Opening statement to the UNFCCC Preparatory Meeting from David Sheppard, Director-General of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme
25 October 2011
Good morning delegates.
Welcome to this important meeting which I understand is the final preparatory meeting for the Pacific region before the Durban UNFCCC.
And a warm welcome to you all to the SPREP Headquarters here in beautiful Samoa.
We are established under the SPREP Treaty, signed in 1993, which defines SPREP as both the Secretariat and the SPREP Member States.
So, SPREP is your organisation and this is your headquarters and base in Samoa.
We are excited to have you here and we welcome your participation this week.
Climate Change is the biggest challenge facing Pacific island Countries – this is recognized and has been clearly stated by Pacific leaders many times, including at the recent Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in New Zealand.
So, what are the implications for you as Pacific Island negotiators?
To my mind, we have clear marching orders to seek the best deal at the international negotiating table for our countries. We should work to get a more meaningful outcome at Durban than simply a stepping stone toward a future agreement.
We have planned this preparatory meeting to help move us along this course.
Many of us have been to previous UNFCCC COPs and know that the process can at times seem slow and tedious – a bit like watching paint dry in some cases – while at other times it can be adrenalin charged.
We are constantly reminded in these meetings of the current political and economic realities in developed countries which will impede the urgent and ambitious response demanded by science.
At times it seems like climate change is in the "too hard basket".
While many countries raise these issues, many others are making the case that they are the most vulnerable.
At times this all seems to me like "Nero fiddling while Rome burns". While these debates are on-going, here in the Pacific our island countries are already suffering the impacts of climate change, including sea level rise, more extreme and frequent weather events, ocean acidification and coral bleaching.
These impacts are clearly bought home by current State of Emergency drought conditions in Tokelau, Tuvalu and the Cook Islands.
Since the failure of the Copenhagen COP, there seems to have been a major effort to lower expectations.
Cancun last year was quite different from Copenhagen, in that there were fewer Heads of State and Government, less media and celebrity frenzy electrifying the corridors, and expectations were consistently lowered by key actors in the process.
We need to put this ship back in the right direction. We need to raise our sights and bring a sense of urgency to the climate negotiations.
The Pacific in partnership with AOSIS has consistently asked for the increase in global temperature to be limited at well below 1.5 degrees Celsius change above pre-industrial levels.
Any hotter than that and the impacts will be catastrophic to small island developing states. In order to meet this, countries must commit to stronger targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
Right now the pledges on the table will not bring us to where we need to be.
Three non-profit climate research institutions in Europe recently analysed the pledges made under the Cancun Agreement. They found the aggregated emission reduction pledges of wealthy nations fall short of what is needed to get the world on track to limiting global warming.
If the world continues on this path, we are headed towards a temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius. A temperature rise of this level will have a direct impact on the future viability of many Pacific countries. It will cause destruction of already fragile coral reefs and lead to the devastation of many natural habitats and species, the life blood of our societies.
Your role is critical in working towards a meaningful outcome from Durban.
And what shape should this outcome have?
Pacific negotiators have maintained that our efforts at Durban should strengthen the rules based multilateral climate change regime. There are great concerns over efforts by some Parties to undermine the legally binding nature of the FCCC regime, which the region believes provides the best means of delivering the results we all seek.
I have only attended one UNFCCC COP – in Copenhagen - but have attended many COPs of many other international Conventions.
Three things stand out to me.
First, that these COPs are not a level playing field – while Canada or Australia, for example, may have a team of 2 to 300 people at the negotiations, many Pacific countries will only have 3 to 4 representatives. This makes it impossible to compete at an individual country level, and at a practical level to attend the myriad of working groups and committees, such as those on adaptation, mitigation and climate finance.
The key point is that we have to work together as a Pacific team to achieve our common objectives.
A wise man once said – "if you want to go fast you go alone, if you want to go far you go together".
It is essential that we all go together.
We must work cohesively as a region and with other island countries with similar objectives. AOSIS is a key umbrella group that we should continue to work with and we note with pleasure that the Pacific through Nauru will be shortly be assuming the chair of AOSIS.
SPREP is committed to working together, within this region and beyond. In fact we signed a MoU with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre this year and we will cooperate at Durban, including through the joint hiring of a 60 square meter room for our island countries to meet, to network, and to showcase our island activities and priorities.
Second, we need to work in a smarter way. We need to know the right entry points to negotiations and which buttons to push. We have many at SPREP and from your countries with considerable expertise in UNFCCC negotiations. We need to draw on this expertise and use it to our advantage.
High profile can also be smart, when carefully planned - events at Copenhagen such as the Kiribati side event and the strong positions of Tuvalu played a key role in getting our message across to wider audiences, amongst a very crowded agenda.
Third, we must collectively maintain a high level of ambition on the road to Durban given the consequences of delayed or insufficient action to address climate change.
Our leaders have demanded nothing less and ambition is an essential requisite to the long term survival of Pacific peoples.
Some of you will have attended the recent UNFCCC meetings in Panama and will be familiar with the outcomes there. You will hear more about this during this meeting.
Important advances were made in Panama in some critical areas such as mitigation and adaptation, finance and technology.
We are beginning to see what could represent the contours of an agreement at Durban, particularly on issues related to the Cancun Agreements.
However we must intensify efforts at bridging our differences and finding areas of convergence.
This meeting at SPREP this week aims to equip Pacific Island country delegates with further skills to work with other countries in the negotiations to achieve this.
We are also using the opportunity of the meeting to refine negotiating positions and to further our knowledge of certain finer points of discussion.
Climate Finance is an on-going and critical issue. We welcome the billion dollar commitments made at Copenhagen, under the Fast Start Finance. However the reality has not matched the rhetoric and the release of these funds has been far too slow.
In fact, I think we need to change the name from Fast Start to Slow Start.
We welcome the Green Climate Fund and are fortunate to have the presence of our Member of the Transition Committee to design the Green Climate Fund. Welcome Ambassador Fetturi.
We look forward to hearing how this fund will be made operational, as well as how commitments from developed countries will capitalize this fund when it is up and running.
We hope to hear the latest news on this critical issue to assist our preparations for Durban.
There will also be opportunities this week to discuss other issues of emerging importance, such as the status of discussions on the loss and damage mechanism and recent developments around the concept of blue carbon. These are clearly issues that the region should be well informed about, in order to take appropriate steps at Durban.
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome again and I wish you all the best for a productive and enjoyable meeting.
Thank you, Fa'afetai lava