
Distinguished Members of the Head Table
Fellow Ministers and Heads of Delegation
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen


Last year, the theme "Socio-economic and environmental impact of climate change on the countries of the Hemispheric" was inadvertently excluded from the agenda of the thirty-fourth regular session of the Assembly, held in Quito, Ecuador. My delegation is pleased that the issue has returned to the Assembly's agenda; especially that it is of vital importance to many countries in our hemisphere.

Mr. President, sixteen years ago, in 1989, Antigua and Barbuda joined with the other member of states of the Untied Nation in developing what eventually became known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We were convinced then, as we are now, that the Convention's primary objective of reducing the dangerous levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere must be realized in order to protect the environment and avoid serious disruptions to our way of life. The Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was adopted in December 1997, sought to arrest and reverse the upward trend in greenhouse gas emissions and to move the international community one step closer to achieving the convention's ultimate objective of preventing dangerous man-made interference with the world's climate system. Failure to work together as a community of nations to arrest the rising levels of greenhouse gases, will result in serious socio-economic and environmental impacts to all countries, but in particular to Small Island Developing States, which are recognized as being among the most vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change.

The attempts of the international community to act on reducing the levels of emission of the greenhouse gases, has been modest at best. Meanwhile, human induced climate change, manifested through severe temperature fluctuations and increased frequency and growing intensity of extreme weather events continue to wreak havoc on our countries. We only have to reflect briefly on the 2004 hurricane season and recall the severity of the devastation that was brought upon many of the countries in this hemisphere. Mr. President, we must work together to save our environment and protect public health, because the price of inaction will be too horrible to contemplate.

In September 2004, four devastating hurricanes and tropical storms killed more than 1,500 Haitians, destroyed roughly 90 percent of Grenada, and wreaked billions of dollars of damage on the southern United-States. Mr. President, this very state, Florida, was hardest hit. Devastation also occurred in parts of Jamaica, The Commonwealth of the Bahamas, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Barbados, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. Last January, 40 inches of rain fell in the most densely populated parts of the Republic of Guyana, causing massive floods and bringing widespread destruction to lives and property.

Mr. President, Antigua and Barbuda holds strongly to the view that environmental degradation increases vulnerability to tropical storms. Global Warm is believed to contribute to the number and intensity of hurricanes that hit the Caribbean, Central America and the southern United States. Ice caps and glaciers in the Arctic Circle and parts of Greenland are melting. Sea levels are rising as evidenced by the fact that the sea has claimed large acres of once arable land in certain vulnerable regions of the world, resulting in the permanent loss of residential and commercial activities.

The foremost scientific authority on climate change, the Inter- Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has warned that the adaptive capacity of human systems is generally low in small island states and vulnerability high; small island states are likely to be among the countries most seriously impacted by climate change. The impact of the IPCC’s warning has a particular relevance to the major industry of Antigua and Barbuda and a number of islands in the Caribbean, namely tourism. Tourism, which is an important source of income and foreign exchange for Antigua and Barbuda, and our neighbors as well, would, more than any other industry, face severe disruption from both climate change and sea level rise.

Mr. President, concerns are mounting over the socio-economic and environmental impacts of climate change and the extreme weather conditions that result there from, on our countries. To mitigate our vulnerability, we, the countries of the hemisphere should work more diligently to minimize greenhouse gas emissions. We should create and introduce new technologies that allow for the emission of cleaner air into the earth's atmosphere. We should find new and renewable energy sources, and we should study more closely factors such as population pressure, the effects of poverty and affluence and those environmental changes that drive disasters. The solution to climate change may well be found in the introduction of new technologies for energy production, and requiring that vehicles produce fewer greenhouses gases, which scientists believe contribute to global warning.

I wish to conclude Mr. President by thanking you for the opportunity to raise this important subject at this the Thirty-fifth Assembly of the OAS. If we act collectively as a community of nations within the existing framework of the Kyoto protocol, we can avert serious disaster and save the environment and ourselves.

Thank you very much.