?Trinidad and To­ba­go's Com­mon­wealth lead­ers' meet­ing has wrought con­sen­sus on a Com­mon­wealth cli­mate change de­c­la­ra­tion, whose key el­e­ment in­volves im­me­di­ate fund­ing from next year for small is­land states af­fect­ed. The Port-of-Spain Cli­mate Change Con­sen­sus–among the first sig­nif­i­cant strides so far made by lead­ers at this Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM)–is ex­pect­ed to fa­cil­i­tate a suc­cess­ful out­come of next month's cru­cial Unit­ed Na­tions cli­mate change con­fer­ence in Copen­hagen, Den­mark. The de­c­la­ra­tion was an­nounced yes­ter­day by con­fer­ence chair­man, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing at the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (IFC).

Man­ning, who pi­lot­ed the Com­mon­wealth de­c­la­ra­tion process, will be among the 90 world lead­ers who will dis­cuss the cru­cial cli­mate change is­sue in Copen­hagen in a few weeks. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's brief­ing, Man­ning was flanked by Prime Min­is­ter of Den­mark Lars Lokke Rass­mussen–host of the up­com­ing Copen­hagen con­fer­ence, Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Kevin Rudd, UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ban Ki Moon and Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Ka­malesh Shar­ma. The cli­mate change is­sue was dis­cussed dur­ing a spe­cial ses­sion on Fri­day, im­me­di­ate­ly as they got down to agen­da busi­ness of the three-day CHOGM. Man­ning said T&T's CHOGM was al­ways recog­nised as a po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ty to add val­ue to the ne­go­ti­at­ing process for the Unit­ed Na­tions Copen­hagen con­fer­ence on cli­mate change and for­mu­la­tion of a legal­ly-bind­ing agree­ment at that up­com­ing meet­ing.

Ban Ki Moon and Rass­mussen, who were very con­cerned about the way the is­sue had been go­ing, as well as French Prime Min­is­ter Nico­las Sarkozy were, there­fore, in­vit­ed to the CHOGM. Man­ning added: "I'm very pleased to say the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing here in Port-of-Spain, af­ter de­lib­er­at­ing with our in­vit­ed col­leagues, have come to a con­clu­sion on this mat­ter. "We have al­ways known the di­ver­si­ty of the Com­mon­wealth pro­vid­ing us with a par­tic­u­lar op­por­tu­ni­ty, com­pris­ing, as it does, some of the small­est and most vul­ner­a­ble states in the world, re­gard­ing cli­mate change, as well as some of the rich­er coun­tries of the world who are in a much bet­ter po­si­tion than oth­ers to con­tribute to a suc­cess­ful res­o­lu­tion of the is­sue.

Man­ning presents de­c­la­ra­tion

"We have come to a con­clu­sion which we'd proud­ly like to present as the Port-of-Spain Cli­mate Change Con­sen­sus." Rudd said the de­c­la­ra­tion was a sig­nif­i­cant and sub­stan­tial doc­u­ment aimed at pro­vid­ing con­sen­sus, mo­men­tum and sup­port for a sub­stan­tial out­come in Copen­hagen. He said cli­mate change fi­nanc­ing had been, for some time, one of the key is­sues in ne­go­ti­a­tions among states which will par­tic­i­pate in the Copen­hagen sum­mit. The POS de­c­la­ra­tion, Rudd added, had now fa­cil­i­tat­ed a break­through re­gard­ing fi­nanc­ing for the most vul­ner­a­ble states to adapt to and deal with the mit­i­gat­ing ef­fects of cli­mate change. This would be done via an an­nu­al "fast start" fund, start­ing in 2010 and build­ing to a lev­el of re­sources of $10 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly by 2012.

The fund will be known as the Copen­hagen Launch Fund. Im­me­di­ate fast dis­burs­ing as­sis­tance with a ded­i­cat­ed stream is pro­posed for small is­land states and as­so­ci­at­ed low-ly­ing coastal states to the tune of ten per cent of the fund. Lead­ers met with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of such states yes­ter­day. Caribbean states are among small is­land ter­ri­to­ries. Com­mon­wealth lead­ers said they recog­nised the need for fur­ther spec­i­fied and com­pa­ra­ble fund­ing, to as­sist the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble states to cope with cli­mate change. They al­so ac­knowl­edged the need to scale the fund up be­yond 2010. Flow of monies for the fund from pub­lic and pri­vate sources will be dis­cussed dur­ing the Copen­hagen meet­ing. The fund is based on a pro­pos­al by UK Prime Min­is­ter Gor­don Brown.

?What the lead­ers say:

"What the Com­mon­wealth has done to­day is throw its full weight be­hind the process now chaired by the Prime Min­is­ter of Den­mark," Rudd said, not­ing that the sit­u­a­tion on the cli­mate change is­sue had reached some­thing of an im­passe pre­vi­ous­ly. Rudd said the lead­ers' de­c­la­ra­tion had recog­nised the im­por­tance of cli­mate change fi­nance in de­liv­er­ing a sub­stan­tive out­come at Copen­hagen. Cana­da was ful­ly sup­port­ive of the de­c­la­ra­tion and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fund. Rudd added: "What we're seek­ing to do in Copen­hagen is to bring about a com­pre­hen­sive, sub­stan­tial, op­er­a­tional­ly-bind­ing agree­ment in two steps. "The first is the Port-of-Spain Con­sen­sus which will lead to a legal­ly-bind­ing doc­u­ment dur­ing the course of 2010."

Ban Ki Moon said he was very en­cour­aged by the Com­mon­wealth lead­ers' shared de­sire to achieve a suc­cess­ful out­come at the Copen­hagen sum­mit, and wel­comed their de­c­la­ra­tion and com­mit­ment. He felt as­sured that the up­com­ing con­fer­ence would "seal a deal " and have im­me­di­ate ef­fect and short-term fi­nan­cial sup­port for small coun­tries. Rass­mussen said he was very im­pressed by the Com­mon­wealth lead­ers' state­ment and was en­cour­aged by their pledge of sup­port to reach a pos­i­tive out­come in Copen­hagen. Shar­ma said small states would know that they had in the Com­mon­wealth a friend and part­ner which will "walk the walk" with them in what­ev­er was re­quired for mit­i­ga­tion and ac­cess­ing fi­nance to deal with cli­mate change ef­fects.