Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor—News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

In a dra­mat­ic re­ac­tion at the 29th Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties (COP29) tak­ing place in Baku, Azer­bai­jan, the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) led by chair Cedric Schus­ter walked out on ne­go­ti­a­tions. How­ev­er, AO­SIS said in a state­ment yes­ter­day they re­main com­mit­ted to the glob­al mul­ti­lat­er­al process at COP.

“First­ly, let me make it clear that the Al­liance of Small Is­land States re­mains com­mit­ted to this process and is here in the spir­it of good faith in mul­ti­lat­er­al­ism to se­cure the best deal that will pro­tect not just us, but the world from the worst im­pacts of cli­mate change,” Schus­ter said.

AO­SIS re­moved it­self from stalled ne­go­ti­a­tions on the New Col­lec­tive Quan­ti­fied Goal (NC­QG) af­ter it deemed it was “not of­fer­ing a pro­gres­sive way for­ward.”

The body which rep­re­sents 20 per cent of the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UN­FC­CC) said while it wish­es to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble, the process must be “in­clu­sive.”

“If this can­not be the case, it be­comes very dif­fi­cult for us to con­tin­ue our in­volve­ment here at COP29,” Schus­ter said.

He added, “Across all pack­ages, there is a de­plorable lack of sub­stance, es­pe­cial­ly as it re­lates to the spe­cial needs and cir­cum­stances of SIDS and LD­CS. Our key asks on mit­i­ga­tion have al­so been ig­nored. We need to see progress and fol­low up on the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fu­els that we agreed on last year. We have been asked to for­get all about that at this COP as though we are not in a crit­i­cal decade and as though the 1.5°C lim­it is not in per­il.”

AO­SIS has called on all par­ties to ho­n­our the Paris Agree­ment which was agreed to in 2015.

“What is hap­pen­ing here is high­light­ing what a very dif­fer­ent boat our vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries are in, com­pared to the de­vel­oped coun­tries. Af­ter this COP29 ends, we can­not just sail off in­to the sun­set. We are lit­er­al­ly sink­ing. Un­der­stand this—I am not ex­ag­ger­at­ing when I say our is­lands are sink­ing! How can you ex­pect us to go back to the women, men, and chil­dren of our coun­tries with a poor deal which will sure­ly plunge them in­to fur­ther per­il?” Schus­ter asked.

He end­ed by call­ing on all coun­tries to con­sid­er the im­pact cli­mate change is hav­ing on the world’s most vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries.

COP29 was sched­uled to wrap up in Baku yes­ter­day but ran in­to over­time as par­ties could not agree on a way for­ward.