Pe­ter Richards

CAS­TRIES, St Lu­cia–Guyana has called on the Caribbean to con­tin­ue to lever­age "our ex­treme ex­po­sure to cli­mate change" as it seeks to forge and ad­vo­cate a com­mon po­si­tion on the mat­ter. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Ramo­tar, ad­dress­ing the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing of the 33rd Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (Cari­com) sum­mit yes­ter­day said that of all the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties fac­ing the re­gion, none pos­es a more di­rect threat to the re­gion's ex­is­tence than cli­mate change.

He said that the sum­mit, which is be­ing at­tend­ed by all of the 15 mem­ber coun­tries, ex­cept the lead­ers of The Ba­hamas, Be­lize, and Montser­rat, was be­ing held im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the Unit­ed Na­tions con­fer­ence on Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment (Rio+20) in Brazil.

He said that the in­ter­na­tion­al ne­go­ti­a­tions on cli­mate change mat­ters were "go­ing much too slow while emis­sions are on an ac­cept­ably high tra­jec­to­ry and fi­nance for adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion woe­ful­ly in­ad­e­quate. "We recog­nise that the Dur­ban meet­ing es­tab­lished an adap­ta­tion mech­a­nism, a tech­nol­o­gy mech­a­nism and a green cli­mate fund. But it is es­sen­tial that agree­ment is reached by this year on the new and ad­di­tion­al sources of fi­nanc­ing for the fund and that a REDD plus win­dow be es­tab­lished to re­duce de­for­esta­tion and in­cen­tivise for­est con­ser­va­tion and sus­tain­able for­est man­age­ment."

He said that while the re­gion sup­ports a process to achieve a long-term glob­al agree­ment through the Dur­ban Plat­form, "we must up­hold the prin­ci­ple of his­tor­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of some par­ties and the con­comi­tant prin­ci­ple of com­mon but dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties be­tween de­vel­oped and de­vel­op­ing coun­tries."

He said that in much the same man­ner, the re­gion ex­ists in an in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment that is in­creas­ing­ly un­pre­dictable and un­help­ful to the cir­cum­stances of small states. Ramo­tar said as Eu­rope strug­gle to find so­lu­tions to its eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial cri­sis, it is im­per­a­tive for the re­gion to dis­cuss its own eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, lament­ing the fact that sev­er­al years af­ter a new frame­work had been agreed up­on, "we are back in St Lu­cia where the re­gion­al econ­o­my is still a main item on the agen­da.

"We should not as a re­gion, have to re­act to sit­u­a­tions, but en­sure that pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures are put in place. We must as a re­gion be more earnest in our ef­forts to de­fine a de­vel­op­ment agen­da that is re­spon­sive to the evolv­ing glob­al cir­cum­stances we face and the do­mes­tic re­al­i­ties of our small­ness and our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties," he added.