Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) has called for a glob­al com­mit­ment to en­sure vi­tal in­puts are pro­vid­ed for im­mi­nent re­ports from the world’s lead­ing sci­en­tif­ic body.

In a state­ment on Fri­day, the 39-mem­ber body said, "This must be done in time to in­form ac­tion that can stave off the most cat­a­stroph­ic im­pacts of cli­mate change. Cli­mate change sci­en­tists and ex­perts are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing for the forth­com­ing 62nd meet­ing of the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) in Hangzhou, Chi­na from Feb­ru­ary 24th, 2025."

AO­SIS says they are con­cerned that the Sev­enth As­sess­ment Re­port of the IPCC, which will con­tain es­sen­tial sci­en­tif­ic in­puts, may not be ready in time to in­form the sec­ond round of the Glob­al Stock­take. The Glob­al Stock­take (GST) is a crit­i­cal tool which tracks progress on in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate ac­tion and iden­ti­fies pri­or­i­ty needs.

The state­ment went fur­ther in say­ing, "With­out the IPCC re­port in­form­ing the next GST, vi­tal analy­sis on pri­or­i­ty ar­eas such as Mit­i­ga­tion, Adap­ta­tion, re­spons­es to Loss and Dam­age, and Cli­mate Fi­nance will not be com­pre­hen­sive­ly ad­dressed. This could lead to a Glob­al Stock­take that lacks the lat­est sci­ence from the IPCC, re­sult­ing in a push to­wards ac­tions which are po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­pe­di­ent rather than ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress­ing needs iden­ti­fied by ex­ten­sive sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis."

AO­SIS Chair, Her Ex­cel­len­cy Ilana Seid said, “Wield­ing the best sci­en­tif­ic analy­sis will im­prove our col­lec­tive un­der­stand­ing and bol­ster our de­fences in this fight to ad­dress cli­mate change. The Glob­al Stock­take is a vi­tal tool for iden­ti­fy­ing gaps in glob­al cli­mate ac­tion, and in­clu­sive cli­mate sci­ence – which takes SIDS’ and LD­CS’ unique cir­cum­stances in­to ac­count - will en­sure we can build the most ro­bust roadmap to achieve sus­tain­abil­i­ty and re­silience for all."