GEORGETOWN, Guyana — The Georgetown, Guyana-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) secretariat has launched a campaign to promote the Region’s collective position on climate change leading up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, next month.
 |
| Edwin Carrington, CARICOM Secretary General |
The campaign under the theme “1.5 °C to Stay Alive”, was launched on Monday and intends to support and “dramatize a common regional approach for mitigating the effects of climate change on the Region, which it will articulate at Copenhagen as well as at the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government Conference, November 27-29, 2009, Trinidad and Tobago” the secretariat says .
According to CARICOM, the plan includes a digital display on the harmful effects of rising greenhouse gases on the small island states and several video presentations on the how climate change is affecting human, animal and plant life in the Caribbean .
CARICOM Secretary-General Edwin Carrington said the common regional approach for mitigation of climate change to avoid “its unmanageable consequences” was based on studies by the CARICOM Climate Change Centre.
He noted that these concluded that global average temperatures that exceeded 1.5 degrees centigrade would have devastating effects on the Region including significant destruction of coral reefs, coastal barriers, and marine ecosystems, as well as excessive flooding and more intense hurricanes.
“It will erode much of the foundation of our tourism, our agriculture and our fisheries industry; it will wreak havoc on our plant-life, our forests and most of all dislocate our people. Immediate corrective action must therefore be taken if we are to avoid this widespread destruction,” Carrington said.
Meanwhile, Carrington noted that the recent MOU between Guyana and Norway on a low carbon development programme, which provided incentives to Guyana for the preservation of its forest, was a “significant signal to the rest of the world of the type of collaboration between developed and developing countries that could make a difference.”
Brazil’s commitment to a low density emissions programme by 2020, was also praised by Carrington who noted that “It is only with this type of solidarity that CARICOM can carry a strong and unyielding shared vision that could make Copenhagen a landmark for reversing the ill effects of Climate Change. The future generation deserves no less; to delay is to gamble with the very future of mankind.”
He stated that the Region would seek to consolidate its position within the Alliance of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), the Group of 77 and China, as well as with the Developed or Annex 1 Countries. |