Pe­ter Richards

If he has his way, Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit would re­main at home in Do­mini­ca, rather than trav­el to Dubai for the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP 28) that be­gins at the end of this month un­til De­cem­ber 12.

But, the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) chair­man is al­so a prag­mat­ic per­son, who has equat­ed at­ten­dance at the two week event to the stance tak­en by “our fore­fa­thers” who, de­spite the bru­tal­i­ty of the slave trade, fought un­til eman­ci­pa­tion was won.

“We ask our­selves should we go? Is it a waste of mon­ey to go? But you can­not give up on fight­ing against an in­jus­tice,” Sker­rit ar­gues, not hid­ing his bit­ter­ness at the re­fusal of the de­vel­oped coun­tries to meet their com­mit­ments re­gard­ing cli­mate change.

“And so it is an in­jus­tice that we will con­tin­ue to fight,” he added.

Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell says re­gion­al coun­tries need not be apolo­getic in get­ting the de­vel­oped world to meet their com­mit­ment in deal­ing with the im­pact of cli­mate change.

“What our fore­par­ents had the priv­i­lege of en­joy­ing 40 or 50 years ago, we do not have that priv­i­lege. And so the ques­tion is do we con­tin­ue along that line or do we fight?

“We have to be pas­sion­ate about this, per­haps even an­gry about the is­sue be­cause if we ac­cept that 20 per cent of the world has caused this, and if we ac­cept that same 20 per cent of the world con­trols 85 per cent of the GDP (gross do­mes­tic prod­uct) then the ques­tion is why should me, you and us…con­tin­ue to qui­et­ly, slow­ly watch our way of life slip by, while those who cre­at­ed the in­dus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion …con­tin­ue to en­joy the high stan­dard of liv­ing,” said Mitchell, who is al­so an at­tor­ney.

Ba­hamas Prime Min­is­ter Phillip Davis has told his re­gion­al col­leagues that it makes no sense shoot­ing ar­rows at “new tar­gets, when the bulls­eye of two decades be­fore has yet to be hit.

“As COP28 ap­proach­es, it is cru­cial that we, the de­vel­op­ing coun­tries on the front­lines of the cli­mate cri­sis, hold the de­vel­oped world to ac­count. Whether they ho­n­our their com­mit­ments could mean the dif­fer­ence be­tween a mere dis­tur­bance and an­oth­er Do­ri­an – that dev­as­tat­ing Cat­e­go­ry 5 su­per storm, the likes of which my coun­try had nev­er seen and is still re­cov­er­ing from,” he added.

Caribbean coun­tries re­main hope­ful that COP 28,which will al­so be at­tend­ed by Britain’s King Charles III and US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, will de­liv­er, at the very least, sev­er­al ma­jor po­lit­i­cal out­comes, in­clud­ing an am­bi­tious mit­i­ga­tion work pro­gramme that will see de­vel­oped coun­tries and ma­jor economies sub­mit en­hanced Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) aligned to the 1.5 path­way.

The In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) Sixth As­sess­ment Re­port (AR6) makes it clear that with­out steep cuts aligned to a 1.5 path­way, the sit­u­a­tion will wors­en.

In ad­di­tion, the re­gion al­so wants a glob­al stock take that will pro­vide an op­por­tu­ni­ty that keeps alive the promise of Paris as well as as­sess the ad­e­qua­cy of adap­ta­tion ef­forts and the fi­nanc­ing, ca­pac­i­ty-build­ing, and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer that the Paris Agree­ment is to de­liv­er.

In ad­di­tion, Cari­com coun­tries want the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion and cap­i­tal­iza­tion of the Loss and Dam­age fund that will pro­vide crit­i­cal cli­mate fi­nance to the most vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries who are rav­aged by the ad­verse im­pacts of cli­mate change.

When he vis­it­ed the Caribbean in Au­gust, Caribbean coun­tries made it clear to Dr Sul­tan Al Jaber, the pres­i­dent-des­ig­nate of COP 28 what they ex­pect­ed from the event with his help.

“The Caribbean is one of the most vul­ner­a­ble re­gions of the world; cli­mate change, for us in the Caribbean, is an ex­is­ten­tial threat. We are on the front lines of the cli­mate cri­sis, suf­fer­ing from the rav­ages of cli­mate change that is not of our mak­ing,” Sker­rit told Al Jaber, adding that the sci­en­tif­ic im­per­a­tive is clear and the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty needs to cut emis­sions by 45 per cent by 2030 and reach net ze­ro by 2050.

“The po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship re­quired, how­ev­er, to de­liv­er at the scale and speed nec­es­sary, is lag­ging. De­spite the geopo­lit­i­cal chal­lenges be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced across the globe, we can­not let up on pur­su­ing am­bi­tious cli­mate ac­tions.

“As the COP28 pres­i­dent-des­ig­nate, we in the Caribbean will count on your lead­er­ship to en­sure that COP28 is a COP of ac­tion. COP28 must de­liv­er ac­tions that are com­men­su­rate with en­sur­ing that we keep 1.5 alive. Our lives and that of our chil­dren and their chil­dren de­pend on it,” added Sker­rit.

De­vel­oped coun­tries have in the past spo­ken about es­tab­lish­ing a US$100 bil­lion fund to as­sist de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to deal with the im­pact of cli­mate change, but Cari­com be­lieves “the new es­ti­mate re­al­ly is US$2.3 tril­lion”.

The Caribbean Small Is­land De­vel­op­ment States (SIDS) are some of the most vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries to cli­mate change im­pacts which will be­come crit­i­cal if no ap­pro­pri­ate ac­tion is tak­en. Glob­al warm­ing, sea lev­el rise, in­creased in­ten­si­ty and fre­quen­cy of trop­i­cal cy­clones, storm surges and droughts, as well as chang­ing pre­cip­i­ta­tion pat­terns, and coral bleach­ing are crit­i­cal threats to SIDS.

For ex­am­ple, among the 29 Caribbean SIDS, 22 were af­fect­ed by at least one Cat­e­go­ry 4 or 5 trop­i­cal storm in 2017 with an es­ti­mat­ed cost of US$93 bil­lion.

But the re­gion has been warned that they would need to tem­per their ex­pec­ta­tions. The for­mer se­nior Grena­da gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, Si­mon Stiell, who is now the Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FCC) Sec­re­tari­at, has said a “gar­gan­tu­an lev­el of fi­nance” would be re­quired to im­ple­ment the Paris agree­ment.

On De­cem­ber 12, 2015, at the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP 21) par­ties to the UN­FC­CC reached a land­mark agree­ment to com­bat cli­mate change and to ac­cel­er­ate and in­ten­si­fy the ac­tions and in­vest­ments need­ed for a sus­tain­able low car­bon fu­ture.

The Paris Agree­ment builds up­on the Con­ven­tion and – for the first time – brings all na­tions in­to a com­mon cause to un­der­take am­bi­tious ef­forts to com­bat cli­mate change and adapt to its ef­fects, with en­hanced sup­port to as­sist de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to do so. As such, it charts a new course in the glob­al cli­mate ef­fort.

De­vel­oped coun­tries first in 2009 and again in 2015 un­der the Paris cli­mate agree­ment, agreed to a col­lec­tive goal of US$100 bil­lion a year in grants, loans, pri­vate sec­tor in­vest­ments and more by 2020. How­ev­er, more than a decade af­ter the first pledge was made, na­tions have yet to meet their promise.

Stiell said that while there has been “a lot of talk about the 100 bil­lion dol­lars that’s sup­posed to be de­liv­ered this year per year for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, the amount that is ac­tu­al­ly re­quired is….six tril­lion dol­lars” in or­der to re­duce glob­al emis­sions by 2030 and that’s “what the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty will need to find and that’s just to im­ple­ment our na­tion­al­ly de­ter­mined con­tri­bu­tions (NDC).

“This ob­vi­ous­ly is not just lim­it­ed to the fi­nan­cial trust is­sues, we have with­in our process over ar­eas such as the 100 bil­lion dol­lars or the dou­bling of adap­ta­tion fi­nance, but with­out ur­gent ac­tion to re­set the glob­al fi­nan­cial frame­work we are not go­ing to reach the cli­mate goals that are set for us.

“The fi­nance that we are seek­ing is not go­ing to come from tra­di­tion­al sources. Those cof­fers, those pub­lic monies from de­vel­oped coun­tries are be­ing chan­nelled to oth­er pri­or­i­ties right now,” he said, ar­gu­ing that cli­mate change is com­pet­ing with those oth­er “lo­cal pri­or­i­ties”. (CMC)