Pacific at International climate conference

Pacific delegates in a working group

Durban, South Africa, 23 November 2011 - Pacific survival is what the region is negotiating for during the Climate conference in Durban over the next three weeks.  The 17^th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework to the Convention on Climate Change is hosted in South Africa.

Preparations for a strong Pacific voice included a one day Pacific strategy meeting coordinated by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) in Durban.  This is followed by a two day preparatory meeting with the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS) which the Pacific is part of, to form a stronger negotiating block during the discussions with over 190 parties.

“These negotiations are crucial for the survival of the Pacific region,” said Espen Ronneberg, SPREP’s climate change adviser.

SPREP's Diane Mcfadzien and Espen Ronneberg

“Many pacific communities feel the impact of climate change now and we can’t sit by and let this happen to us, by being here and arguing our case we take every step we can for Pacific survival.  Our one day meeting was to help strengthen our united Pacific ‘asks’ and strategically plan our way forward for the next three weeks.” 

For the Pacific, climate change has impacted upon the lives of many people.  In October this year Tuvalu and Tokelau declared a state of emergency due to drought conditions with the Cook Islands and Samoa experiencing several water shortages.  In the Solomon Islands and Federated States of Micronesia, traditional food crops are now difficult to grow because of salt water inundation.

L - R: Delegates from Palau and Marshall Islands

Climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions; AOSIS is asking for countries to commit to deeper emission cuts.  Science shows the Pacific region currently contributes to less than 0.03% of the World’s total greenhouse gases however we are among the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. 

“This is just one of the issues that the Pacific is negotiating at the Conference of the Parties we have many other negotiating agenda issues to follow over the next three weeks.”

Quick information on the Gigatonne gap

Total annual emissions must be reduced to no more than 44 gigatonnes by 2020 and continue to fall thereafter to avoid a temperature increase of over 2.0 degrees Celsius.   An even steeper decline is needed to keep warming well below 1.5 degrees to avoid devastating impacts.

Last year emissions pushed 48 gigatonnes.

To learn more about the Gigatonne Gap, visit:  http://climatepasifika.blogspot.com/2011_10_05_archive.html

For more information on the UNFCCC COP 17 in Durban, please visit: http://www.cop17-cmp7durban.com/

Closing the Lessons for Future Action Conference

Closing statement by Mr David Sheppard, Director of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) at the Lessons Learnt for Future Action Climate Change Adaptation Conference, 23 – 26 May, Apia, Samoa

Conference delegates, friends

I’m very pleased to offer some closing remarks to this important and very successful conference.

On Monday, I mentioned that we have gathered the “cream of the cream” in this room in relation to expertise on climate change and disaster risk reduction in small island states. This has been borne out by the quality of presentations and discussions during the week.

Given this wealth of expertise, I also mentioned that SPREP may even try to keep you all here and not let you go back home.

Even if that is not possible – unfortunately and reluctantly - I am sure all of you have been impressed by the great natural beauty of this country, the warmth of its people and the professionalism of approaches to address climate change and other issues.

I think this is best summed up by Janet Larue this morning in discussing one of the conference field trips when she said: “I love Samoa”.

We do too.

I hope many of you are planning a trip back to Samoa – if you do return please consider SPREP as your home away from home – our home is your home – our fale is your fale.

I urged everyone on Monday to be open and generous in sharing our experience and to learn from one another. This objective has been exceeded and I think we have all definitely learnt from each other. Jo mentioned this morning that a particular point from one of the working groups was “a great bit of wisdom”. In fact I think we have heard “many great bits of wisdom” this week and I am sure they will be well captured in the conference report.

This will be a very important and landmark document.

This conference has underlined that there are differences between our regions but there are in fact many more similarities, particularly in terms of the challenges we face and the approaches we are taking. As Leonard Nurse said this morning, “there are many positive things happening in our regions”

From my side I have learned a lot from listening to and talking with colleagues from the Caribbean and Indian Oceans. I will ask SPREP staff to consider how these suggestions and lessons can be best applied in the future development of climate change programmes at SPREP, and in the Pacific region.

Robert asked each of us this morning to consider what we would like as an outcome from this conference.

My answer was - concrete action to ensure this conference is followed up.

We have heard a number of concrete suggestions for follow up from this mornings’ session and a number of practical suggestions are included in the Outcomes Statement from this conference.

Ken Leslie and I will be signing a Memorandum of Understanding today between SPREP and 5 Cs. This is a very important document and a major step towards better information sharing and practical cooperation between the Pacific and the Caribbean.

I am sure this partnership will also provide a useful vehicle for following up many of the key recommendations from this conference. SPREP is really looking forward to working with the 5Cs to implement this MOU and we hope this cooperation can be expanded in the future to include the Indian Ocean region as well.

Ken told me the idea of this conference, bringing together key people from the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Oceans was floated by him about 4 years. It has been great to bring this about and we look forward to the next conference - hopefully we will not have to wait another 4 years and we look forward to meeting in the beautiful Caribbean.

Ken – thank you for your leadership, and perseverance, in bringing this conference from an idea to reality.

This conference has been rich in content. Jo Mummery and her team have provided a masterful summary of key insights which has been well refined by the excellent reports from working groups this morning.

To briefly highlight some key messages I will take from this conference.

First the benefits of working across regions and ensuring there are better mechanisms put in place for sharing experience in the future. We have more work to do on this area. This works to the benefit of us all and can be done easily and quickly.

Second the need to be flexible and look at new ways of working. Climate Change poses many new and different challenges and we need to look at different approaches to how we carry out our core business. By necessity this must involve working across sectors and encouraging and better applying innovation in our work.

Third we must focus on better and more strategic partnerships. We must avoid a silo approach to working. In the Pacific, SPREP is committed to working more collaboratively with other Regional Agencies, particularly with and through the CROP CEO’s Task Force on Climate Change, as well as working better with civil society. This conference has also provided an excellent platform for expanding partnerships between the Caribbean, Pacific and Indian Oceans. We now need to ensure this translates to action.

Fourth I would emphasise the issue of sustainability which is vital if we are to better address the many challenges of climate change. This is implicit in our discussions this week on moving from a project to a programme approach, ensuring more long term and sustainable sources of finance, and developing stronger and more effective institutions for climate change. This is also closely linked with the issue of strategic leadership – at all levels - as clearly outlined by Edward Green in his closing remarks yesterday.

Fifth, and finally, there are some very specific key messages from this conference. I awoke on Tuesday morning to the thought resounding in my eardrums that: “The climate has changed, the climate will change, and the climate demands change”. So this is one message that not only resonates but has stuck. Thank you Michael Taylor for this insight.

In closing I would like to thank a number of organisations.

The Government of Australia, and particularly the PASAP Programme, for its most generous support for this conference. We have all appreciated the guidance and wisdom of Martin and Jo and the hard work and dedication of Liz and Cameron throughout the week. Thank you. We really value having the PASAP team at SPREP and feel this is a real win-win situation. This underlines the practical and tangible benefits of partnership.

Thank you again to the Government of Samoa for excellent support throughout this conference and, once again, for the very generous hosting of SPREP in your beautiful country.

Thank you to the SPREP team for your hard work and support. I am honored to lead such a professional and hard working team.

Thank you to all the hard working staff at the Tanoa Tusitala – we have appreciated your hard work and smiles throughout this week.

Finally, I would like to invite you all to at SPREP tonight and wish you all a safe trip back to your home countries.

Thank you again and I would like to declare this very important and significant conference closed.

Your thoughts…..

Michael Nanua Senior Journalism Student – Vanuatu Institute of Technology

How can we make bottom-up planning for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction more effective?

Quick definition of Bottom up planning – Planning is to start from the community and then this is worked through different levels so it ultimately get folded into national plans.

Rebecca McLean

AUSAID, Suva Fiji

I think the bottom up planning for climate change adaption and disaster risk reduction will be more effective if the governments build a good relationship or strong linkage with the communities and lead some ideas up to national and international level.

Gabor Vereczi

Regional Technical Advisor on Climate Change Adaptation for the Pacific

UN international Development Program

I think the bottom line is that we need to engage with the traditional villagers and their leaders and study their structures and need to engage also with the government representatives, youth groups and the church groups that are also important in the Pacific.

I think that once you find those leaders and you have them fully engaged in the project then they will be your best advocators.

And I think another mechanism is the sharing of the knowledge management for example is when you’re engage with a village for the project, you better take it to another village where they didn’t done this before so that can look and learn on what is happening on the ground. I think it’s better to have constant flow information. 

Marina Illingworth

AUSAID, Suva Fiji

It is very important to create the ownership value with the communities if they want to own a project then the development partners will help and we can assure them that the project will continue because they do understand things happening to our resources.  Because of that I think that a very important aspect of the bottom up planning is to focus more on the ownership.

Kenrick Lesley

Executive Director of the Caribbean Community of Climate change Centre.

We have to remember that the Climate Change will not impact me, I’m too old. It will be for the children and my grandchildren and therefore we have to educate them as to “what is Climate Change” and “what they can do” because children can influence they parents and the parents can influence the policy makers and therefore we need to get this from bottom up and that will continue in our life. But if you take from the top they will only looking for short times. Children will make it for a long term period because Climate Change will be a long term and that’s the way I see the importance for the bottom up planning.

Brenda Koon-Wai-You

Red Cross, Samoa

We do that in Red Cross, sometimes we have to go to the communities and run the awareness programs called Preparedness and Awareness in the Communities. That program includes the Climate Change and Disaster Risk Reduction because the Climate Change is striking now so we have to let them know as some of them have some good ideas that might help contributing in the issue.

Asaia Taape

PM’s office, Tuvalu

Well, in relation to my country Tuvalu where I come from, most of the time the planning is normally done at the community level. We do experience some challenges with their plans because the knowledge at this level is different from ours so we as the government official are trying to help them out with it. Despite this, I can see that it is more effective rather than making the plan at the top and going down.  

Claire Bernard

Planning Institute of Jamaica

We need to have an interface between national level planning and the community level planning because if we adopt the community level planning alone, the action could conflict the national objectives. I think need to have some coincidence between the two then we will recognise the knowledge of the communities as well and the national planning can take that and put it into consideration.  I think we need both to have the best possible solutions.

We just can’t do it one way because sometimes the communities have good knowledge and so on but sometimes they need additional knowledge from outside. Community have to go up as the national have to come down and meet somewhere in the middle.

Augustine Poyotte

Ministry of Physical Development and the Environment

St Lucia.

I think it’s a case that we need to involve the local public a lot more than what has been done in the past.  I think we need to listen to the people who are going to lose and benefit from the varying changes that will be caused by the Climate Change.  But so far I think it will be good to have a mixture of both, I think it is one of the most effective ways to plan – the bottom up planning.

Official urges quick adoption of global agreement on climate change

by Ernie Seon - Caribbean Media Corporation

Apia, Samoa - The science advisor to the Alliance of Small Islands States (AOSIS), Dr. Albert Binger, is urging countries to quickly adopt a global agreement which will spare small island states the agony of having to deal with the effects of more intense hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Dr Binger, who is on secondment from the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (CCCCC), told the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC) that while discussions are taking place on climate change, many are unaware of the urgency of the situation.



Far right - Dr Al Binger



“Essentially we have five years to set a global agreement to keep the emissions to where we see we can survive.

“It seems like in all the talk people don’t seem to recognise the urgency involved in the situation. There are 2,000 days or five years to actually get an implementation to meet a window to keep the temperature below 1.5 degrees.

“If it goes above 1.5 degrees a lot of countries especially those in the Caribbean and Pacific will be in serious trouble,” he warned.

Dr. Binger is among a number of climate change and environmental experts attending a four day conference on Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction in Small Island Development states which opened here on Monday.

“The Lessons for Future Action Conference” will allow delegates to share experiences and lessons learned in relation to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction among Small Island Developing States (SIDS) drawing on experiences from Australia and other countries.

He told CMC that collectively most small island states would feel the effects of serious flooding, drought and a lot more intense hurricanes in states like the Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Suriname and Guyana.

“We are already half way there, we are at .8 degrees and with all the hell that’s going on, you can imagine what another doubling can do,” Dr Binger remarked.

The AOSIS official whose role is to provide information on development projects, technologies and strategies to deal with climate change and sustainable development issues said that while the science and its impacts are known, the time factor isn’t.

“The development of science only last year gave us enough information that we were able to know that we had this amount of time.

“So the urgency is something that we look to the media to tell the population and the political leaders so there will be a sense or urgency. But at this time there still no urgency because they don’t realize there is actually a clock,” he noted.

He suggested that regardless of what is done at the international level if emissions are not stopped at a certain level, “all we are doing is buying time”.

Dr. Binger said what is required at the international level is a global agreement which caps the emissions and then reduces them, while at the national and regional levels, a rethinking is required because of the impact of sea level rise.

He said that an analysis for the Caribbean suggests that for one meter sea level rise, the damage to infrastructure is estimated at US$100 billion.

“This is a very conservative estimate, most of our beaches will be gone, so how do you build a future economy without tourism,” he said, recommending that the region gets its energy sector right, “not just to reduce our emissions but to generate finance resources that we can build a new economy with and deal with adaptations”.

The AOSIS official also called for better uses to be employed with educating people as to the existing threats, so that they same mistakes and malpractices are not repeated, “thinking that they live in a different climate regime than the one they face in the future.”

Dr. Binger also identified the need for more political understanding that climate change is not an issue for the wider Caribbean but for every single member of the population.

Climate Change Lessons Learnt for Future Action Conference

Mona Ainu'u - Broadcasting Corporation of Niue

23 May 2011, Apia, Samoa - The start of the “Lessons for Future Action Conference” in Apia today heightened the urgency to address issues of climate change adaptation and future decisions affecting Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

The threat of natural disasters is becoming increasingly clear both in terms of their impact on SIDS, and of their personal vulnerability. A strong message during the opening ceremony was the need for immediate action, in cooperation with others, as we cannot do it alone.

Prime Minister of Samoa, Hon. Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi

The Prime Minister of Samoa, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, opened today’s conference calling upon participants to share the lessons learnt so we can strategise for a better future in the face of climate change.

“What is needed now in the pacific and elsewhere is more climate change project implementation, and this is the single most important action for the future, I will urge you therefore as stakeholders of climate change and disaster risk management to share the lessons learned to date”.

The issue of partnership was echoed by Mr. David Sheppard, Director of the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP). He shared SPREP’s continuing focus of strengthening partnerships and the critical need to work together without competition or duplication.

Mr David Sheppard, Director of SPREP

“We have limited resources and capacity, so let’s work together and better utilize resources and avenues that have been established-both within and between our regions”.

“While there are differences between and within regions in terms of size, capacity, levels of development and geography, I have always been impressed by the level of solidarity and cooperation that exist between small island states. This is exemplified by the work of the Alliance of Small Island States, AOSIS”.

The Prime Minister of Samoa also reiterated the support the Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) needs from the international audience.

“One of the biggest challenges as you all know has been to get the voice of Alliance of Small Islands States member countries heard. We collectively want a 45 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 based on 1990 levels. I think we may now have the man power and the skills to fund the determination and the technological means to achieve this”.
 

James Bartley, Deputy Director General of AUSAID

James Bartley, Deputy Director General of AUSAID acknowledged the importance of productive means to assist the Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

“The issue is not simply one of the amount of resources available to address climate change around the world, there‘s a real issue of how effectively those resources are used most efficiently, most productively and indeed in ways that are not counterproductive”.


Over the next four days participants will deliberate over a range of different issues including capacity development, strategies and on-ground options, community based responses to climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction as well as information and awareness raising. By sharing the lessons learnt in these areas during panel discussions and presentations, it is hoped a path forward will be forged.

The meeting is a partnership between the Australia Government Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency AusAid and the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP). It is hosted in Samoa from 23 to 25 May.