AOSIS: Climate promises must become action as islands face mounting threats

Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

As Caribbean coun­tries grap­ple with ex­treme heat and drought, the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) is warn­ing world lead­ers that cli­mate promis­es must trans­late in­to ac­tion and ac­ces­si­ble fi­nanc­ing for vul­ner­a­ble states.

At the 81st Unit­ed Na­tions Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in New York, AO­SIS called for con­crete com­mit­ments to keep the 1.5°C glob­al warm­ing lim­it with­in reach, ac­cel­er­ate the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els and de­liv­er cli­mate fi­nanc­ing to Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS).

AO­SIS Lead Cli­mate Change Ne­go­tia­tor Anne Ras­mussen, de­liv­er­ing a state­ment on be­half of AO­SIS Chair Am­bas­sador Ilana Seid, said wors­en­ing cli­mate con­di­tions could no longer be treat­ed as busi­ness as usu­al.

“The last two months have been the hottest on record. Sea lev­el rise is un­prece­dent­ed. This can­not be busi­ness as usu­al,” Ras­mussen said, cit­ing in­for­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­gan­i­sa­tion at the launch of the COP31 Ac­tion Agen­da.

For Trinidad and To­ba­go and its Caribbean neigh­bours, the warn­ing hit clos­er to home.

“In the Caribbean, drought-struck farm­ers and cit­i­zens are fac­ing no re­lief, all while grap­pling with ex­treme heat,” Ras­mussen said.

AO­SIS in­sist­ed coun­tries should not aban­don the in­ter­na­tion­al­ly agreed 1.5°C thresh­old de­spite warn­ings that the world could tem­porar­i­ly ex­ceed it.

“We re­it­er­ate: 1.5°C is not an ar­bi­trary goal that would be nice to achieve. It is the legal­ly af­firmed lim­it, en­dorsed by the UN­GA, com­mit­ted to by coun­tries to pro­tect peo­ple, ecosys­tems and economies,” Ras­mussen said.

The group­ing wants coun­tries to im­ple­ment com­mit­ments aris­ing from the Glob­al Stock­take, in­clud­ing tran­si­tion­ing away from fos­sil fu­els in a just man­ner, tripling re­new­able en­er­gy and dou­bling en­er­gy ef­fi­cien­cy by 2030.

Asked dur­ing a joint AO­SIS and Least De­vel­oped Coun­tries (LD­Cs) press con­fer­ence whether dis­cus­sions about fos­sil fu­els should con­tin­ue, Ras­mussen said: “Of course, the fos­sil fu­el con­ver­sa­tion must con­tin­ue as this is the main dri­ver of cli­mate change.”

But she said SIDS have al­ready pre­sent­ed en­er­gy tran­si­tion plans through their Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions and are still wait­ing for ad­e­quate fi­nan­cial sup­port to im­ple­ment them.

“So­lu­tions are fu­tile if our coun­tries can­not ac­cess the means of im­ple­men­ta­tion and re­sources for es­sen­tial adap­ta­tion. Cli­mate fi­nance must be ac­ces­si­ble, af­ford­able, pre­dictable and re­spon­sive to our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty,” the AO­SIS state­ment said.

LDC Chair Am­bas­sador Adão Soares Bar­bosa al­so cau­tioned that vol­un­tary cli­mate pledges re­quire scruti­ny.

“Vol­un­tary pledge is al­so good, but then ac­count­abil­i­ty is very much need­ed,” Bar­bosa said.

The ne­go­tia­tors al­so raised con­cerns about the Loss and Dam­age Fund es­tab­lished to help de­vel­op­ing coun­tries fac­ing cli­mate-re­lat­ed de­struc­tion.

Ras­mussen said the fund re­mained un­der-re­sourced, while Bar­bosa called for quick­er ac­tion when coun­tries ex­pe­ri­ence dis­as­ters.

“The board mem­bers need to con­sid­er about the ur­gency, how to re­spond quick­ly, how to ad­dress quick­ly,” Bar­bosa said.

Head­ing to­wards COP31, AO­SIS is seek­ing in­creased and more ac­ces­si­ble cli­mate fi­nanc­ing, faster im­ple­men­ta­tion of na­tion­al cli­mate and adap­ta­tion plans and progress on a Just Tran­si­tion Mech­a­nism.

“The Belém Mis­sion to 1.5°C must not be just an­oth­er re­port,” Ras­mussen said. “It must be a blue­print for im­ple­men­ta­tion and pro­vide re­al ac­count­abil­i­ty be­yond 2026.”

Her clos­ing mes­sage to world lead­ers was equal­ly point­ed: “This UN­GA ses­sion must progress co­op­er­a­tion and com­mit­ments to en­sure that 1.5°C re­mains the North Star of glob­al cli­mate ac­tion.”