Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

The Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) has made it clear that they will not ac­cept any out­comes which could di­min­ish the af­fir­ma­tion of Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS) spe­cial cir­cum­stances, or lessen am­bi­tion on a new cli­mate fi­nance goal at the piv­otal COP29 sum­mit.

AO­SIS de­liv­ered the state­ment at Tues­day’s Open­ing Ple­nary of the Bonn Cli­mate Con­fer­ence (SB60). AO­SIS is the ne­go­ti­at­ing body for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states with­in the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC).

AO­SIS al­so made a strong call for an ur­gent change in the glob­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem, so that SIDS can fi­nal­ly re­ceive the ad­e­quate, ef­fi­cient fi­nan­cial flows nec­es­sary to ad­dress cli­mate change and build re­silience. 

The al­liance's stern warn­ing comes amid record-break­ing heat­waves, un­prece­dent­ed wild­fires in Be­lize, un­sea­son­al tor­ren­tial down­pours in the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, the dev­as­tat­ing and trag­ic land­slide in Papua New Guinea, and the threat of a se­vere At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son, SIDS are fac­ing in­creas­ing­ly wors­en­ing cli­mate change im­pacts and are strug­gling to cope.

In de­liv­er­ing the group state­ment, Anne Ras­mussen, AO­SIS' Lead Ne­go­tia­tor said, "“Cli­mate change is with­out a doubt a sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment chal­lenge and a bar­ri­er for small is­lands.”

Ras­mussen went fur­ther in stat­ing, “As coun­tries that are at the fore­front of cli­mate change im­pacts, we are feel­ing ex­treme heat, in­creased flash flood­ing, the de­cline in bio­di­ver­si­ty, and the per­ma­nent ero­sion of our coast­lines. The con­tin­ued fight to keep our­selves afloat against the many cli­mate change im­pacts fur­ther in­creas­es our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.”

She re­it­er­at­ed to the Ple­nary that the spe­cial cir­cum­stances of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states’(SIDS) and least de­vel­oped coun­tries (LD­Cs) must be pri­or­i­tized, re­gard­ing these vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries’ lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty to ad­dress cli­mate change im­pacts with­out ad­e­quate sup­port from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty, not­ing, “LD­Cs' and SIDS’ spe­cial cir­cum­stances are non-ne­go­tiable.”