Belize Delegation Ready to Defend National Position at COP27
Belize made waves at the United Nation’s Conference of the Parties last November in Glasgow, Scotland, getting noticed for its exemplary conservation and forest management efforts. The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly referred to as COP27, will be held from November sixth to the eighteenth in Egypt. But even before then, pre-sessional meetings are being held at the regional and international level. C.E.O. Doctor Kenrick Williams says that the Belize delegation is ready to defend the country’s national
positions.
Kenrick Williams
Dr. Kenrick Williams, C.E.O., Ministry of Sustainable Development, Climate Change Disaster Rick Management & NEMO
“We are working on national positions as it relates to COP27. As you would know coming out of COP26, we had a generally agreed Paris Rules Book. The detail of those rules as it relates to article six, for example the market mechanism for carbon and carbon sales. There are some of those details that still have to be unpacked. There is some discussion on loss and damage and a loss and damage financing facility. So there are some of those key thematic areas that’s being discussed at the negotiators level and within our various negotiating blocks. As you know Belize negotiates within CARICOM, first block, then AOSIS, G77 and China and then within the global block. So our national position is being shored up as it relates to some of the negotiation and preparation by negotiators. I think that put and that thrust remains in terms of getting countries to really commit the investments that they made to support adaptation. As we know, a lot of the investments have been made on the mitigation side, but not a lot of the investments have been made on the adaptation side. That is going to be a continuous fight for developing countries and that’s not one that we can give up on. So in these forums, some of the pre-sessionals, as well as the regional negotiating positions, the AOSIS discussions, we continue to fight and push this on the agenda so that it doesn’t disappear from the UNFCCC’s international agenda and the COP negotiating agenda. So it is in these forums that we shore up those positions, we look at new approach, innovative approach to thrust upon the developing countries the importance of those investments, the impact of those investments. But we have to continue to scale up and we have to continue to put the pressure as developing nations because as you see, we continue to suffer the impacts of climate change.”
Key thematic areas such as conservation in marine and terrestrial and approaches as well as the role of indigenous communities in conservation and management will also be featured by Belize at COP27.
