Crunch Time at COP26

Today, environment/climate change ministers from across the world get down to work, tasked with the important role of finalizing that critical document that will be produced out of COP26. Ambassador Janine Felson is the deputy head of delegation for Belize and the lead negotiator for the Alliance of Small Island States on Climate Finance. She did not mince words earlier today following a meeting with CARICOM saying that Belize and other countries impacted by climate change need to get what is owed to them.

Ambassador Janine Felson, Lead Negotiator, AOSIS

“We have so many loose ends that if we don’t tie them up by the end of the week, we will leave here with nothing. So what we need now, we need a lot of effort in closing the mitigation gap which is to get us to one point five. We need efforts to push us – not us, but developed countries – to deliver on their climate promise, climate finance promise. But to go beyond the hundred billion that they are speaking about – to start shifting towards the trillions. And we need specific focus on how support can be increased for countries like Belize who are fighting against the impacts of climate change, but we are paying for it out of our own pockets and when we get support, we get it in the form of loans. We can’t continue to pay for something that we didn’t cause. So we need to push on that finance front to make sure that our countries are getting the access to the grants that we need and that we actually are owed. We are not going to allow it to fall on deaf ears. We have been in alliance with other small island developing states for thirty years. Thirty years is basically the history of this climate change regime and we haven’t faltered, we haven’t split apart, we haven’t become disunified so as long as we maintain that solidarity amongst ourselves our collective voice can go very far. And I think AOSIS has been making itself heard very well. WE are doing it here within the process. Right now I think there are seven of our ministers from the Caribbean and the Pacific and the Indian Ocean who will be leading consultations on behalf of the United Kingdom presidency of this COP26. I mean that goes to show you; they’ve proven their metal and I think we will see their efforts also pan out to something positive and ambitious for our region and for the rest of the small island developing states.”