‘Caribbean should hit reset on climate advocacy’
CARIBBEAN COMMUNITY (CARICOM) countries are being urged to take a serious relook at their advocacy efforts ahead of the global climate talks in Poland next month, and in the wake of the approved summary for policymakers (SPM) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“I believe it is fair to say that we have lost a considerable amount of momentum in our climate advocacy campaign post-COP21 (the international climate talks, referred to as the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Paris in 2015). This is regrettable,” said Dr James Fletcher, former minister of sustainable development for Saint Lucia.
“In the build-up to the negotiations on the Paris Agreement in 2015, we did a fantastic job in mobilising the media, artistes, youth groups and civil society in our ‘1.5 to Stay Alive’ campaign. Unfortunately, after the successes at COP21, we appear to have decided that Paris was the destination and not just another step in our journey to fight climate change, and we shifted our focus away from climate advocacy,” he added.
The 1.5 to Stay Alive campaign kicked off in October 2015, with a launch event held in Saint Lucia. At the same time, a website, Facebook page, and Twitter account were established to promote Caribbean negotiating positions and to expose the region’s climate challenges. A theme song - the collaborative effort of regional acts – was subsequently released, with several other activities, including a Selfie Video Challenge and a flash mob, also implemented to get Caribbean people behind the campaign effort.
At the talks, the region, for the first time, had a pavilion called the Wider Caribbean Pavilion, which afforded the space for strategy meetings by regional negotiators and networking among players, while Caribbean artistes Aaron Silk of Jamaica and Adrian ‘The Doc’ Martinez of Belize were on hand to spread, through music, the 1.5 To Stay Alive message, and were big hits with participants.