BY JARED KOLI
IN BONN, GERMANY
THE Solomon Islands government delegation is undertaking four key tasks for multilateral global process on climate change at the 23rd Conference of Parties (COP23) in Bonn, Germany.
Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment, Climate Change, Disaster Management and Meteorology (MECDM) Dr Melchior Mataki informed the local media covering the conference that these tasks needs to be sorted out to address the key issues that are needed in the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
The first is the importance of the 1.5 degrees partway.
“It has been a long standing issue that Solomon Islands and other vulnerable countries are fighting for, and wanted to having it fulfil in the main negotiations at COP23. Even in the work programmes of subsidiary bodies.
“Essentially, it’s about the main streaming of the 1.5 degrees to drive global ambition to address climate change,” he said.
The other is the government wants to see a clear articulation of the work programme for the implementation of the Parish Agreement. That is one of the most important issue for the people of Solomon Islands.
“If we do not sort these out, then work on this should be pending and will not address the key issues that are needed in the implementation of the Paris Agreement.
“Thirdly, we want to see the main streaming of Loss and Damage. It is one of the important issue for us because I think a number of different factors are there, including a very low ambition we have, especially on emitters.”
Dr Melchior said Loss and Damage is a reality for us in the Solomon Islands.
“For example, some of our islands have already face huge difficulties, in terms of loss of land and damage to properties as a result of extreme weather such as cyclones, and it is hard for us to regain this. There is no way of compensating it as well. Now it will be discussed. We would like to see these two subsidiary bodies to take some decisions of Loss and Damage on their discussion and work programme,” he said.
The adaptation fund which is the third priority task, is very important funding mechanism, according to the Environment Permanent Secretary.
“Our intention here is to really see the decisions comes – where the adaptation fund can really be made a mechanism for the implementation of the Paris Agreement – to also have the same status of the Green Climate Fund (GCF).
These four key tasks for multilateral global process to align to the overall work that parties to the Paris Agreement are going through.
Negotiations at COP23 should be reached by the end of this week.
