RYAN BA­CHOO
Lead Ed­i­tor – News­gath­er­ing
ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

Amid closed-door ne­go­ti­a­tions at COP28, world lead­ers took cen­tre stage at the start of the sec­ond day in Dubai.

–Of im­por­tant note, The World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion is­sued a re­port late on Thurs­day con­firm­ing 2023 would be the hottest year ever record­ed. The Unit­ed Na­tions Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al An­tónio Guter­res re­spond­ed to the news by say­ing, “We are liv­ing through cli­mate col­lapse in re­al time.”

–Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is not at­tend­ing COP28, but Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, is rep­re­sent­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go at the glob­al sum­mit.

–Pres­i­dent of Guyana, Dr. Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali, will ad­dress the ple­nary as the last of the lead­ers in the ses­sion be­tween 6am and 10am T&T time (2pm to 6pm Dubai time).

–Dick­on Mitchell, Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da, is sched­uled to at­tend a Spe­cial High-Lev­el seg­ment for Heads of Gov­ern­ment this evening in Dubai.

–On Sat­ur­day, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter, Mia Mot­t­ley, will de­liv­er her na­tion­al state­ment to world lead­ers in the ses­sion that starts at 1am T&T time (9am Dubai time). Do­mini­ca Prime Min­is­ter, Roo­sevelt Sker­rit, will al­so speak in that ses­sion as well as Prime Min­is­ters Gas­ton Browne of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Philip Joseph Pierre of St Lu­cia and Dr Ralph Gon­salves of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

–A day af­ter the Loss and Dam­age Fund was adopt­ed at COP28, Cana­da has com­mit­ted US$60m to the fund, en­vi­ron­ment min­is­ter Steven Guil­beault an­nounced out­side his coun­try’s pavil­ion.  That brings the ini­tial size of the fund to US$489m. US$245m has al­ready been com­mit­ted by the EU, in­clud­ing US$100m from Ger­many. There is al­so US$75m from the UK, US$24.5m from the US and US$10m from Japan.

–In his ad­dress to the ple­nary on Fri­day, COP28 pres­i­dent, Sul­tan Al-Jaber called on par­ties to “de­liv­er some good news to the world.”

_____

Stay tuned to Guardian Me­dia for reg­u­lar up­dates on COP28.