(photo credit: IISD)

My name is Ben Namakin, and I come from the small island state of Kiribati in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. This is a place in which, along with our other pacific islands neighbors, we contribute less than 0.001% to the global greenhouse gas emissions; sadly, we are currently paying the price for global emissions with rising sea levels, droughts and saltwater intrusion contaminating our groundwater.

Kiribati was the first place to ring in the new millennium in 2000 and will also likely be the first state to be shown on international news as being underwater. What steps should those in our region take? We may be small, but we are not insignificant.

I am fortunate to be a Leadership Development Program (LDP) fellow for CAN International, which gives me the opportunity to increase my knowledge and skills on the issues, especially at the United Nations negotiation level. We are doing as possible to adapt to climate change: raising awareness on the issues of our people, building sea walls to prevent coastal erosion, and working on other adaptation activities. Despite this work, we still need to make our voice be heard at international negotiations! We must express the concerns of vulnerable communities to the leaders of the world, who claim they make decisions on behalf of us. Here I would like to highlight those of the developed states.

I am here in Doha, Qatar with 7 LDP fellows from various parts of the world following the UNFCCC COP18 negotiations. We all come from the South, and represent the most vulnerable parts of the world to climate change impacts. Though few in numbers, we try to cover the different issues that most concern us, such as mitigation, equity, finance, sustainable development goals and adaptation.

My focus is on adaptation, given the situation faced by those of Kiribati today. We are indeed in need of support for adaptation mechanisms that will ensure the survival of my people. My expectations here concentrate mostly on the call for international mechanisms for loss and damage, for adaptation committees as well as developed countries raising their ambitions on both finance and mitigation.

I want us to leave Doha with an outcome in which the role of the adaptation committees is well arranged so that they will function appropriately. I would also like to see arrangements under loss and damages adopted with concrete mechanisms for all LDC countries, including easy access to funding mechanisms for implementing national adaptation plans. What we want out of this gathering in Doha is not pretext of commitment, but real commitment.

CAN, YOUNGO and CJN! SBI Opening Plenary Intervention at COP18

Delivered by, David Gawith of YOUNGO, 27 November 2012

Thank you Chair, my name is David and I will be 60 years old in in 2050

Your task this week is a challenging one. The SBI is expected to complete its entire business this session by Saturday.  We stand ready to assist you in this task. Science is telling us that full and sustained implementation of the Convention's fundamental objective is slipping further and further from our grasp. This has disastrous implications for humanity and for its future, our future.

 Hurricane Sandy’s impacts in Haiti, Cuba, and the United States have reminded us that loss and damage is a reality. It’s happening now. Current low mitigation ambition is breaching the ultimate objective of the Convention. Opportunities for avoiding loss and damage are being wasted because of insufficient funding. We need to start thinking beyond adaptation. Based on the decision from Durban, we expect you to set up a comprehensive mechanism to address compensation and rehabilitation issues. Further, we expect you to develop the next phase of the work programme to detail the modalities of the mechanism. Almost 100 vulnerable developing countries have outlined the needs and potential elements of an international mechanism. Doha must not end without clear progress on addressing loss and damage.

On technology, for the Technology Mechanism to be considered "fully operational" at COP18 there must be a committed source of interim and long term funding for the Technology Executive Committee, the Climate Technology Centre and its Advisory Board. The architecture of the Technology Mechanism must also be highly responsive to developing Party clients in order to promote transparency and ensure equitable access to adaptation and mitigation technologies. Finally there must be robust engagement with stakeholders and civil society.
 
On Capacity Building, Parties should concentrate their work on paragraph 6 of 13/CP-17. By agreeing on an intensive 2 year work programme that creates an enhanced structure for effective capacity building in developing countries, by the end of 2014, the ground lost on capacity building could be regained here in Doha.

We hold you accountable for these outcomes.

 Thank you.

ECO has noted that adaptation negotiators have worked seriously to make decent progress on the Adaptation Committee in the last days here in Panama. The time for adding new text suggestions should be over now. Parties should sort out differences, produce the negotiating text and leave only the political issues to be tackled in Durban.

COP 17 taking place on African soil is just seven weeks away and ECO is probably not the only one to note that adaptation is crucial for the African continent. Therefore insufficient progress on this issue would be an bad signal for Africa and the whole world. In no circumstances should adaptation be held hostage by other issues and used as a bargaining chip. The Durban conference must advance the implementation of the Cancun Adaptation Framework, which ECO acknowledges is not an easy task. In Durban, Parties need to finalize the modalities and guidelines of National Adaptation Plans; operationalize the Adaptation Committee; concretize the work programme on Loss and Damage and make specific decisions on activities for the next phase of the Nairobi Work Programme. ECO recommends that those few Parties that have for so long stalled and delayed the negotiations on adaptation change their behavior, otherwise they will be to blame for any failure of the adaptation track.

ECO hopes that parties will come to Durban prepared to reach an agreement on adaptation that will give Africa, the world’s poor and vulnerable peoples and communities and their ecosystems the much needed confidence to combat climate change.