As the 67th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) debate wraps up on Monday night, the regional leaders have been echoing a sense of urgency about the need for reaching a post-Kyoto Protocol climate accord..
“St. Vincent and the Grenadines is angered by the continuing and inexcusable failure of the States assembled in this room to move decisively towards a meaningful and legally binding climate change treaty,” said the island’s Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves.
“Entire nations that currently occupy this Assembly, whose representatives sit among us as friends and equals, may simply cease to exist as a result of our inaction and political cowardice.
“Other nations, including my own, are already victim of increasingly intense and frequent storms, hurricanes and weather events. These changes threaten not only our way of life, but risk reversing our recent developmental progress,” Gonsalves said.
He told the UNGA that the islands of the planet are at war against climate change, warming temperatures and rising seas insisting that “this war is not a future event, it is a preset-day and ongoing battle.
“As all of you in this Assembly are aware, it is a war that we are currently losing,” he warned, adding that the “survival of our islands is at stake, and the responsibility for immediate change lies undisputedly with those whose reckless pollution over generations has led us to the brink of catastrophe”.
Gonsalves says the negotiations to arrest climate change are “not merely some arcane academic or diplomatic pursuit, and cannot be treated as any interminable, run-of-the-mill United Nations process.
“Let us set aside narrow, short-term interests and act as we are capable of acting: for the benefit and protection of all mankind,” Gonsalves urged.
His St. Kitts and Nevis counterpart, Dr. Denzil L. Douglas said he was troubled that the main contributors of greenhouse gases were still not taking responsibility for the coastal degradation, coral reef bleaching and decimation, infrastructure damage and loss of lives that their actions have wrought.
“The physical, mental and financial burden that other countries’ energy usage has inflicted on countries like mine has been enormous – plunging us deeper into debt, and severely frustrating our efforts to meet our Millennium Development Goals.
“While a shift to renewable energy will not instantly solve the myriad problems caused by a significantly fossil-fuel based global economy, the embrace of green energy will, indeed, help to halt the intense downward spiral into which our fossil-fuel based economies have thrust our planet,”
Douglas wants the international community to make “green energy an absolute priority” commending UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon for his “visionary leadership” as well as those governments and financial institutions that “have committed generously to ensure that high impact clean energy is utilized globally”.
For his part, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said his country has already linked with member countries of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), in “sending the strongest message to the international community on the need for bold and ambitious actions.
“We cannot wait for our lands to disappear before we act. We must act now to respond to the climate crisis, and ensure that not a single country is sacrificed, no matter how small.
“The threat is real, our sea-levels are rising, there is coral bleaching beyond the depths of our shores, and hurricanes are becoming more recurrent and severe,” he warned, urging the UN to take “concrete steps” in order to protect islands like his that are exposed to the threats of climate change.
Spencer said that the responsibility to mitigate climate change should be a “collective consciousness” for both developing and developed countries.
However he said that developed countries should accept their responsibilities as the leading contributor in emitting extremely high levels of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, “which are now threatening the welfare of the present and future generations.
“It is my government’s hope that the selfish act of inaction will dissipate in Doha (Round of Negotiations) and that a positive outcome in climate change negotiations will usher-in new hopes for humanity and compassion for our planet,” he said.
Guyana, which has ended into a multi-million dollar agreement with Norway to implement an “avoided deforestation” plan, told the international community that despite “strong scientific and economic case for action, the global response to the climate crisis falls far short of what is required both in terms of scale and in urgency”.
President Donald Ramotar told the UNGA that the projected level of reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is much too low and that scientists have warned of catastrophic consequences if the rise in greenhouse emissions is not halted.
“Already some states are facing imminent extinction. To add insult to injury, the promise of fast-start financing made at Copenhagen (Denmark), a few years ago, has not materialized.
“The result is that those most at risk are effectively deprived of the means to adapt to this existential threat,” Ramotar said, adding “we cannot continue to deal with threats to the survival of the planet with such casualness”.
He said that as a low lying coastal state, Guyana is mindful of the dangers posed by climate change and that the country has been “at the forefront of appeals for the international community to match its concern with tangible action”.
St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony said his country wanted a future with more “targeted and interventions and policies” by the UN and other global institutions as it relates to the environment.
“As expressed in Mauritius Strategy for Sustainable Development, as well as in the 1994 Barbados Conference, small states are committed to seeing action taken on Climate Change and tangible support for the requisite adaptations and interventions needed at all levels.”
Anthony said that the iliendal Declaration adopted by CARICOM leaders in 2009 “encapsulated our concerns as small island states subject to major dislocation as a consequence of the threat of climate change” and that St. Lucia remains fully supportive of the recommendations and conclusions coming out of the Rio+20 conference in Brazil earlier this year.
“We are comforted by the words of the Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon, that we will secure a legally binding agreement to tackle Climate Change by 2015. With climate change, we cannot afford unfinished business, for there is but one world.
“We also hope that there will be a strong commitment to technology transfer and building local human capacity to deal with climate change and attendant disasters,” the St. Lucian prime minister added.
The newly elected government in The Bahamas said that it believes the Brazil conference provides “significant opportunities” for SIDS.
CMC/nk/pr/2012