Call for climate change funds to help vulnerable states

by Marlon Madden

As the world prepares for the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), the call for finance to help the most vulnerable and to accelerate climate ambitions is getting louder.

Ahead of the UK hosting the framework convention scheduled to start on October 31, His Excellency Georges Rebelo Pinto Chikoti, Secretary General of the Organisation of African, Caribbean and Pacific States (OACPS), said he was calling on all parties to speed up climate ambitions.

He made the plea recently during a virtual High-Level dialogue with key partners in preparation for COP26.

“I call upon and urge all parties to commit to further strengthening their greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets in the next round of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs),” he said,

“I also call on all parties to increase climate ambitions and adaptation actions, giving them the same weight
as mitigation, and to scale up technical and financial support to least developed and most vulnerable countries,” said Chikoti.

The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report confirms that global warming will rise from 1.5 °C to 2 °C by the middle of the 21st Century, unless immediate, profound, large-scale and sustained measures are taken to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Secretary-General Chikoti, rising temperatures and the impacts of climate change are higher in the 79 countries of the OACPS than the global average.

He said despite these nations contributing the least to global warming, their economies, livelihoods, human health and ecosystems are among the most severely affected.

“We are counting on the strong leadership from developed countries at COP26, to provide clarity, reliability and predictability on how they will fulfil their long-term commitments to mobilise at least US$100 billion in climate finance in the post-2020 period and beyond, for the poorest populations most affected by the climate crisis,” said the Secretary General.

This comes on the heels of a recent impassioned plea by Prime Minister Mia Mottley for richer nations and those responsible for majority of the world’s CO2 emissions to take meaningful action in tackling the climate crisis, vaccine inequity and poverty and social development.

“When will the world take action? None are safe until all are safe,” Mottley told the UN General Assembly.

She was at the time addressing the UN General Assembly 76th session General Debate at the UN Headquarters in New York.

“How many more hurricanes must destroy, locusts devour and islands submerge before we recognise that $100 billion in adaptation is simply not even enough? The answer is that we are waiting for urgent, global moral strategic leadership,” said Mottley.

Pointing to issues relating to social development and education, Mottley said: “we have the means to give every child on this planet a tablet and we have the means to give every adult a vaccine and we have the means to invest in protecting the most vulnerable on our planet from a change in climate but we choose not to. It is not because we do not have enough. It is because we do not have the will to distribute that which we have.”

“If we can find the will to send people to the moon and solve male baldness . . ., we can solve simple problems like letting our people eat at affordable prices,” said Mottley.

marlonmadden@barbadostoday.bb