(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The CARICOM Community Council of Ministers at its recent meeting in Barbados, reaffirmed the importance of a common regional approach to address the threats and challenges of climate change, and for the effective participation of the region in the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in Denmark .
The 24th Meeting of the Community Council of Ministers held in Bridgetown, on 17 June, 2009 acknowledged the lead role that the region’s negotiators had been playing as part of the Alliance of Small Island Development States (AOSIS) group led by Grenada, in the negotiations on a new climate change agreement.
Given the importance of climate change to the sustainable development of the Community, the Council indicated that it was imperative for the Community to ensure that it was fully engaged in the negotiations, and represented at the highest level of policy making, with a coherent and comprehensive position at the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen, Denmark, 7-18 December, 2009.
The Council also expressed its support for the work of the CARICOM Task Force on Climate Change and Development which established at its second meeting, four Committees that will review the draft Conference of the Parties XV Negotiation Documents; develop the strategic political action to facilitate a proactive regional approach at the Copenhagen Conference; develop an Information, Communication and Education strategy for climate change and formulate a strategy to address the development of projects and resource mobilization.
The Council also considered the report on a regional climate change strategic framework, spearheaded by the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) and to be presented to the Conference of the Heads of Government in July. The strategic framework document is a ‘live’ document comprising four key elements, namely: the mainstreaming of adaptation strategies into the development plan and programmes of Member States; promoting policy actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; facilitating policy actions to reduce the region’s vulnerability to natural and human impacts that often contribute to climate change; and promoting actions to attain social, economic, and the environmental benefits through the prudent management of standing forests in CARICOM States.
