THE Ministry of Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and Technology, together with the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission and the High Level Support Mechanism (HLSM) will host two important meetings on climate change, next week, at the Bay Gardens Hotel in Rodney Bay.
The first meeting, which runs from Monday to Tuesday will bring together senior climate change negotiators from across the Caribbean to discuss the major issues that will be addressed during negotiations that will lead to the signing of a new international agreement at the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris, in December of this year.
The second meeting on Wednesday and Thursday, is directed at Caribbean ministers with responsibility for climate change and has four main objectives: to provide ministers with a status report on the UNFCCC climate change negotiations; to provide political guidance to CARICOM negotiators participating in the UNFCCC negotiations, to prepare ministers for engaging in climate change negotiations during 2015; and to identify and discuss priority political actions that are required at the national level to accelerate the national and regional responses to climate change.
These two meetings are critical in helping to formulate a coordinated regional approach to the myriad issues on climate change—particularly in the areas of adaptation, mitigation, loss and damage, and climate financing.
Saint Lucia’s Minister for Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and Technology, James Fletcher, who chairs the CARICOM Regional Task Force on Sustainable Development and the Regional Coordinating Committee on Climate Change, will chair the meeting of Caribbean climate change ministers.