PM says SIDS do not need death sentence

SOURCE: CMC-Prime Minister Mia Mottley Monday urged the international community to agree to a 1.5 degree Celsius mark regarding the environment warning that anything higher than that would constitute a “death sentence” for countries in the Caribbean and other Small islands Developing States (SIDS).

“Two degrees is a death sentence for the people of Antigua and Barbuda, for the people of the Maldives, for the people of Dominica and Fiji, for the people of Kenya and Mozambique and yes, for the people of Samoa and Barbados.

We do not want that dreaded death sentence and we are here to say try harder,”Mottley told the opening ceremony of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 26, taking place here until November 12.

The global average air temperature may rise by more than 1.5 degree Celsius mark over pre-industrial levels between 2021 and 2040, according to the Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on August 9, 2021.

To reach a 1.5-degree pathway, new cultivation approaches would need to prevail, leading to a 53 percent reduction in the intensity of methane emissions from rice cultivation by 2050. Finally, about one-third of global food output is currently lost in production or wasted in consumption.

Mottley told the ceremony that because small states are increasingly vulnerable to the worst effects of climate change, increased global temperatures will impact these smaller, developing countries first.

“We can work with who is ready to go because the train is ready to leave (and) those who are not yet ready we need to continue doing circles and to remind them that their people, not our people, but their citizens need them to get on board as soon as possible,” Mottley said.

“For those who have eyes to see, for those who have ears to listen and for those who have a heart to feel 1.5 is what we need to survive,” she said, reiterating that two degrees “is a death sentence”.

She called on the international community to “try harder because our people, the climate army, the world, the planet needs our action now, not next year, not in the next decade”.

Several Caribbean Community (CARICOM) leaders are attending the conference as countries work towards the global goal of limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. If this limit is exceeded, scientists have predicted that worsening climatic events will threaten people’s lives, livelihoods and food systems.

Among the actions being advocated for are the reduction in gas emissions from burning fossil fuels like oil, speeding up a transition to the use of more renewable sources of energy (such as solar and hydro energy) and adequate financing to help small, developing countries to become more resilient to climate change.

UN Secretary General, António Guterres in a blunt message to the COP 26 said “the six years since the Paris Climate Agreement have been the six hottest years on record.  Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink.

“We face a start choice. Either we stop it – or it stops us”, he added, delivering five key messages to world leaders.

“Enough of brutalizing biodiversity, killing ourselves with carbon, treating nature like a toilet, burning, and drilling and mining our way deeper.”

“We are digging our own graves”, Guterres said, adding that our planet is changing before our eyes from melting glaciers, to relentless extreme weather events.

He reminded that sea-level rise is double the rate it was 30 years ago, that oceans are hotter than ever, and that parts of the Amazon Rainforest now emit more carbon than they absorb.

“Recent climate action announcements might give the impression that we are on track to turn things around. This is an illusion”, he stated, referring to the latest report on national plans to reduce emissions, known as NDCs, which indicates that even when fully met, the result would still condemn our world to a “calamitous” 2.7- degree increase.

“And even if the recent pledges were clear and credible – and there are serious questions about some of them – we are still careening towards climate catastrophe. So, as we open this much anticipated climate conference, we are still heading for climate disaster.”

Guterres urged nations to build coalitions to create the financial and technological conditions to accelerate decarbonization of the economy and the phase out of coal.