SPREP Director on SIDS Dock

Geoffrey Smith, Fiji TV, Climate Pasifika

Copenhagen, December 18 - SIDS Dock is an innovative project jointly implemented in the AOSIS regions, the Caribbean, the Pacific and the Indian Ocean in relation to encouraging renewable energy and improving energy efficiency.

Its called SIDS Dock because its acting as a docking station for funding which comes in association with the carbon markets and can be docked in this and distributed to Pacific countries.

Today we had a ceremony attended by the prime minister of St Lucia, ministers of many other Caribbean and Pacific countries signing this agreement so its the launch of the project. It will address the needs of island countries in our region and the Pacific to move and shift away from the very expensive diesel petrol to shift to other forms of energy as quickly as possible.

Partly as a result of COP15 its likely that there will be increased finance for mitigation efforts in particular to funding thats associated with carbon markets and this will provide a  the SIDS Dock for money to be docked and then allocated.

Today we looked at the memorandum of understanding involving SPREP the Caribbean Climate Change Centre and member countries.

This is an initiative launched today and will have major implications in terms of encouraging renewable energy in the island countries      and shift away from petroleum and diesel fuel as a key source of energy so it is quite an important and exciting initiative.

well I think there are some tangible benefits, clearly an initiative like the SIDS Dock, clearly there's also increased financing that will flow.

The mechanics of that are still to be worked out. But there are many significant commitments on the table.

Many commitments which are targeted to the most vulnerable countries which obviously include the island countries and many other partnerships which have been developed at COP15 so there are some positive elements coming out of this COP and the final outcome we still waiting to see.

So we hope we will still have a positive outcome there.