Distinguished ministers, delegates, ladies and gentlemen,
As Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands it is a great pleasure for me to welcome you all to this Side Event. This is one of Denmark’s official Side Events as host country of COP 15. I would therefore like to thank the Government of Denmark for providing us with this excellent opportunity to focus on oceans at this historical climate conference in Copenhagen.
The connection between the ocean and climate is something we experience “up close and personal“ every day in the Faroes, in the middle of the Northeast Atlantic. We are a small island nation of 49.000 people with an economy highly dependent on fisheries and aquaculture. We consider ourselves experts when it comes to observing changes in weather patterns, conditions at sea, and changes in the marine resource base, which so greatly determine and dominate the way we live. But we are also well aware that we are living on the edge and that we are very vulnerable to the dramatic shifts in the marine ecosystems that we are seeing around us.
We are of course not alone in this. And we know that low-lying island nations in other regions of the world are already facing extreme conditions and major threats to their very survival. So we hope this event can help remind all negotiators here at COP 15 to include strong wording in a new global climate agreement – wording which underlines the role of oceans in providing us with sustainable livelihoods, food security and the basis for future economic development.
Time is very short so I will not take up any more of it. I would just like to thank you all once again for joining us. I will now leave you in the capable hands of my colleague, Annika Olsen, Minister for the Environment and Climate Policy, to introduce and chair this session.
Kaj Leo Johannesen,
Prime Minister of the Faroe Islands