GUEST COMMENTARY: BY SIR RONALD SANDERS
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary by Sir Ronald Saunders, Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States (OAS), was published in The Tribune, one of leading newspapers in The Bahamas, on Monday, November 28, and we decided to share it with readers of BAHAMAS CHRONICLE. Sir Ronald is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London and Massey College in the University of Toronto).
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Call me a cynic, but years of participation in negotiations between developed and developing countries have schooled me to be cautious about grand announcements and promises. The devil is usually in the detail. Experience has taught me to remain hopeful, but to be vigilant in ensuring the commitments, pledges and promises are kept.
That experience has been garnered in negotiations in the Commonwealth, the World Trade Organization, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, the Organization of American States, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Financial Action Task Force and in direct bargaining between European Union countries and the Caribbean. In each of these fora, the countries of the developed North have sought advantage over the underdeveloped countries of the South. By various stratagems, the developed countries have got their way, including by making commitments at major occasions such as COP27, which concluded on November 20.
In the words of Barbados’ Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, at the opening of COP27, “This world looks, still, too much like when it was part of an imperialistic empire”.
Therefore, while the leaders of small island states, including Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, who, for years, as the Chair of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS) has been advancing the argument for a fund to pay for loss and damage caused by Climate Change, are to be applauded for gaining acceptance by developed nations that such a fund should be created, the game is not yet over.
The negotiated text has recognized the need for financial support from a variety of sources, but no decisions have been reached on who should pay into the fund, where the money will come from, and which countries will benefit.
When COP27 had to be extended into the weekend of 19 and 20 November to address the loss and damage issue, Ministerial negotiators for many small island states had already departed Egypt. It was left to Antigua and Barbuda’s Environment Minister, Sir Molwyn Joseph, and the Environment Minister of the Maldives, Shauna Aminath, with their technical teams, to ensure that the concerns of small island states were adequately met.
Much work remains to ensure that the loss and damage fund is established and adequately resourced. Further, it has to be clear that new money will finance the Fund, and not a shifting of monies already pledged for other purposes which, regrettably, happens far too often.
It should be recalled that wealthy nations still have not fulfilled an outstanding pledge to provide $100 billion to help vulnerable countries adapt to the impact of Climate Change that they have been suffering for decades.
See complete commentary by Sir John Sanders in The Tribune at http://www.tribune242.com/news/2022/nov/28/world-view-not-moment-waste-small-island-states-mu/
