CARIBBEAN-CARICOM countries hoping for best at COP 28

ROSEAU, Dominica, CMC – Caribbean Community (CARICOM) chairman, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit Wednesday reiterated the position of the 15-member regional integration grouping that the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) should be a success for small island developing states (SIDS) like those in the Caribbean.

COP 28 gets underway in Dubai from November 30 to December 12. Its thematic program is designed to unite diverse stakeholders, including governments, youth, businesses and investors, civil society, frontline communities, indigenous peoples, and others, around specific solutions that must be scaled up this decade to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

“As I have said on several occasions before, we need this COP to be one of the actions that deliver on the promises of developed countries to provide the much-needed financing to tackle the worsening climate situation, “ said Skerrit, Dominica’s head of government.

He told a news conference that if regional countries leave Dubai “with no clear deliverables, it will be a miserable period for us in the developing world.

“Everybody knows of my misgivings about the utility of such conferences. After all, we have walked the walk and talked the talk, and after 30 years or so, we have seen no practical action on the part of the developed world to help address an existential threat to us in the Caribbean and small island states”.

Skerrit told reporters that the lives of the Caribbean are at risk, “and so I will stay true to the pledge that I have made to the Dominican people and the wider Caribbean region to keep fighting for more equitable distribution of climate financing.”

He said such financing is “critically and urgently needed to ensure that all of us have a better future.

“And so we will attend, and we will address and engage the various stakeholders of COP 28 next week,” Skerrit told reporters.

Caribbean countries remain hopeful that COP 28 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.

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.

In addition, the region also wants a global stocktake that will provide an opportunity to keep the promise of Paris and 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 the adverse impacts of climate change.