HE Ken Okaniwa, Ambassador of Japan to Kenya,
Excellencies, friends.
Thank you for coming to this commemoration, to mark 77 years after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.
The environment is a casualty of conflict. Always. And when the environment suffers, people suffer. We saw the tragic impacts of this in 1945 after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. By the end of 1945, 140,000 deaths in Hiroshima and 74,000 deaths in Nagasaki were attributed to the impacts of the atomic bombings. Since then, science has laid out unequivocally, the enormous impacts on human health and the environment. Death. Destruction of property and livelihoods. Radiation exposure. Fatal cancers. Altered DNA in the genes of plants and animals disrupting the web of life, i.e. nature on which we all depend.
This enormous tragedy has been compounded by the deplorable reality: that we have not yet learnt our lesson. In his visit to Hiroshima a few months ago, the UN Secretary-General spoke of the “sheer absurdity of nuclear weapons.” Almost 13,000 nuclear weapons are being held. Stockpiles are being upgraded. And in almost every geopolitical crisis we face in the world today, the threat of potential nuclear annihilation is a common theme. This would be unbelievable if it were not true.
As the world reels from the triple planetary crisis: the crisis of climate change; the crisis of biodiversity loss; and the crisis of pollution and waste, nuclear war is not something we can afford to add to the challenges we face. Even small-scale use of nuclear warheads could deplete the ozone layer, raise global temperatures even further, and hasten the effects of global warming. The use of less than 10 per cent of today’s global nuclear arsenals could nearly stop all rain over India and central China and reduce precipitation globally by 15 to 30 per cent.
The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons must be our guiding light to realise a world without nuclear weapons – the vision expressed clearly by hibakushas. We must also invest further in truly understanding the impacts of ionizing radiation on the environment and human health so that we are able to be further studied as many issues, such as trans-generational effect, low dose exposure etc. are yet to be clarified. We see an important role here for the UN Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR), the UN body focused on the scientific aspects of effects of ionizing radiation. This is a programme of UNEP, together to International Atomic Energy Agency and World Health Organization and one that we at UNEP remain deeply committed to. And finally, we must remember that any pursuit of nuclear warfare goes against the grain and spirit of the recent UN General Assembly resolution – reaffirming the human right of all people to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment. In implementing this resolution, we have a strong roadmap to commit ourselves to intergenerational justice – a moral obligation to future generations. So to end in the words of the UN Secretary-General let us “Finish the work that the hibakushas have begun. Carry their message forward. In their names, in their honor, in their memory — we must act.”
