(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) As the Caribbean Community gears up for the impending 15th Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Denmark, it is expecting to come away with an Agreement that helps to expand the Caribbean‘s capacity to reduce its vulnerability to the effects of Climate Change.
Dr Kenneth Leslie, Executive Director of Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) told the Second CARICOM Conference on Climate Change on Tuesday that any agreement coming out of the Copenhagen conference slated for December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark should have “environmental integrity” and respond to the special challenges of the most vulnerable, including Small Island Developing States (SIDs).
In preparation for negotiations at this conference at which Heads of State and Government will try to reach an agreement on a new global climate strategy, CARICOM is working assiduously to refine its position going into the conference, in the hope that the new climate change treaty to be signed will favour the Caribbean in its mitigation and adaptation policies and strategies for Climate Change.
Dr Leslie, who was addressing the opening ceremony of the Second Climate Change Conference in Castries, Saint Lucia on Tuesday, stated that he was anticipating an agreement that would provide a framework of support for adaptation that would prioritise the needs of the most vulnerable countries including SIDs. That framework, he asserted, should provide support for global and regional coordination mechanisms, adequate financial support and assistance to developing countries to adapt, based on national priorities. He added that risk management should also be provided for through the multi-window insurance mechanism that was proposed by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).
In the area of finance, Dr Leslie hoped that the agreement reached should provide financial flows that would be sufficient for the scale of adaptation efforts that the Region has to take on. This is estimated to be in excess of US$ 80B per year.
In addition, he anticipates that the agreement would provide for mechanisms to access environmentally sound technology, both for adaptation and mitigation, and should also discourage dependency on carbon intensive technology.
While the Caribbean continues to fine-tune its position, the UN climate chief Yvo de Boer is expressing hope that the conference will reach agreements on “four political essentials,” one of which is the financing of developing countries in their bid to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and adapting to the impacts of climate change. For CARICOM countries, this would settle the perplexing questions of what should be the global target for greenhouse emissions reductions after 2012 when the Kyoto Protocol expires; and, who should bear the burden for these reductions.
If a new climate treaty is signed it will be replacing the Kyoto Protocol which was adopted in December 1997 at the third Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in Kyoto, Japan, and entered into force on 16 February 2005. The Kyoto Protocol which sets binding targets for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has been signed and ratified by 184 parties of the UN Climate Convention.
