SAINT LUCIA, Oct 01 (IPS) – 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 Might, they let the world know that reaching 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 challenge, strengthening alliances with different SIDS, and looking for essential funding for adaptation and mitigation tasks. With the current enactment of its Local weather Change Act of 2024, the island nation acknowledges that securing local weather finance is significant for safeguarding its future.
“This yr’s COP has been dubbed the ‘Finance COP’,” Maya Sifflet, a Sustainable Improvement and Atmosphere Officer for Saint Lucia informed IPS. “The main target 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. Nevertheless, with out sufficient funding, even probably the most well-crafted plans danger 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 properly,” Sifflet stated.
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 danger, assess vulnerabilities and discover what actions could be taken to construct resilience. We now have due to this fact developed a number of sectoral adaptation methods and motion plans.”
Saint Lucia has additionally developed a set of bankable undertaking ideas, which goal to make the nation “finance-ready” when international funds turn out to be out there. 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 power is in numbers,” she stated. “Via AOSIS, we alternate data, share experiences, and amplify one another’s voices within the negotiations. It is a massive enviornment, it’s totally contentious and also you want that collective presence to have energy.”
One of many key areas Saint Lucia and AOSIS members will give attention to throughout COP29 is the operationalization of the Loss and Injury Fund, which was a breakthrough settlement throughout COP27. The fund is designed to offer monetary help to susceptible nations for losses and damages ensuing from local weather change impacts that can not be mitigated or tailored to.
“Operationalizing the Loss and Injury 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 neighborhood 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 Injury Wants-Primarily based Evaluation to make sure it’s ready to entry financing as soon as it turns into out there.
“As susceptible nations, we bear the brunt of local weather change, usually being compelled to hit the reset button after each excessive climate occasion,” Sifflet added. “And it is not 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 informed IPS.
Sifflet concluded that whereas Saint Lucia’s preparation for COP29 has been in depth, the actual measure of success can 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 gaggle of programmes to propel international local weather motion. In a letter to all events, President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev stated it embody 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 predicted to be a aggressive negotiations stage for international local weather change funding. Small island growing states can be trying to the massive economies and main emitters of greenhouse gases to present 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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