Marrakech Archives - SolarBuzz Jamaica

Advocates Advised To Maintain Gender And Climate Change Body

January 17, 2017 Webmaster

The effort to mainstream gender in climate change considerations while cementing the place of women in decision-making in that arena has a supporter in Dr James Fletcher, recent head of the CARICOM Task Force on Sustainable Development.

“Women are disproportionately affected by climate change, particularly in small-island developing states. Anytime here in Saint Lucia, if there is a drought, the people you see going miles to collect water are not the men, it is the women because they are the ones who, unfortunately, have the children on their hands and the household on their hands,” he noted.

“So women are always the ones who are disproportionately affected by natural disasters, and I think there must be some sensitivity in funding to the fact that there is a gender imbalance in the impacts of climate change and other natural disasters,” Fletcher added.

He was speaking with journalists at the Marrakech Climate Talks in November last year on the issue of a lack of funding to support the gender work programme that emerged from the Lima Climate Talks two years earlier.

Decisions in that work programme include:

– To enhance the implementation of the decision to promote gender balance and improve the participation of women in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations and in the representation of parties in bodies established in line with the Convention or the Kyoto Protocol; and

– that additional efforts be made by parties to the convention to improve the participation of women in their delegations and in all of the bodies established under the convention.

Among other things, it also invites parties to advance gender balance and promote gender sensitivity in developing and implementing climate policy and achieve gender-responsive climate policy in all relevant activities under the UNFCCC.

However, in Marrakech – as in Lima – it emerged that financing to achieve the provisions of the work programme is a challenge.

Fletcher’s advice to the women and gender constituency is to press ahead with their efforts.

“The thing with some of these discussions is it takes a while for common sense to prevail. So things you think people would get immediately, they don’t, and you must have a lot of back and forth. But I think that is the nature of the multilateral process. People come with different agendas, different perspectives,” he said.

CONTINUING THE PROCESS

“It really speaks to the need to continue having faith in the process, to continue pressing the line, and continue developing a coalition and seeking out allies and seeing how you can get support,” added Fletcher, who is also the former sustainable development minister for Saint Lucia.

He revealed that this is what had happened in the small island developing states’ effort to have the world take up the issue of loss and damage associated with climate change.

“When we started out with loss and damage, loss and damage was quintessentially a small-island state issue, and then suddenly, other people realised ok, there is a lot of merit in this, and we started developing allies and having more people come and support our cause,” he said.

“It is unfortunate that on a gender issue you need to go in that way because you figure anybody should realise that is an issue. But I think, probably, it is one of these areas where we need to do more work and where we need to do more sensitisation and make people understand the imperative of making sure that the funding is gender sensitive,” Fletcher noted.

Gleaner

Climate Climate Change Environment Government News

Jamaica Holds Judgement On Future Of US Climate Finance Flows

November 22, 2016 Webmaster

MARRAKECH, Morocco:

Jamaica is choosing, at least for now, not to worry over whether climate finance flows from the United States (US) will dry up under the presidency of Donald Trump.

This is despite news that the president-elect – a climate-change sceptic – may be looking to opt out of the historic Paris Agreement.

The US ratified the agreement on September 3 under President Barack Obama, who, after submitting the documents to the United Nations, is reported to have said: “Some day we may see this as the moment when we decided to save our planet.”

Fast-forward just two months and the victory of the Republican Trump over the Democrats’ Hillary Clinton to succeed Obama has triggered anxiety among participants here at the international climate talks.

Holness Not Worried

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, who was in Marrakech last week, does not share in the worry.

“I think the public should be aware that the US is a party to this agreement; it is an international agreement. So, too, are other major powers in the world, including China and India, and that is significant,” he noted.

“The signing of the Paris Agreement is a significant movement in the world – towards making some definitive attempts to address the issue of climate change. I believe it is still early days yet for us to cast any conclusions. I am still confident and very optimistic that the movement which has started will not be turned back,” Holness added.

At the same time, the PM hinted at the intention to do whatever possible to ensure the success of the agreement.

“There is always room for negotiations, for change, for improvement, and for Jamaica, it is in our interest to ensure that this movement continues because we are susceptible [to climate threats]. We are seeing the effects of increased tropical storms, of sea-level rise, of droughts, unpredictable weather events, which are impacting on our infrastructure – damage to our roads, our gullies, our drains,” said the PM, who was attending the COP for the first time.

“[There is also] the emergence in recent times of various health threats which are transmitted because of changes in the weather which allow the breeding of various vectors, particularly mosquitoes. So we have a vested interest in ensuring there is a global movement that will protect our environment,” Holness added.

Jamaica is not alone in choosing not to worry over the future of US climate financing.

“We work with the US government and the US institutions, US researchers, and we look forward to continuing the work with the new administration,” Jonathan Lyn, head of communications and media relations at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told The Gleaner.

The IPCC is the international body for assessing climate science. Set up in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme, it provides policymakers with regular assessments of the scientific basis of climate change, its impacts and future risks, and options for adaptation and mitigation.

Wait And See

“There is a new administration. We are waiting to see what the policies will be. The US has been a very active participant in the IPCC, and not just in terms of financial contributions but contributing experts,” said Lyn, who will be in Jamaica later this month for an IPCC-led regional workshop.

“We have seen how the world is using our scientific findings to work together on tackling climate change, and there has been real momentum on that in the last few months. We expect that global effort to continue and we expect to continue to contribute to that with good, robust science,” he added.

The US has contributed some US$2 million annually to the work of the IPCC over the last five years. Since the international climate talks in Copenhagen in 2009, it has “ramped up its climate finance for developing countries fourfold”, according to the Overview of the Global Climate Change Initiative: US Climate Finance 2010-2015report available on the State Department’s website.

“Between 2010 and 2015, the United States allocated $15.6 billion in climate finance across adaptation, clean energy, and sustainable landscapes activities. Additionally, in 2014 the United States pledged $3 billion to the Green Climate Fund, the largest pledge by any country,” it added.

Gleaner

Climate Climate Change Environment Government News

China Tells Trump That Climate Change Is No Hoax It Invented

November 19, 2016 Webmaster

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China couldn’t have invented global warming as a hoax to harm U.S. competitiveness because it was Donald Trump’s Republican predecessors who started climate negotiations in the 1980s, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said.

U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush supported the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in initiating global warming talks even before China knew that negotiations to cut pollution were starting, Liu told reporters at United Nations talks on Wednesday in Marrakech, Morocco.

Ministers and government officials from almost 200 countries gathered in Marrakech this week are awaiting a decision by President-elect Trump on whether he’ll pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change. The tycoon tweeted in 2012that the concept of global warming “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” China’s envoy rejected that view.

“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” Liu told reporters during an hour-long briefing.

Reagan’s Legacy

While Reagan died in 2004, George Schulz, who served as his secretary of state, has become one of the most prominent Republicans voicing concern about climate change and urging action.

“The potential results are catastrophic,” said Schulz, 95, in an interview with Bloomberg in 2014. “So let’s take out an insurance policy.”

Increased U.S. efforts to curb emissions through investing in new cleaner technologies and manufacturing could actually boost U.S. competitiveness, Liu countered. “That’s why I hope the Republican’s administration will continue to support this process.”

A fortnight of discussions in Marrakech were thrust into the spotlight last week by Trump’s victory. The negotiating texts being drafted by delegates and officials in north African country were suddenly overshadowed by a uncertain political future cast by Trump’s shadow over the two-decade-old process.

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped secure the Paris Agreement last year, said the majority of U.S. citizens back action on climate change and tried to assuage concern.

“No one has a right to make decisions for billions of people based solely on ideology,” he said. “Climate change shouldn’t be a partisan issue. It isn’t a partisan issue for our military. It isn’t a partisan issue for our intelligence community.”

China’s President Xi Jinping underlined the importance of cooperation between the two largest economies when he spoke to Trump on Monday, said Liu, who added China will continue its fight against climate change “whatever the circumstances.”

He added that richer nations should take more responsibility than poor countries for financing the fight against climate change, in line with the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. “Of course we’re still expecting developed countries including the United States will continue to take the lead on mitigating climate change,” he said.

Bloomberg

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Caribbean Islands Urged To Ratify Paris Agreement

October 21, 2016 Webmaster

CARICOM Secretary General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque (left) with Dr James Fletcher, who led CARICOM negotiators, in discussion with regional heads of government and ministers at the Paris Climate Talks last year.

With the Marrakech climate change talks now only weeks away, the few CARICOM member states that have not yet ratified the Paris Agreement – Jamaica among them – have been urged to do so.

The appeal has come from Dr James Fletcher, former head of the CARICOM Task Force on Sustainable Development.

He predicted that the failure to ratify will see those islands running the risk of not having a say in the first meeting of the parties to the global deal next month.

“Given that the Paris Agreement will enter into force in the Marrakech meeting … if you haven’t ratified the Paris Agreement, then really you cannot be at the table determining rules and procedures and everything else,” he cautioned.

“If you have not ratified the agreement, then you don’t have a voice at the meeting. There will be CARICOM countries there (who share similar challenges) and who will speak on your behalf, but I don’t think it is a position you want to be in because you cannot articulate your own concerns,” added Fletcher, also the former minister of sustainable development for St Lucia.

Ten CARICOM countries have so far ratified the agreement. They include Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and St Vincent and the Grenadines.

They are among the 81 countries to have ratified the agreement, which prescribes the way forward for the planet in its battle against the changing climate.

Caribbean islands and other small-island developing states (SIDS) are counted among those most vulnerable to climate threats.

Those threats include extreme weather events, the likes of Hurricane Matthew, which barrelled across the region recently, leaving in its wake death and destruction in places such as Haiti, Cuba and The Bahamas.

In Haiti alone, the death toll is registered at more than 900, with millions of dollars in loss and damage to infrastructure.

Meanwhile, Fletcher – a respected regional statesman reputed for his work in climate change and other development issues, including energy – is buoyed with the progress on the Paris Agreement. Still, he cautions that there are still miles to go to where the region needs to get in its readiness for climate change.

“We are very encouraged by how quickly this agreement has come into force … It really is awesome for me that the community has rallied to this cause and there seems to be an urgency that, at least philosophically, we need to move in a particular direction,” he said.

LACK OF URGENCY

“What is worrying to me is that there does not seem to be an urgency where climate action is concerned. If you look at the level of ambition for the level of greenhouse gases, it is still not taking us below 2.7 degrees Celsius. Nobody has come out and said, for example, that they will reduce their emissions by another 25 per cent,” Fletcher added.

This, he noted, is what is required if the world is to realise one of the objectives of the Paris Agreement, to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.

“I would like to see greater pledges from major emitters to reduce their emissions and more pledges where finance is concerned,” the former minister noted.

“There is a lot that has to be done where SIDS are concerned. (We are in a time when we) have hurricanes hitting multiple countries and travelling in pairs. So the situation is ominous; the projections are all showing that our area will be one of the hardest hit by climate change, and we don’t have the funds to adapt,” he said.

“We are really are saying to our residents that they are in for a very bleak future when we should be saying, having signed the agreement, we can now assure that the climate finance is going to flow and action is going to be taken to reduce greenhouse gases to get us close to 1.5,” added Fletcher, who will be in Marrakech next month to support CARICOM.

“We are not in a good place where bending that temperature curve is concerned, and making finance more readily available to SIDS is one way to get there,” he said.

Gleaner