SECRETARY KERRY: Last December, representatives from more than 190 nations came together in
Paris to express their commitment to build a low-carbon energy future in which greenhouse
gas emissions are curbed and the worst consequences of climate change are prevented.
We’ve been working on that for 20-plus years.
I was in Rio 1992, part of the delegation with Al Gore and Tim Wirth and a bunch of
people many of you know.
But it was voluntary; we weren’t able to get there.
We went through machinations of Kyoto and other efforts.
Finally, we came together in a unique, extraordinary multilateral event.
Three years ago, when I first became Secretary of State, we were living with the experience
of the failure of Copenhagen and the problem of China being on the other side of the ledger.
President Obama asked me to go to Beijing and open up a new collaboration, if it was
possible, on climate change.
Everybody was skeptical.
But we built a strong working relationship, and in the end, our two presidents – President
Xi and President Obama – were able to stand up in Beijing a year before Paris and make
an historic announcement that changed the entire dynamic of the negotiations in Paris.
In August, I had the privilege of traveling to Havana to raise the American flag above
our embassy for the first time in 54 years.
President Obama’s bold decision to normalize diplomatic ties with Cuba reflects, yes, both
our national interests, but it also reflects our desire to try to help the citizens of
that country live in a more open and prosperous society.
We were determined to turn a corner after decades of a policy that just simply didn’t
work.
You know the old saying, the first way to solve the problem of digging a hole deeper
and deeper is stop digging.
But we have a long way to go, we know, but we’re already seeing progress.
Last year, travel by Cuba – to Cuba by United States citizens to deepen the ties between
our people increased by more than 50 percent over the previous year.
We have further empowered a growing Cuban private sector that now employs thousands
of Cuban workers.
And the Government of Cuba signed its first cellular telephone roaming agreement with
a United States company that will help Cubans connect to the world and access information.
And every one of you here knows that helps change – changes thinking, changes behavior.
Now, of course the United States and Cuba still remain far apart on some very important
issues.
But we are much closer than we were in our ability to be able to address those differences
in a systematic and mutually respectful way.
I talked to my counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez, the other day.
We will meet again shortly to talk about those other differences and to continue to try to
march down this road.
In October, after seven years of negotiation, the United States joined 11 other nations
along the Pacific Rim in signing and sending to Congress the Trans-Pacific Partnership
– a trade agreement that will ensure heightened labor and environmental standards in 40 percent
of the global economy.
And already, other nations in the region are beating on the door and saying, “We want
to be part of that.
We want to be part of these higher standards and environmentally responsible, labor responsible
business enterprises.”
At this time last year – I remember this, because we talked about it here – experts
were predicting that the Ebola virus was going to kill a million people or more by Christmas
of last year.
Again, President Obama led an effort at the United Nations to bring people together.
He took the risky decision without knowing all of the consequences and all of what was
happening, but on the basis of our health care expert advice – we sent several thousand
American troops and put them on the ground to build the capacity to be able to respond
to this crisis.
And together with partners around the world – France, Great Britain particularly, but
China, Japan, others all joined in – we built a broad coalition of actors to educate
the public, isolate the stricken, and stop the spread of the virus – spelling the difference
between life and death for hundreds of thousands of people.
And in response to the global refugee crisis, President Obama is going to host a summit
at the UN this fall.
And the summit will be the culmination of a sustained, rigorous effort to rally the
world community on several fronts to increase by 30 percent the response to humanitarian
funding appeals; the number of regular humanitarian donors, to increase it by at least 10; to
at least double the number of refugees who are resettled or afforded other safe and legal
channels of admission; to expand by 10 the total number of countries admitting refugees;
and to get a million children in school and a million people working legally.
Now, the private sector, civil society, religious organizations will also be called on to help
integrate refugees into host communities socially, academically, and through access to employment.
And I know we know how to do this in a way that protects the security of our countries.
Across the globe, my friends – you don’t hear about it every day.
You don’t read about it every day.
But every day, I can tell you our diplomats – myself and others – are deeply involved
in trying to bring peace, together with regional organizations, and trying to do so in troubled
lands.
We’re working with countries to help stand up a government in Libya.
Just before Christmas, we held a ministerial in Rome.
We brought Libyans there.
They agreed to sign the makings of a new government.
And now we are working together to try to find a way to stand it up in Tripoli and bring
people together and begin to move forward and take on Daesh in Libya.
We’re trying to end the war in Colombia.
I appointed a special envoy to the task, and we are welcoming President Santos to Washington
in two weeks to celebrate 15 years of our relationship under Plan Colombia, and we are
working to help end the fight with FARC that is one of the longest-running conflicts on
the planet.
We’re working to encourage a thawing of relations between India and Pakistan.
It wasn’t an accident that Prime Minister Modi and Prime Minister Sharif began discussions.
And earlier this week here at Davos, Vice President Biden and I met with Ukrainian President
Poroshenko to help ensure full implementation of the Minsk agreements.
And I believe that with effort and with bona fide, legitimate intent to solve the problem
on both sides, it is possible in these next months to find those Minsk agreements implemented
and to get to a place where sanctions can be appropriately, because of the full implementation,
removed.
Even in lands at peace, my friends, reconciliation is still an imperative, and we are working
at it.
That is why we’re supporting the best chance in decades to achieve a settlement in Cyprus.
I was there recently; met with both leaders, had dinner with both of them together.
Others are engaged in trying to encourage this process.
We are able to welcome something that we’ve encouraged and supported for a long time in
addition to that – a resolution between Japan and South Korea to end the sensitivity
of the legacy of World War II.
So ladies and gentlemen, the world is not witnessing global gridlock.
We are not frozen in a nightmare that we can’t wake up from.
The facts and the lessons are clear: If we stay at it, if we stay serious, if we’re
willing to work in good faith to resolve problems, not create them, then we can make progress.
And what I find really exciting about this moment is that we are staring at extraordinary
opportunities everywhere we look in the world, if we make the right choices.
Like our boldest predecessors who overcame depression, fascism, global wars, we can turn
this story into the story that we want if we show that we have the same fierce determination
to succeed.