Earth Today | ‘Climate justice is long overdue’
Published:Thursday | December 7, 2023 | 12:29 AM
CARIBBEAN AND other small island developing states (SIDS) are – as one outcome from the ongoing international climate negotiations in Dubai – digging in their heels for a concluded Global Stocktake (GST) that takes into consideration their special circumstances and which drives action to meaningfully turn the tide on climate threats and impacts.
The GST provides an inventory of climate action and support worldwide, together with insight into existing gaps and prospects for collaboration to achieve improvements. It is to inform the next round of climate action plans under the Paris Agreement, due in 2025.
“For small island states, it (the GST) is a lifeline to keeping the 1.5 goal alive. The outcome of GST must include both a political declaration and a robust CMA (Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties the Paris Agreement) decision that lays out an action plan charting a clear path for implementation to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius,” said Cedric Schuster, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), in a statement issued on December 4.
Keeping global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius has been a longstanding negotiating point for SIDS who face catastrophic climate change impacts, if that temperature is exceeded.
Other required important outcomes from the COP, the AOSIS statement said, include progress on adaptation and scaled up climate finance.
“The Global Goal on Adaptation negotiations should yield an ambitious framework to scale up progress on transformative adaptation actions, deliver swift solutions and financial support, and set us on a course for a more sustainable future,” Schuster noted in the statement.
“On climate finance, Parties must deliver on their commitments to the $100 billion goal. There is a need for developed countries to enhance this commitment post 2025 to make the scale of climate finance commensurate with the scale of the challenge,” he added.
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said that ‘climate justice is long overdue’ for the most vulnerable.
“Developing countries are being devastated by disasters they did not cause.Extortionate borrowing costs are blocking their climate action plans; and support is far too little, far too late,” the UN boss said at the opening of the COP.
“The Global Stocktake must commit to a surge in finance, including for adaptation and loss and damage; and it must support reform of the multilateral development banks to leverage far more private finance at reasonable costs for developing countries on climate action. Developed countries must [also] show how they will double adaptation finance to $40 billion a year by 2025 – as promised – and clarify how they deliver on the $100 billion – as promised,” he added.
“Excellencies, the climate challenge is not just another issue in your inbox. Protecting our climate is the world’s greatest test of leadership. And so I urge you to lead. Humanity’s fate hangs in the balance. Make this COP count. Make this COP a game-changer. Make this COP the new hope in the future of humankind,” Guterres said further.