The Solomon Islands has welcomed the focus of COP29 on climate finance.
However, the COP Presidency and parties have been reminded not to lose sight of the need to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Our survival and the health of our planet to be able to sustain life depends on limiting global temperature rise,” Trevor Manemahaga, Minister of Environment Climate Change Disaster Management and Meteorology, told world leaders in Baku on Tuesday.
He was speaking during the High Level segment of the 29th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), now into its second week.
The call for 1.5 to stay alive refers to the promise of the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Anything warmer and the impacts of climate change will be dire.
COP29 takes place soon after the World Meteorological Organisation’s (WMO) State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2023 report detailed how sea level rise in the region is above the global average. The report found that sea surface temperatures have risen three times faster than the global average since 1980.
Despite accounting for just 0.02 per cent of global emissions, Pacific islands are uniquely exposed. Their average elevation is just one to two meters above sea level; 90 percent of the population live within 5 kilometres of the coast and half the infrastructure is within 500 metres of the sea.
It is against this backdrop that Solomon Islands joins the global call for urgent action to help the vulnerable, especially Pacific communities whose ‘lived reality’ is the devastating impacts of the climate crisis.
“The urgency to address climate change, demands decisive leadership, and we are confident that you will provide it,” said Manemahaga. “The Solomon Islands, like many Least Developed Countries (LDC) as well as Small Island Developing States (SIDS), are on the front lines of the climate crisis. Climate Change is a lived reality and our stories now are those of loss, displacement, suffering, and erosion of culture and heritage.”
The negotiations on the Mitigation Work Programme is a key issue for the Solomon Islands.
“Solomon Islands is concerned that the latest synthesis report of the Nationally Determined Contributions and outcomes of the first global stocktake point to an overshoot of global temperatures beyond 1.5 degree warming,” said the Minister of Environment Climate Change Disaster Management and Meteorology.
“High emitting countries must take our plight seriously and increase mitigation ambition and action. It is imperative that major emitters address the root cause of this crisis, which is the emission of greenhouse gases.
The Global Stocktake (GST) presents a vital opportunity for transparent evaluation of the progress made toward climate goals, Solomon Islands noted.
“There must be follow-up on implementation of mitigation outcomes from the Global Stocktake, including the phasing out of fossil fuels, removal of fossil fuel subsidies, tripling of renewables and doubling of energy efficiency.”
On COP29 as a finance COP, Manemahaga said while climate finance is a critical enabler of effective climate action, the current system is unjust.
“We cannot effectively address vulnerabilities and enhance resilience when the international finance architecture and the great reliance on debt instruments contributes to exacerbating our existing financial burdens and strained economies,” he said.
“Funding must be significantly grant-based, predictable, and unburdened by complex and onerous processes The current system of climate finance is demonstrably failing considering the promised $100 billion has fallen woefully short, marred by a lack of transparency and accountability.”
The lessons learned from the failures of the current climate finance system must shape the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG), a key expected outcome in Baku.
“The NCQG must deliver pathways and timeframes to keep the 1.5-degree goal alive, guided by the most recent science. It must provide accessible, simplified, predictable, additional, and crucially, grant-based finance to meet the needs of developing nations. The NCQG must operationalise the Article 9.4 of the Paris Agreement. It must also establish a minimum floor of allocations for SIDS and LDCs.”
On the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage, the Solomon Islands acknowledged the swift establishment of the Fund and called for its swift operationalisation to address the pressing needs of vulnerable communities.
“We must use this momentum to ensure our collective commitment to a sustainable future for all. The 1.5-degree goal is not negotiable for it is a matter of survival.”
