St. Lu­cia Prime Min­is­ter Phillip J Pierre has called on the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to trans­form the world in­to a safer place for the next gen­er­a­tion, in­sist­ing al­so that Tai­wan must not be left out.

St Lu­cia is among a hand­ful of Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) coun­tries with diplo­mat­ic re­la­tions with Tai­wan that Chi­na re­gards as a rene­gade province and has been urg­ing coun­tries to adopt the One Chi­na pol­i­cy in their for­eign re­la­tions with Bei­jing.

Ad­dress­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP28), Pierre said that the world is in “an un­chart­ed ter­ri­to­ry” and that the op­por­tu­ni­ties to se­cure a live­able plant for all are nar­row­ing.

“With the cli­mate crises rag­ing around the world, af­fect­ing not on­ly Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States, like St. Lu­cia and the mem­bers of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) but de­vel­oped coun­tries as well, we are here to join hands to­geth­er, unit­ing as a col­lec­tive, to take am­bi­tious ac­tion, with a sense of ur­gency to course-cor­rect.

“We are here to en­sure that every par­ty an­swers our call at this COP, to put us on a path­way that does not fur­ther com­pro­mise the fu­tures of not on­ly our par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble na­tions, but all of our na­tions.”

Pierre said that the im­pacts have been dev­as­tat­ing to the Caribbean and that loss and dam­age have struck at the core of re­gion­al economies and so­ci­eties.

“At one ex­treme, lives and liveli­hoods have been lost. At the oth­er ex­treme, our en­vi­ron­ment is un­der siege,” he said, adding that St. Lu­cia wel­comes the de­ci­sion to at last make the loss and dam­age fund func­tion­al and look for­ward to the pledges to make it a re­al­i­ty”.

Pierre said it is a fact that the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial en­vi­ron­ment is ill-suit­ed to sup­port vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries ac­cess to af­ford­able, sus­tain­able, pre­dictable, and scal­able fi­nance. He said to ad­dress these fi­nan­cial chal­lenges, CARI­COM states are pur­su­ing readi­ness projects to bet­ter ac­cess fi­nance.

“We are al­so pur­su­ing in­no­v­a­tive fi­nan­cial ini­tia­tives from con­ser­va­tion bonds, to dis­as­ter claus­es; and ex­plor­ing new op­por­tu­ni­ties in car­bon mar­kets. We are push­ing for a Re­form Agen­da for in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions through the Bridgetown Ini­tia­tive and new eco­nom­ic mea­sure­ments that will in­clude our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty like the Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank’s Re­cov­ery Du­ra­tion Ad­just­ment (RDA).”

Pierre said that the world is near­ing the 1.5°C warm­ing thresh­old and must put peo­ple first be­fore eco­nom­ic ra­tios and sta­tis­tics.

“We must leave Dubai as­sured of three key mes­sages. We lead­ers must com­mit to pur­sue 1.5°C path­ways for just, eq­ui­table and ac­cel­er­at­ed tran­si­tion, ac­cel­er­ate progress in im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Glob­al Goal on Adap­ta­tion and de­liv­er trans­for­ma­tive fi­nance for a 1.5°C agen­da,” he added.

DUBAI, Dec 4, CMC