RYAN BA­CHOO

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

If the Caribbean is on the front­lines of this cli­mate change cri­sis, it is now send­ing its sol­diers to lead the bat­tle at the geopo­lit­i­cal lev­el.

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has emerged as the po­lit­i­cal voice of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states around the world. An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne, mean­while, brought loss and dam­age fund­ing to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble as a COP27 agen­da item as chair of the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS).

Now, Grena­di­an Si­mon Stiell is set­tling in­to his new role as Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Sec­re­tari­at Ex­ec­u­tive Sec­re­tary.

It is a big but not sur­pris­ing leap for this for­mer politi­cian. For near­ly a decade, Stiell served his coun­try in var­i­ous min­istries such as ed­u­ca­tion, state and agri­cul­ture. But no oth­er port­fo­lio con­nects him with his new job quite like the five years he spent as Min­is­ter for Cli­mate Re­silience and the En­vi­ron­ment.

It’s a long leap from serv­ing a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of just over 113,000 peo­ple to now stand­ing at the sum­mit of an or­gan­i­sa­tion over­see­ing more than 190 coun­tries, each with its own agen­da, en­tan­gled in the geopol­i­tics of world lead­ers who are trapped be­tween sav­ing the plan­et’s fu­ture and sur­viv­ing in the po­lit­i­cal present.

Loss and dam­age fund­ing has en­gulfed COP27. Small is­land state lead­ers had not seen it el­e­vat­ed to an agen­da item for 30 years be­fore now.

“Hav­ing this as part of the con­ver­sa­tion is a great start. En­sur­ing that there is a sub­stan­tive dis­cus­sion and out­come are now the next steps,” Stiell told Guardian me­dia in an ex­clu­sive in­ter­view.

Yet, as ne­go­tia­tors sparred this week over what loss and dam­age fund­ing should look like, prompt­ing AO­SIS to re­lease a state­ment on Wednes­day out­lin­ing its “grave con­cerns” that “some de­vel­oped coun­tries are fu­ri­ous­ly try­ing to stall progress,” Stiell out­lined what suc­cess will look like for him at this COP.

“In terms of where we are in terms of the com­plex­i­ties of this try­ing to bridge ex­pec­ta­tions of de­vel­oped coun­tries’ ex­pec­ta­tions of de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, hav­ing a ro­bust process that out­lines all of the el­e­ments that speak to ad­dress­ing loss and dam­age, speak to the fund­ing arrange­ments, that is time-bound, that lays out a roadmap to a fi­nal de­ci­sion as to how this will be treat­ed in the near-term will be a suc­cess.”

Un­der­stand­ably, noth­ing is done quick­ly at these con­fer­ences. Noth­ing, how­ev­er, could hide the gulf in ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween de­vel­oped na­tions and de­vel­op­ing na­tions quite like this COP. Small is­land states have seen a crack in the door with loss and dam­age fund­ing be­ing added as an agen­da item and are now push­ing to break down the bar­ri­ers stop­ping them from mak­ing pol­luters pay.

It’s Stiell’s job to bring every­one to­geth­er and that can of­ten be a hard task when each na­tion is seek­ing its own in­ter­ests.

He said, “Every­one has a part to play in this. We know where the chal­lenges are. We know where the so­lu­tions are. If you look with­in the G20, the G20 are col­lec­tive­ly re­spon­si­ble for 80 per cent of glob­al emis­sions and they con­sti­tute 85 per cent of Gross Do­mes­tic Prod­uct (GDP), so the means of sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing emis­sions so that we stay be­low 1.5 de­grees cel­sius lie right there.”

There have been small steps to­ward help­ing small is­land states stave off the ef­fects of cli­mate change and re­cov­er from loss and dam­age when nat­ur­al dis­as­ters oc­cur. It was re­cent­ly an­nounced G7 coun­tries with Glob­al Shield will pro­vide in­sur­ance fa­cil­i­ties for loss and dam­age.

At COP27, plans were an­nounced for glob­al ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems. On Wednes­day, Eu­ro­pean Union cli­mate chief, Frans Tim­mer­mans, an­nounced the union will pro­vide 60 mil­lion eu­ros to the Glob­al Shield to help coun­tries af­fect­ed by loss and dam­age from cli­mate change.

“Progress is in­cre­men­tal,” Stiell said.

In­deed, it has been slow or of­ten stalled. COP has reg­u­lar­ly come un­der scruti­ny as a large talk shop, where ideas are not im­ple­ment­ed and ac­tioned and where pledges are made but not kept.

How­ev­er, Stiell point­ed to what is hap­pen­ing with non-state ac­tors he says will ul­ti­mate­ly de­ter­mine the di­rec­tion emis­sion sta­tis­tics go. He al­lud­ed to the pri­vate sec­tor, the in­vest­ment fi­nance com­mu­ni­ty, phil­an­thropy, civ­il so­ci­ety, cities and mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties.

“That’s where we will see sig­nif­i­cant progress in emis­sions re­duc­tion and sig­nif­i­cant parts of that fall out­side of the process,” Stiell said.

Stiell said a suc­cess­ful con­fer­ence for him would “show progress on Glas­gow.”

He ex­plained, “Every sin­gle COP is im­por­tant. Every COP should show progress on the last.”

As a Caribbean man, Stiell takes his knowl­edge of the re­gion in­to his po­si­tion, say­ing, “I think the more we are able to move from the ab­stract to how this im­pacts peo­ple and how this im­pacts com­mu­ni­ties, I think will push the process fur­ther.”

This ar­ti­cle was pub­lished with the sup­port of Cli­mate Track­er.