UN General Assembly
2008

is a matter of life and death to the people of the Caribbean and other small island developing States. Similarly, the cost of adaptation to the changes wrought by our industrialized brothers and sisters must be borne adequately and responsibly by those who have so profoundly altered our global environment. Hurricanes remind us in the Caribbean of our existential oneness. Accordingly, the effort of Caribbean nations to fashion a more perfect union is to be fully supported as a vital strategic necessity. The geographic happenstance that has placed the innocent people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the path of increasingly intense storms has also located 08-52272 36 us unfortunately between the supply and demand that fuel much of the West’s narcotics trade. As a result, our scarce resources are increasingly being diverted to stem the tide of drugs and small arms flowing through our region. To the people of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, disarmament means not the eradication of nuclear weapons, which we lack the will and resources to build, but the elimination of small arms, which