GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – Caribbean Community (CARICOM) ministers of the environment and sustainable development have welcomed the first Global Stocktake as a vital opportunity for a universal push this decade to keep global warming below 1.5°C.
The first-ever Global Stocktake will conclude at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) underway in Dubai from November 30 to December 12.
The Global Stocktake is a process for countries and stakeholders to see where they’re collectively making progress towards meeting the goals of the Paris Climate Change Agreement – and where they’re not. Governments are expected to decide on the Global Stocktake at COP28, which can be leveraged to accelerate ambition in their next round of climate action plans due in 2025.
In a statement, the ministers said that there is mounting irrefutable evidence that the world is uncharted territory and that there is a narrowing window of opportunity to secure a livable planet for all.
They said the entry into force of the Paris Agreement inspired a new generation of emissions reduction targets that saw projections for global warming reduced by whole degrees.
“As promising as those projections were, they only brought us within range of keeping global warming as close to 2.7°C, not 1.5°C. Even more concerning is that action is lagging. Already, the world has experienced global warming of 1.1°C, and recent science suggests that we are nearing the 1.5°C warming threshold. It is now a matter of years, not decades,” the ministers said.
They said the impacts have been devastating on a global scale.
“However, those impacts have been discriminating especially against our small island and low-lying coastal developing states. Our experience of economic and non-economic loss and damage related to climate impacts has struck at the core of our economies and societies.
“At one extreme, lives and livelihoods have been lost. Our people’s health is at risk. Homes and other critical infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed. Whole sectors of the economy have been shut down, whether in times of hurricane or drought or because of slow onset events, and for some, the threat of slowing down of other sectors is imminent due to energy transitions that will become inevitable.
“At the other extreme, our environment is under siege. The biodiversity and ecosystems that have sustained generations of Caribbean people are under constant threat.
“Still, we strive. The Caribbean remains committed to 1.5°C. We are committed to accelerating the renewable energy transition in our region. We are committed to a robust conservation and sustainable use agenda for our natural resources.
“ Our ocean and forests are important carbon sinks that benefit not only our people and our countries but the world. We are committed to building the resilience of our people, economies, and environment. We are doing so with our limited resources, with limited fiscal space, and in tandem with progressing our targets for Sustainable Development Goals.”
But the ministers said that despite the region’s best efforts to entrench climate-resilient development at home, “we are faced with a global environment that is not conducive to our ambition.”
They said the wars in Ukraine and Palestine are having waves of impacts worldwide. Inflationary pressures are driving up costs of capital that were already unaffordable for the region’s small economies with complex debt dynamics.
They said even before these more recent disruptions, Caribbean countries have had to work within an international financial environment that could be better suited to support vulnerable countries with the raft of new and emerging transboundary challenges like climate and biodiversity loss.
“Our access to affordable, sustainable, predictable, and scalable finance has been limited, slow, and sometimes precluded due to anachronistic eligibility criteria and overburdensome bureaucracy.
“In the face of these external challenges, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) remains sanguine. Member states are pursuing readiness to better access climate and development finance more broadly, including piloting a multidimensional vulnerability index.”
The ministers said that the region is pioneering innovative finance initiatives, from conservation bonds to catastrophe bonds to disaster clauses, and exploring new opportunities in carbon markets that are rights-based and that can uphold environmental integrity.
“We are also joining up efforts to push forward a reform agenda for international financial institutions that have people and planet as their central focus,” the ministers said in their lengthy statement, noting that they are now looking to the Global Stocktake to send solid and unmistakable signals that the world is up to the task, and ready to do its part; that together they will support 1.5°C aligned pathways “for just, equitable and accelerated transition across the whole of economies and societies.”
They promise to cooperate to accelerate adaptation and foster climate-resilient development. They will do so with urgency “in an inclusive people-centered manner and with the aim that we will leave no one behind.”
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