Small Island states militant about climate deals for Copenhagen

October 7, 2009: Bangkok (Panos) – The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) including the Caribbean yesterday said that they had marshalled almost 100 countries to support their call for more ambitious emission reduction targets in the new deal to be struck on climate change in Copenhagen in December.

“The AOSIS is not waiting on others to put in the targets to protect us,” said AOSIS chair, Dessima Williams while expressing disappointment at the slow pace of talks in Bangkok and the lack of a sense of urgency in the negotiations.

“… the science speaks to what is happening now. We have to respond internationally to what is happening now and not just 50 years away,” Williams said in a press conference organised by the Climate Change Media partnership at the United Nations Intersessional meeting on climate change in Bangkok. The Bangkok Talks are seen as important in delivering some real answers on what should be the key elements of a Copenhagen agreement.

Williams, speaking on behalf of the 42 member AOSIS, expressed concern at the slow pace and sometimes divisive nature of the recent negotiations and called for more urgent action including a more substantive commitment to a new climate deal.

“Talks cannot go on forever… we need to move beyond blame games and the divisions of the past and achieve a new global consensus,” said Williams in a statement distributed at the press conference.

“All countries must play their part NOW if we are to limit climate change below 1.5 degree Celsius temperature increase that is necessary to safeguard all island states. The science and the economics tell us that we are nearly out of time to get emissions down fast enough to save the planet. Delay will cost us our islands in the future,” said Williams, who is also the Permanent Representative of Grenada to the United Nations in New York. The AOSIS is calling for developed countries to limit its global warming activities to targets below 1.5 degrees Celsius and a concurrent 350 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide equivalent. This is well below the 2 degree celsius and 450 ppm targets that is being aimed at by the developed countries and which according to AOSIS could devastate islands.

“Our people are already suffering devastating impacts and losses at the current 0.8 degrees celsius of warming – coastal erosion, coral bleaching, flooding and more intense cyclones and hurricanes. We cannot sign and will not sign a deal that commits our countries to devastation,” said Williams. At least six Caribbean islands – Haiti, Dominican Republic, Dominica, Jamaica, Martinique and Saint Lucia – have been ranked in the top forty countries experiencing extreme weather impacts by the 2009 Germanwatch Global Climate Risk Index.

At the AOSIS heads of state meeting held in New York in September, its leaders stressed that the provision of funding for adaptation to small islands must be an urgent global priority. They also insisted that the new global deal that many hope will be struck in Copenhagen in December will also include a comprehensive insurance facility to address the ‘now inevitable loss and damage to vulnerable countries as a result of climate change.’

Some of the AOSIS position was also supported by Meenakshi Raman, legal advisor of the Third World Network (TWN), who argued that some of the discussions were ‘hollow’ and that more credence needed to be given to vulnerable groups such as AOSIS and TWN.

We don’t think developing countries perspectives are being taken seriously in the discussions. For example, we say that we need a new mechanism apart from the (bureaucratic) Global Environment Facility and the developed countries say no, we have to keep that mechanism,” she said. “That is not constructive and does not show the political will to change.”

She argued that in Copenhagen, the deal to be struck must reflect the views of those most affected and not just the developed world.

“We want a fair deal – not just a deal for a deal’s sake,” she said.

In turn, the AOSIS does not seem to be daunted by lag in discussions or resistance to their ambitious targets.

“A year ago some said that targets like our 1.5 degrees Celcius would not be considered and now we have 100 countries backing us – not only about 42 like last year,” Williams said. “We have 16 days to go and those are 16 days of hope for AOSIS.”