Lead Editor - Newsgathering
ryan.bachoo@cnc3.co.tt
T&T’s lead climate negotiator Kishan Kumarsingh says Caribbean leaders will have to lobby strongly in the coming months to get the outcomes they desire at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29).
He made the comments as the Bonn Climate Change Conference wrapped up a week ago in Germany. Kumarsingh, who represented T&T at the conference, said COP29 is shaping up to be a highly political affair where decisions on many issues and their interlinkages will have to be resolved “at a very high level.”
Some of the issues Caribbean leaders will need to strongly look at include strong ambitions in the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to be submitted in 2025, an increase in ambition for climate finance which will enable climate action in Caribbean countries and pressing for progress in areas such as adaptation and just transition.
In an interview on his return from the Bonn meetings, Kumarsingh said, “What is required is high political will and negotiations in good faith to have those outcomes realised.”
Access to climate finance remains a key aspect of negotiations for small island states in the Caribbean and it was a major talking point in Bonn, he said. While developing nations sought to hold developed nations to account on the $100 billion pledge made in 2009, there was a difference in opinion in Bonn over whether that has been realised, which entrenched distrust in the negotiations.
Kumarsingh, who heads the Multilateral Environmental Agreements Unit at the Ministry of Planning and Development, said developed countries have argued they have not only met the pledge but overshot it.
However, developing countries rebutted by saying this hasn’t happened, particularly due to the lack of a universally accepted definition of what climate finance is, as this has also been understood to be financed by some developed countries in the form of loans (which have to be repaid with interest) and official development assistance (ODA).
Kumarsingh explained, “The main dividing issue was the obligation to provide by developed countries and who is to receive and in what form and who can access.”
What remains to be determined is the design, quantum and contributors to this collective goal. Some developed countries have argued it should include major emitters and emerging economies.
“In all likelihood, the climate finance discussion is headed for a political resolution at COP29, even though the discussions crept along, and in some instances were frustrating, in the Bonn sessions,” Kumarsingh said.
He said similar differences emerged in discussions surrounding adaptation, mitigation and just transition, all of which will have to be worked out at COP29, which takes place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11 to 22.
COP29 president Mukhtar Babayev, who is also the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources in Azerbaijan, has already identified climate finance and NDCs as key areas from which he wants to see an agreement emerge at the conference later this year.
Kumarsingh insisted that the outlook for Caribbean countries is optimistic as they push for outcomes in their favour ahead of COP29.