11 November 2025, 16:30 – 17:30 (BRT)
Distinguished Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Alii, good afternoon and very warm Pacific greetings to you all.
It is an honour to join you today to officially open the ocean pavilion and to showcase the Belem Declaration.
It is absolutely critical to ensure ocean-based climate solutions are accessible, inclusive, and just
The Belem Ocean Declaration calls for priority to be given to the needs of least developed countries, small island developing states, and front line coastal communities.
For Pacific Small Islands Developing States, who collectively are custodians of 20 percent of the worlds combined EEZs, the ocean is our lifeblood. The Ocean sustains our economies, nourishes communities, and shapes cultures. For some Pacific States, 70% of our GDP comes from tuna fisheries. Our people rely on coastal fisheries for food security – 47% of Pacific people rely on fishing for primary and secondary incomes. We have some of the world’s richest ocean biodiversity and huge mangrove ecosystems.
We in the Pacific, know the challenges before us and are already delivering ocean-based climate solutions: through commitments to marine protection, mangrove protection and restoration and more. But our ambition is for more. We want to decarbonise shipping, to deliver ocean based renewable energy, to protect our communities from sea level rise, and to effectively support ocean management and conservation.
We have to solutions to our global challenges.
But what we lack as SIDS is access to finance, technology and capacity building to deliver our solutions at the scale needed.
SDG 14, the ocean goal, receives only 0.01 percent of all development funding. Pacific Islands States have only accessed 2.4% of total climate finance to date through the operating entities of the Financial Mechanism.
For the Pacific, the finance must flow from the pledges, it must scale up, there must be simplified access. And it must be grant based. In response to our access issues, we have developed our own climate finance facility to deliver to our communities – the Pacific Resilience Facility. There is a lot to learn from this.
We heard big pledges for the Ocean at UNOC. But this finance cannot just deliver for countries that have the means to access it. It must flow to the Pacific. It is a matter of duty, equity and of justice.
When we leave Belem, I encourage you all to consider the real needs of the people who live in the ocean every day, who are seeing the ocean rise up into their homes, and hold many ocean-based solutions to this climate crisis.
