This year’s three-day conference focused on three primary development issues facing the planet: the global economic downturn, democracy and development, and climate change.
“My country is on the verge of drowning,” Mori told the conference.
As the president of a small island nation, Mori said he represented the interests of the most vulnerable nations of the world, but also the future health of the planet.
“Within just a few generations, we have become the front line of a global crisis that threatens not only our water supplies, our agricultural productivity and our ocean resources, but also our very existence,” he said.
Mori spoke of the recent title surge in Micronesia that inundated atolls less than a meter above sea level, flooding taro patches, destroying crops and polluting drinking water, all of which demonstrated “just how powerless we are to stem the coming tide of global warming.”
Mori warned that the people of the planet “must change our lifestyles and learn to consume less of our planet’s resources or we will be overcome by our own gluttony.”
