Board Members of the 5Cs,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning and warm greetings from the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre.
We are most grateful for your presence at this very important event. The 5Cs is pleased to co-host this CARICOM COP 26 Climate Change Negotiators Virtual Preparatory meeting. We had hoped for a face-to-face meeting in Antigua and Barbuda; however, as we have seen time and time again since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the SARS-COV-2 coronavirus continue to test our resolve and resiliency.
Colleagues, the 5Cs has the mandate to coordinate the Region’s response to climate change – a mandate that the Centre has been faithfully executing, despite the challenges, since its operationalization in 2005. Despite the 5Cs being a completely self-financed CARICOM institution, receiving no subventions from Member States, the Centre has successfully mobilized and implemented over USD $260M for climate change investments in our Member States. In addition to mobilizing resources to improve the Region’s resiliency to CC, the Centre continues to play, in partnerships with other Region institutions, like CIMH, UWI-Climate Modeling group, and INSMET, a critical role in ensuring that the Region’s meteorological and climatological observing network is strengthened so that we have access to Region-specific climate change data and information for evidence-based decision-making.
The 5Cs, during the last 10 years, in partnership with a number of donors and partners, also carries out the role of coordinating CARICOM’s position on key issues leading up to COPs. To do this, the 5Cs relies on our small but highly skilled and experience contingent of climate change negotiators, many of whom are gathered here today, to ensure that the political directorate is well apprised of the key issues leading up to the COP, including those issues that may require political interventions and solutions. In the international climate change negotiations and discourse, our negotiators continue to punch far above their size in number to ensure that CARICOM’s position is well reflected in the negotiated outcomes. The historic Paris Agreement and the inclusion of the 1.5 degree temperature goal is but one testament of their competence and success.
This COP 26 preparatory meeting organized by the 5Cs, in collaboration with the CARICOM Secretariat, Climate Analytics and Charles and Associates, has a number of key objectives and outcomes that include:
- Providing our CARICOM negotiators with a forum to discuss, ventilate and recommend positions on COP26 agenda items for consideration and endorsement of Ministers on 14 July;
- Identifying key possible outcomes that are favorable to CARICOM at COP26;
- Assisting in the design of a CARICOM strategy for COP26 negotiations and a proposed roadmap for Ministerial and wider regional engagement to ensure coordination between the technical and political arms of the process leading up to and at COP;
- Identifying roles of regional institutions to support negotiators and Ministers through to COP26 and other relevant high-level events with inter-linkages to COP26;
- Identifying the key issues to be considered for a political declaration on CARICOM expectations for COP26.
Equally important, the preparatory meeting will also provide an opportunity to:
- build capacity among our negotiators and identify CARICOM lead negotiators on key agenda items in the negotiations;
- Provide updates to negotiators on outcomes and state of play in climate change negotiations post the June Subsidiary Bodies session.
We are acutely aware how critical COP26 will be for global ambition to keep the 1.5 degree temperature goal within reach. We have but 10 years for the world to take action to avoid the kinds of irreversible damages that have been outlined in the IPCC special 1.5 degrees report. Despite the leadership of the COP 26 Presidency and stated objectives of COP 26 being a COP of ambition, it is obvious that the level of ambition needed in Glasgow will not come easy. Just two days ago, G-20 finance ministers failed to agree on a climate pledge to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. As you all know, failure to take action today to reach net zero by mid-century will result in the overshooting of the 1.5 degrees C goal. As such, it is becoming evident that political leadership and pressure at the highest levels will be required at COP26, if we are secure the level of ambition expected by SIDS. To this end, the united and amplified voices of CARICOM, as part of AOSIS, will be critical to the successful outcome in Glasgow.
This preparatory meeting is but one of a number of strategic engagements that the 5Cs will coordinate leading up to COP26. With the collective expertise and experience we have assembled here, I am confident that we will achieve our objectives of articulating CARICOM’s positions and priorities for recommendation to the Ministers. Once adopted, CARICOM would be able to communicate its position with AOSIS and the international community, including our citizens and the media. As a region, we have always been stronger together when we join and amplify our voices. It is this solidarity, forged by our shared experiences and vulnerability to climate change, that has served CARICOM so well in the UNFCCC process.
We look forward to your perspectives, your expertise and your engagement, over the next two days, as we discuss a number of key priorities on the COP agenda that include inter alia:
- Finalizing Paris Rulebook;
- Article 6;
- Issues relating to closing the mitigation gap to keep the 1.5 degree goal in play;
- Advancing the global goal of adaptation;
- Scaling up financing to vulnerable and accelerating action and support for adaptation and loss and damage for SIDS
- Technology and Technology transfer
- Capacity Building to name a few.
We have important work ahead and are counting on your active engagement and participation.
It would be remiss of me not to highlight and mention a number of partners who have made this event and subsequent events leading up to COP 26 possible. We are grateful to AOSIS Secretariat, AOSIS Chair and UNICCC for making the platform available to facilitate the meeting. Of course, we are very appreciative of our donors, GIZ/BMU via Climate Analytics for providing the resources to host the meeting. Other donors such as the Open Society Foundation, Caribbean Development Bank and UK government have also provided resources to ensure that the 5Cs can effectively coordinate among CARICOM. We are still hopeful that the UK, as the host country, will provide CARICOM with a Pavilion Space that will enable us to effectively coordinate in Glasgow.
Lastly, the 5Cs works closely with and depends on key partnership and support of the CARICOM Secretariat in ensuring that our negotiators and ministers are aligned and engaged.
Colleagues, I wish you all a most productive meeting and look forward to a very favorable outcome.
