EGYPT, the incoming president of the world climate summit (COP27) it will host in Sharm el-Sheikh in November, has renewed the call for pushing forward concerted efforts to turn climate promises into tangible action on the ground. Renewing this call was Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri in a video-conferenced statement he delivered to the opening session of the Caribbean conference on climate change that convened in Nassau last Tuesday. The event was indeed significant for at least three reasons. First, it pointed to the growing international awareness of the value of developing harmonised regional approaches to the issues that will feature high on the agenda of the Sharm el-Sheikh world climate summit. The Nassau conference, officially titled the First Regional Meeting of the Heads of Government of the Caribbean in Preparation for COP27, reflected the growth of that awareness, especially given that it was the first ever regional conference that countries of the Caribbean decided to call on the issue of climate change. Second, the Nassau conference, also as its official title denoted, presented a clear link to COP27 summit. Third, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC) sponsoring of the Nassau event established the conference’s credence as a regional platform for expressing the views and concerns of Caribbean countries regarding climate change issues ahead of the Sharm el-Sheikh summit.
Just one week before the Nassau conference met, this newspaper had editorialised on the environmental, economic and social hazards with which mega droughts are striking regions geographically located far apart, specifically referencing to the cases of the greater Horn of Africa and the Caribbean, harming the lives of people, livestock and crop production. Recalling what he rightly characetrised as the painful blows that climate change has landed in the Caribbean, Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis underscored in statements ahead of convening the Nassau meeting that Caribbean countries want to present a unified position at COP27 in Egypt. Needless to say, the more regional approaches drafted and readied, the more will it be possible for the world climate summit to chart the comprehensive course deemed necessary for international climate action to follow.
Given all these considerations, the Nassau meeting constituted a becoming venue for reasserting the view that all regions of the world have no immunity against climate change hazards; hence the imperative of creating additional momentum for international climate action. And it was in this context that Foreign Minister Shoukri presented to the Nassau meeting Egypt’s vision that calls, inter alia, for achieving marked progress in transforming climate promises into tangible action on the ground in parallel with the provision of the finance for climate adaptation programmes especially for developing countries, including isle and small countries. Underlying this vision is the observation that such countries are heavily hit by climate change’s hazardous effects while remaining small greenhouse gas emitters. In a wider perspective, the implementation of commitments by the parties to the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius and build the resilience to adapt to changing climatic conditions remains the world’s shortest path to forestallng the eventuality of a climate change rendered unchangeable.
