SAINT LUCIA, Oct 01 (IPS) – Buoyed by the collaboration and agenda established of their SIDS4 convention in Could, small island creating states are getting ready for COP29 with a concentrate on local weather finance and collaboration. IPS spoke with an official from Saint Lucia about that nation’s local weather motion, preparation for COP29 and the significance of a united SIDS’ voice in negotiations.Small Island Creating States (SIDS) are experiencing probably the most extreme impacts of local weather change. When leaders of these islands met in Antigua and Barbuda in Could, they let the world know that attaining local weather justice hinges on complete local weather finance.
As they put together for the 2024 United Nations local weather change convention (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan, Saint Lucia is prioritizing this problem, strengthening alliances with different SIDS, and looking for essential funding for adaptation and mitigation initiatives. With the latest enactment of its Local weather Change Act of 2024, the island nation acknowledges that securing local weather finance is important for safeguarding its future.
“This yr’s COP has been dubbed the ‘Finance COP’,” Maya Sifflet, a Sustainable Growth and Setting Officer for Saint Lucia instructed IPS. “The main focus is to get the finance we have to mobilize and implement the bold local weather motion we have dedicated to.”
Saint Lucia, like many different SIDS, faces vital challenges in adapting to the impacts of local weather change. Rising sea ranges, extra intense storms and shifting climate patterns are already threatening its financial system and infrastructure. Sifflet defined that Saint Lucia has developed a complete Nationwide Adaptation Plan (NAP), which integrates local weather motion into nationwide growth methods. Nonetheless, with out sufficient funding, even probably the most well-crafted plans threat falling brief.
“Yearly, nations submit their nationally decided contributions (NDCs), outlining the local weather motion they’re taking. We’re inspired to make them as bold as doable, stating what local weather motion we’re taking. Our NDCs now seize not solely our mitigation efforts, however our adaptation efforts as nicely,” Sifflet mentioned.
Finance is essential to these plans.
“We have to guarantee our sectors are extra resilient—agriculture, tourism, fisheries. Every sector was inspired to evaluate its threat, assess vulnerabilities and discover what actions might be taken to construct resilience. We’ve due to this fact developed a number of sectoral adaptation methods and motion plans.”
Saint Lucia has additionally developed a set of bankable challenge ideas, which intention to make the nation “finance-ready” when international funds turn out to be accessible. These initiatives are a part of a broader effort to place the nation to obtain local weather funding, whether or not by way of bilateral agreements or worldwide mechanisms.
Sifflet emphasised that collective motion by way of umbrella teams just like the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is essential to Saint Lucia’s success at COP29. “We negotiate in blocs. Our energy is in numbers,” she mentioned. “By means of AOSIS, we trade data, share experiences, and amplify one another’s voices within the negotiations. It is a massive enviornment, it’s extremely contentious and also you want that collective presence to have energy.”
One of many key areas Saint Lucia and AOSIS members will concentrate on throughout COP29 is the operationalization of the Loss and Harm Fund, which was a breakthrough settlement throughout COP27. The fund is designed to supply monetary help to weak nations for losses and damages ensuing from local weather change impacts that can’t be mitigated or tailored to.
“Operationalizing the Loss and Harm Fund could be a significant success at COP29,” Sifflet famous. “It is one thing SIDS have lobbied for over a few years. This fund signifies that the worldwide group is able to put cash the place their mouth is.”
Saint Lucia, in anticipation of the fund’s formalization, has already performed a Loss and Harm Wants-Based mostly Evaluation to make sure it’s ready to entry financing as soon as it turns into accessible.
“As weak nations, we bear the brunt of local weather change, usually being pressured to hit the reset button after each excessive climate occasion,” Sifflet added. “And it isn’t nearly financial losses—our cultural property, issues that may’t be quantified, are in danger. There may be a lot at stake for us as small islands,” she instructed IPS.
Sifflet concluded that whereas Saint Lucia’s preparation for COP29 has been intensive, the true measure of success shall be securing the finance and international commitments wanted to make sure the survival and prosperity of small islands within the face of local weather change.
This week, the COP29 Presidency unveiled a bunch of programmes to propel international local weather motion. In a letter to all events, President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev mentioned it embrace the Baku Initiative on Local weather Finance, Funding and Commerce, noting that “local weather finance, as a essential enabler of local weather motion, is a centrepiece of the COP29 Presidency’s imaginative and prescient.”
This yr’s COP is anticipated to be a aggressive negotiations stage for international local weather change funding. Small island creating states shall be seeking to the big economies and main emitters of greenhouse gases to offer the monetary assist wanted for adaptation and mitigation measures to deal with a disaster that they did little to create. The stakes for Saint Lucia, and different SIDS, are excessive.
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