Car­o­line Mair

The Chi­nese year of the Wa­ter Snake be­gan less than a month ago, on Feb­ru­ary 10, herald­ing a year of trans­for­ma­tion and change, of re­births and new be­gin­nings.

It marks a shift from 2012, the year of the Wa­ter Drag­on in the Chi­nese Zo­di­ac. The year of the drag­on in the zo­di­ac is sup­posed to be ag­gres­sive and ruth­less, force­ful with en­er­gy and fast-paced. And what a year it was–a ver­i­ta­ble roller­coast­er of a year for the en­vi­ron­ment. There were many dev­as­tat­ing blows.

We saw this on a glob­al lev­el–in the weath­er, in cli­mate change and in the re­fusal of the world to change or adapt to in­evitable changes.

We saw the fail­ure of Rio Con­fer­ence af­ter the hope of Dur­ban, in the melt­ing ice caps and the de-frost­ing of Green­land. We saw the awe­some pow­er of Hur­ri­cane Sandy, span­ning over 1,000 miles in length.

We see it in the Caribbean as well. Along­side the del­uge of im­ages of Sandy bat­ter­ing New York in in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, I re­mem­ber search­ing for im­ages of the ef­fects of Sandy in Haiti.

There were few im­ages. Sparse footage of chil­dren bare­foot and home­less, tents flap­ping loose in the breeze, brown mud­dy flood­wa­ter cas­cad­ing over three-year-old rub­ble, a dead cow car­ried along the streets in a wood­en cart.

Im­ages of cholera borne by blue-hel­met­ed Nepalese UN peace­keep­ers. And fear and des­per­a­tion in the eyes of moth­ers as they won­der where to find shel­ter, wa­ter, food for their fam­i­lies.

Years af­ter the earth­quake, Haiti has not been re­built, and every hur­ri­cane that pass­es de­bil­i­tates it fur­ther.

We have so much to lose as small is­lands. Vul­ner­a­ble to every pass­ing storm, every drought, every inch the sea-lev­el climbs as a re­sult of cli­mate change.

In the Pa­cif­ic, the Carteret is­lands–a ring of six atolls 50 miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea–have al­ready seen the re­sults of ris­ing sea lev­els. The res­i­dents of these is­lands have be­come the first cli­mate-change ex­iles or refugees, as they are con­tro­ver­sial­ly known, hav­ing to leave all they know ow­ing to loss of hab­it­able and arable lands and de­sali­na­tion of fresh-wa­ter aquif­er­ous lens.

They are the ca­naries in the coalmines, and we in the Caribbean are next if we do not take ac­tion. It is a pe­cu­liar sit­u­a­tion to be in, be­ing a small is­land.

Sea lev­els are ris­ing as a re­sult of the pol­lu­tion pro­duced by de­vel­oped in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries.

The melt­ing of po­lar ice sheets and glac­i­ers, as seen at record rate in Green­land in 2012, could raise the lev­el of the oceans re­sult­ing in the in­un­da­tion of Pa­cif­ic is­land states such as Tu­valu and large parts of Bangladesh.

This could trig­ger a ma­jor shift in hu­man pop­u­la­tion as peo­ple are forced to mi­grate from low-ly­ing coastal ar­eas and is­lands.

De­vel­oped in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries must re­duce emis­sions of green­house gas­es that lead to cli­mate change.

The im­por­tance of glob­al ac­tion and ac­count­abil­i­ty was ad­dressed at two ma­jor en­vi­ron­men­tal sum­mits in 2012: the Rio+20 sum­mit in Brazil, and the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­ven­tion (UN­FC­CC) in Do­ha, Qatar. Both were high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed, and both were over­whelm­ing­ly dis­heart­en­ing.

The Rio+20 Con­fer­ence (or the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­fer­ence on Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment) was held in Rio de Janeiro in June to cel­e­brate the 20th an­niver­sary of the 1992 UN Con­fer­ence on En­vi­ron­ment and De­vel­op­ment (UNCED). This 1992 con­fer­ence, al­so held in Rio de Janeiro, was the orig­i­nal Rio Con­fer­ence. It was sem­i­nal in its ground­break­ing out­puts, which pushed for­ward the en­vi­ron­men­tal agen­da, as coun­tries adopt­ed Agen­da 21 to ad­vance eco­nom­ic growth, so­cial eq­ui­ty and en­vi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion.

Part of Agen­da 21 was the Bali Road Map–a set of de­ci­sions that fo­cused on re­duc­ing emis­sions from de­for­esta­tion and for­est man­age­ment, en­cour­aged tech­nol­o­gy trans­fer to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, launched the Adap­ta­tion Fund and in­clud­ed the am­bi­tious Bali Ac­tion Plan.

In con­trast, the 2012 Rio+20 Con­fer­ence, ac­cord­ing to en­vi­ron­men­tal jour­nal­ist George Mon­biot of the UK Guardian, was "283 para­graphs of fluff."

"At least the states due to sign this doc­u­ment haven't ripped up the de­c­la­ra­tions from the last Earth sum­mit, 20 years ago," he went on to say. "But in terms of progress since then, that's as far as it goes.

"Reaf­firm­ing the Rio 1992 com­mit­ments is per­haps the most rad­i­cal prin­ci­ple in the en­tire de­c­la­ra­tion."

I at­tend­ed the 2011 UN­FC­CC in Dur­ban, South Africa. I re­mem­ber be­ing ju­bi­lant at the out­comes, though ten­ta­tive­ly and cau­tious­ly so, for we thought we had seen the herald­ing of a new era.

For once we thought that change was pos­si­ble, that the de­vel­oped world was be­gin­ning to ac­knowl­edge their his­tor­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the cri­sis. An agree­ment, the Dur­ban Plat­form for En­hanced Ac­tion, had been signed. It launched a new round of ne­go­ti­a­tions aimed at de­vel­op­ing ne­go­ti­ate a new, legal­ly-bind­ing in­stru­ment en­gag­ing all coun­tries for the post-2020 pe­ri­od af­ter the end of the Ky­oto Pro­to­col, which com­mits de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to lim­it­ing emis­sions.

How­ev­er, at the 2012 UN­FC­CC agree­ments in Do­ha, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ists were less than en­thu­si­as­tic. The out­comes were fee­ble at best.

There were gains. The life of the Ky­oto Pro­to­col, which had been due to ex­pire at the end of 2012, was ex­tend­ed un­til 2020. The con­cept of "loss and dam­age" was in­cor­po­rat­ed for the first time. And an agree­ment in prin­ci­ple that rich­er na­tions could be fi­nan­cial­ly re­spon­si­ble to oth­er na­tions for their fail­ure to re­duce car­bon emis­sions.

But on­ly the bare min­i­mum of agree­ments could be ac­com­plished, and more dif­fi­cult agree­ments were pushed in­to the fu­ture.

Here in the Caribbean, there is much we can do. Bar­ba­dos has tak­en strides in so­lar en­er­gy and wa­ter con­ser­va­tion but the en­er­gy sec­tor has ren­dered us in­ac­tive in T&T.

We can­not re­ly end­less­ly on oil and gas non-re­new­able re­sources. De­vel­op­ment must be sus­tain­able if we are to con­front the re­al­i­ties ahead of us. T&T changed sta­tus in Oc­to­ber 2011, and is no longer con­sid­ered a de­vel­op­ing coun­try, ac­cord­ing to the Or­gan­i­sa­tion for Eco­nom­ic Co-op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (OECD) De­vel­op­ment As­sis­tance Com­mit­tee (DAC) list, which de­ter­mines who re­ceives aid for de­vel­op­ment.

It is now up to us to fo­cus on pro­tect­ing what is ours. We can learn from coun­tries like Cos­ta Ri­ca, where con­ser­va­tion is a na­tion­al ef­fort.

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Ed­i­tor's note: Car­o­line Mair is a lawyer and a con­sul­tant spe­cial­is­ing in in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­men­tal law, with an em­pha­sis on cli­mate change and Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS). She is a con­sul­tant with Foun­da­tion for In­ter­na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Law and De­vel­op­ment (FIELD) which ad­vis­es de­vel­op­ing coun­tries on mul­ti­lat­er­al en­vi­ron­men­tal ne­go­ti­a­tions. She is al­so a spe­cial ad­vis­ing con­sul­tant with British In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al and Com­par­a­tive Law (BI­ICL).