BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders Thursday presented a shopping list to Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the president-designate of the 28th Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
COP 28 will take place in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) from November 30 to December 12 this year, and Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, who is also chairman of the 15-member regional integration grouping, presented the shopping list during a meeting here with Al Jaber and other regional leaders.
Skerrit told the president-designate that even as CARICOM is celebrating its 50th anniversary, it was doing so in the face of its “most significant challenge to date.
“The Caribbean is one of the world’s most vulnerable regions; climate change is an existential threat for us in the Caribbean. We are on the frontlines of the climate crisis, suffering from the ravages of climate change that is not our making,” he said.
Skerrit said that the scientific imperative is clear and that the global community needs to cut emissions by 45 percent by 2030 and reach net zero by 2050.
“The political leadership required, however, to deliver at the scale and speed necessary to catch up. Despite the geopolitical challenges being experienced across the globe, we must continue 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 commensurate with ensuring that we keep 1.5 alive. Our lives and that our children and their children depend on it.”
Skerrit said that regional countries expect that COP28 will deliver, at the very least, several prominent political outcomes, including an ambitious mitigation work program that will see developed countries and major economies submit enhanced Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) aligned to the 1.5 pathway.
He said the region also wants a global stocktake that will provide an opportunity to ensure that “we keep the promise of Paris alive 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 operationalization and capitalization of the Loss and Damage fund that will provide critical climate finance to the most vulnerable countries ravaged by climate change’s adverse impacts.
He said these funds must be in the form of grants and that CARICOM also hopes that COP 28 will deliver a credible roadmap for the doubling of adaptation finance.
He said the Caribbean also wants the selection of the host of the Santiago Network1 and a Work Programme in Just Transition that will ensure equity and include both mitigation and adaptation and that won’t leave any small island developing state (SIDS) behind.
“These outcomes are critical to rebuilding trust in the UNFCCC process. Developed countries must be accountable, keep their promises and deliver the climate finance required if trust is maintained.
“They must deliver on the US$100 billion per year by COP28 and must commit new and additional resources by 2025 as we articulate the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance,” Skerrit said.
He told the meeting that time has never been more urgent as the window to avert global catastrophe is fast closing.
He recalled Dominica having experienced such catastrophe firsthand when Hurricane Maria caused damages equivalent to 226 percent of the island’s gross domestic product (GDP), two years after tropical storm Erika wiped out the equivalent of 90 percent of GDP.
“Other CARICOM countries have similar experiences. As bad as this is, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) makes it clear that the situation will worsen without steep cuts aligned to a 1.5 pathway.
“As a result, we have committed in my country to pursue climate resilience across all aspects of our society and economy to avoid such losses in the future and enable more rapid recovery. “We, like all our CARICOM counterparts, require profound development finance reforms, solutions to the debt crisis, and equitable access to climate finance to make resilience a reality truly,” Skerrit said.
The CARICOM chairman said that the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) recently indicated that there is a 66 percent chance that “we will temporarily overshoot 1.5 degrees C within the next five years and that there is a 98 percent chance that the next five years will be the warmest on record.
“We know that with every increment of warming, the frequency and intensity of climate-related disasters will increase…undermining our sustainable development aspirations,” Skerrit said, noting that it is with this urgency that Al Jaber will take up the mantle of the COP28 presidency.
“The negotiations, as always, will be difficult. However, we are counting on your effective leadership to steer the world on a path that will keep 1.5 within reach,” Skerrit said, adding, “Rest assured of the fullest support and solidarity of the Caribbean Community during your pres
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