Ryan Ba­choo

From An­talya, Turkiye

Cari­com is call­ing for greater cli­mate am­bi­tion, faster ac­cess to cli­mate fi­nanc­ing and a firm com­mit­ment to keep­ing the 1.5-de­gree Cel­sius warm­ing lim­it alive as re­gion­al lead­ers and ne­go­tia­tors push for con­crete out­comes here at COP31 in Türkiye.

Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Change Cen­tre (CC­C­CC) ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Dr Col­in Young yes­ter­day told Guardian Me­dia the re­gion was en­ter­ing the two-week Unit­ed Na­tions cli­mate con­fer­ence with a clear mes­sage: more ac­tion and less talk.

Young said Cari­com had iden­ti­fied sev­er­al non-ne­go­tiable pri­or­i­ties for the ne­go­ti­a­tions, be­gin­ning with the need to main­tain 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius as the glob­al cli­mate tar­get, de­spite grow­ing ev­i­dence that the world is like­ly to ex­ceed that thresh­old.

He said the re­gion could not ac­cept the prospect of sur­pass­ing the tem­per­a­ture lim­it as an in­evitable out­come, but must in­stead fo­cus on lim­it­ing both the ex­tent and du­ra­tion of any over­shoot.

“We want to see am­bi­tious cli­mate mit­i­ga­tion op­tions that will tran­si­tion us away from fos­sil fu­els,” Young said.

He added that the lat­est warn­ings from the Unit­ed Na­tions En­vi­ron­ment Pro­gramme about the like­li­hood of ex­ceed­ing the Paris Agree­ment tem­per­a­ture goal made it even more im­por­tant for coun­tries to strength­en their cli­mate com­mit­ments.

Young said the sec­ond ma­jor pri­or­i­ty was cli­mate fi­nance, an is­sue that has re­mained a long­stand­ing con­cern for Caribbean coun­tries.

While in­ter­na­tion­al mech­a­nisms have been es­tab­lished to chan­nel fi­nanc­ing to de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, he said the flow of re­sources to the Caribbean re­mained too slow and in­suf­fi­cient to meet the re­gion’s adap­ta­tion needs.

“De­spite the glob­al mech­a­nisms that have been set up to pro­vide fi­nanc­ing to our coun­tries, the rate of that flow of that mon­ey to our re­gion is too slow and it’s too small to meet our adap­ta­tion re­quire­ments,” he said.

Young stressed that adap­ta­tion alone could not shield the re­gion from the con­se­quences of cli­mate change, mak­ing am­bi­tious emis­sions re­duc­tions and ad­e­quate fi­nan­cial sup­port equal­ly im­por­tant.

A third con­cern is the grow­ing threat to the recog­ni­tion of the spe­cial cir­cum­stances of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) with­in the in­ter­na­tion­al cli­mate ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Young said Cari­com’s ne­go­tia­tors and heads of del­e­ga­tions were de­ter­mined to re­sist any at­tempts to weak­en or erode the spe­cial pro­vi­sions af­ford­ed to vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries un­der the Paris Agree­ment. He said pro­tect­ing those pro­vi­sions was es­sen­tial to en­sur­ing that the unique vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and de­vel­op­ment chal­lenges faced by Caribbean states con­tin­ued to be recog­nised in glob­al cli­mate de­ci­sions.

Young al­so de­scribed COP31 as a his­toric mo­ment for Cari­com, which is now par­tic­i­pat­ing as its own ne­go­ti­at­ing bloc along­side its long­stand­ing in­volve­ment in the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS). He ex­plained that the de­vel­op­ment did not mean Cari­com was break­ing away from AO­SIS, but rather gain­ing an ad­di­tion­al plat­form to strength­en the re­gion’s voice in ne­go­ti­a­tions.

“Strength comes from num­bers and the uni­ty that is pro­vid­ed,” Young said, not­ing that Cari­com re­mained an im­por­tant part of AO­SIS.

He said the sep­a­rate ne­go­ti­at­ing plat­form would al­low the Caribbean to am­pli­fy po­si­tions shared with oth­er small is­land de­vel­op­ing states while al­so ad­vanc­ing re­gion­al pri­or­i­ties where there might be dif­fer­ences in em­pha­sis.

Young said hav­ing an ad­di­tion­al seat at the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble, par­tic­u­lar­ly dur­ing the fi­nal week of COP, was sig­nif­i­cant as coun­tries worked to­wards con­sen­sus on the con­fer­ence’s out­comes.

“It is an im­por­tant plat­form for us to en­sure and de­mand that the out­comes that we get are ben­e­fi­cial to our coun­tries in the re­gion and to all small is­land de­vel­op­ing states,” he said.

How­ev­er, when asked what sin­gle out­come he would most like to see from COP31, Young point­ed to the need for a prop­er­ly cap­i­talised and ful­ly op­er­a­tional Loss and Dam­age Fund. He said donors must make a his­toric com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing the re­sources need­ed to en­sure the fund could de­liv­er mean­ing­ful as­sis­tance to vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries.

Young warned that es­tab­lish­ing a fund and an­nounc­ing fi­nan­cial com­mit­ments would mean lit­tle if the re­sources did not reach com­mu­ni­ties ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the dev­as­tat­ing ef­fects of cli­mate change.

“Our coun­tries can’t wait for the fund to ac­tu­al­ly dis­perse mon­ey,” he said.

He point­ed to the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa in Ja­maica as an ex­am­ple of why fi­nanc­ing must trans­late in­to prac­ti­cal sup­port on the ground.