Co-Chairs,
Excellencies,
Ladies and gentlemen,
My wife, Maurina,

A very high official of a very powerful country once said of Micronesians, “Who gives a damn about 100,000 Micronesians?” That statement marked a dark day in our lives. Today brings a new dawn of hope. Many bodies—196—do give a damn, even about Micronesians.

Last year in Paris, we reached an important milestone in our collaborative work on Climate Change. Many of us left Paris with feelings of elation and hope that our global solidarity in reaching an agreement would result in promising possibilities.

Today just a few months later in New York we have come to enhance our resolve from Paris with further assurances of our individual national commitments to curb the causes of climate and atmospheric deterioration. This is what today is all about: to give sanctity to the Paris agreement; to embrace the spirit born in Paris; and hope, hope that our march from here on will be guided and protected by our multitude of national mandates.

Let us encourage ourselves to continuously update our targets and commitments unilaterally; to aim higher than our paper targets and shorten timelines where we can; to assure our people and our children that we can walk beyond the talk—that we can achieve nationally beyond what we talk about internationally.

Proof of success will be in implementation, when words translate into concrete and equitable actions, and when success is realized above and beyond our agreements and international concessions. My country commits to this challenge, and further;