Gaston Browne, prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda    Photo: UN

United Nations, September 28 (RHC)-- The Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gastón Browne, declared on Friday that the climate crisis "is a persistent and destructive reality for small island developing states (SIDS) countries."

In his presentation to the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN), Gaston Browne stated that climate change "is not an abstract and academic threat."

"For SIDS peoples it is a persistent and destructive reality.  We witness hurricanes, burning ecosystems, flooding villages, wiping out the productive areas of tourism and agriculture, what leaves us with less chance of a tomorrow.”

By insisting that the Caribbean islands "are on the front line of a climate catastrophe we do not cause, a debt crisis we do not create and conflicts in which we do not participate at all," Browne noted that “we are the ones most affected.”

“Humanity has never, as now, faced such grim choices,” the prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda said, in a certain duality of options that wars must end or humanity be condemned to endless suffering.

"Poverty must be solved or seen as millions die of hunger, as well as taking action on climate change or making future generations to a burnt planet," he said.

The representative of Antigua and Barbuda insisted that island developing countries have learned to fight for survival against rising sea levels and storms, "but now we have to fight for something bigger: the survival of justice, requity, peace and human dignity."