HLPF SIDE EVENT HOSTED BY PALAU, FAO, AND NEW ZEALAND

REMARKS FROM PRESIDENT TOMMY E. REMENGESAU, JR.

HLPF SIDE EVENT: ACCELERATING PROGRESS ON THE SDGS THROUGH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE GLOBAL ACTION PROGRAMME ON FOOD SECURITY AND NUTRITION IN SIDS

15 JULY 2019

Ministers, excellencies, partners, friends:

Ambassador Young, thank you for your introduction and moderating today’s event.

I particularly want to welcome Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva, who completes his service as Director-General of the FAO this month. Palau and the SIDS family have had a strong partnership with the FAO under your leadership, as co-hosting today’s event demonstrates, and we look forward to continuing this partnership with your successor.

And of course, I want to thank Her Excellency Ms. Inga Rhondda King for her leadership as President of ECOSOC and overseeing this year’s HLPF.

Palau presents its first Voluntary National Review tomorrow, and the first SDG that our VNR discusses is actually SDG2. This demonstrates the importance of food and nutrition for our sustainable development journey as a whole.

Two years ago I was delighted to be in Rome for the launch of the Global Action Programme on Food Security and Nutrition in SIDS. One key emphasis of the GAP is the importance of fostering sustainable, resilient and nutrition-sensitive food systems.

In Palau, one step towards this goal is catalyzing the development of a domestic artisanal tuna fishery when the Palau National Marine Sanctuary begins its implementation phase next year. Through improving local access to high quality tuna, we hope that the Sanctuary will also improve our food security.

In May of this year, I signed a presidential directive for all government events serving fish to ‘Choose Pelagics’ over reef fish. I hope that this action will show the way forward, to encourage the consumption of high-nutrition, domestically-produced food by our communities. And the synergies with the other SDGs are also important: to benefit from our environmental conservation efforts, and to support sustainable, quality employment and work.

I hope that this evening, we will be able to see other ways of how we have made progress in improving the state of food security and nutrition in SIDS regions. I hope that we will be able to re-commit to our partnership together through the GAP, and to accelerate its implementation to ultimately realize the 2030 Agenda.

Thank you.