MINISTER OF ENVIRONMENT AND HOUSING FERREIRA ATTENDING COP24 CONFERENCE IN POLAND

Commonwealth Secretary General the Rt. Hon. Patricia Scotland presents the Hon. Romauld Ferreira, Bahamas Minister of Environment and Housing, with toolkit for implementing SDGs during their meeting in the margins of COP24.

KATOWICE, Poland — The Hon. Romauld Ferreira, Minister of Environment and Housing, is among that participants attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP24 being held in Katowice, Poland  through December 14, 2018.

COP 24 was convened on December 4 with a “high-level session launching eight days of focused events and dialogues on Global Climate Action, aimed at building a bridge between government delegates and non-Party, public and private stakeholders in the global response to climate change,” according to a press release.

That event featured United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, COP 24 President Michał Kurtyka, and UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Patricia Espinosa and “highlighted the mutually reinforcing and critically important cooperation between state and non-state actors needed if the world is to keep on track to the 1.5C goal of the Paris Agreement.”

Parties to the UN Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) are set to adopt a ‘rulebook’ for the Paris Agreement, which will outline the governing framework and mechanisms for full implementation of the global climate pact.

The Rt Hon Patricia Scotland, QC, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, delivered a statement at the high-level segment of the conference outlining the Secretariat’s climate change initiatives such as the Climate Finance Access Hub, Commonwealth Blue Charter, Law and Climate Change Toolkit, Commonwealth Portal for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the newly-launched Toolkit for Youth Entrepreneurship in the Blue and Green Economies.

The Secretary-General and the Secretariat’s climate change experts also engaged with Commonwealth member countries, regional and international bodies on strengthening international collaboration and partnerships, as guided by the ‘rulebook’ that countries will seek to adopt at COP24.

On her twitter page today (Tuesday, December 11), Commonealth Secretary General Scotland noted: “In the margins of #COP24 today I shared the #Commonwealth’s toolkit for implementing the #SDGs with Minister of #Environment and Housing of #The Bahamas Hon. Romauld Ferreira. We had fruitful discussions on #climatechange #BlueCharter #regenerative #development.”