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Climate Change is an existential threat to the Caribbean #1point5toStayAlive is a Panos Caribbean initiative to help make the Caribbean's case for 1.5°C. Since 2009, Small Island Developing States and many others have been calling for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to prevent the worst of climate change impacts. The inclusion of a 1.5°C temperature limit in the 2015 Paris Agreement was a major victory for vulnerable countries. |
#1point5toStayAlive Frontpage News
GUARDIAN: "COP26: world on track for disastrous heating of more than 2.4C, says key report"
9 NOVEMBER 2021
The world is on track for disastrous levels of global heating far in excess of the limits in the Paris climate agreement, despite a flurry of carbon-cutting pledges from governments at the UN COP26 summit.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
DW: "COP26: Whom should developing countries bill for climate impacts?"
8 NOVEMBER 2021
Antigua and Barbuda's Environment Minister Joseph: "We are being responsible global citizens. We are cleaning up our environment. And at the same time, we have been victims of the polluters."
- Category: 1.5°C Press
The Guardian: "What has COP26 achieved so far?"
7 NOVEMBER 2021
Agreements on deforestation, methane and coal were welcome news. Less so was some countries’ absence from major initiatives.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
COP 26 Presidency Event: "Exploring Loss and Damage - Global perspectives for action"
8 NOVEMBER 2021
PM of Barbados Mia Mottley kicks off open & honest discussion to deepen understanding of #LossAndDamage and ways to avert, minimize and address it.
Even with a rapid scale-up of adaptation action, climate change will still have an impact. So the risk of losses and damages from climate change is growing. This session will bring together experts to deepen our understanding of loss and damage as well as debate how we can take practical actions to avert, minimise and address loss and damage.
- Category: Voices of the 1.5°C Allies
OECS: "OECS is Making its Voice Heard at COP26 in the Race to Deal With Climate Change"
- Category: Voices of the 1.5°C Allies
UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS: "Crunch Time at COP26: Five Things to Watch for as Glasgow Climate Talks Enter Second Week"
8 NOVEMBER 2021
As the second week of the annual UN climate talks in Glasgow—also called COP26—gets underway, negotiations are entering the crunch period. After all the speeches and a flurry of voluntary initiatives announced by politicians in the first week, it’s now time for real talk about what countries will actually commit to doing as part of an agreement. Specifically, will Glasgow deliver a transparent, robust and inclusive agreement to help keep global climate goals within reach, ramp up climate finance for developing countries and address the loss and damage caused by extreme unavoidable climate impacts?
→ READ MORE ON UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS
- Category: 1.5°C Press
THE CONVERSATION: "Climate change is a justice issue – these 6 charts show why"
3 NOVEMBER 2021
To reduce climate change and protect those who are most vulnerable, it’s important to understand where emissions come from, who climate change is harming and how both of these patterns intersect with other forms of injustice.
→ READ MORE ON THE CONVERSATION
- Category: 1.5°C Facts
CDB: "CDB Proposes a Resilience-Adjusted GNI Measure for Small Island Developing Economies to Access Concessional Finance"
4 NOVEMBER 2021
The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) has proposed a resilience-adjusted Gross National Income (GNI) measure for Small Island Developing States (SIDS) to access concessional finance.
Termed the Recovery Duration Adjuster (RDA), this measurement framework better reflects the economic, social, and environmental realities of SIDS, including those in the Caribbean region. The framework is based on two key principles. Firstly, it takes a holistic view of development needs and incorporates underlying structural weaknesses, high debt levels, and insufficient investment in resilient infrastructure as important inputs in determining the extent of a country’s vulnerability to exogenous shocks.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
GUARDIAN: "Never mind aid, never mind loans: what poor nations are owed is reparations"
5 NOVEMBER 2021 - GEORGE MONBIOT
By framing the pittance they offer as a gift, rather than as compensation, the states that have done most to cause this catastrophe can position themselves, in true colonial style, as the heroes who will swoop down and rescue the world.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
CANARI: "In confronting the climate crisis, workers are a critical part of the solution"
5 NOVEMBER 2021 - SANDRA MASSIAH
Every day, whether it is during or outside of the hurricane season, people who live and work in SIDS know only too well that climate change is a reality and that it affects everything that they do. Workers especially feel first-hand the impact of increasingly intense hurricanes, floods, longer periods of drought, and intense heat. Public services workers are on the frontlines responding to the impact of the climate crisis. And perhaps better than anyone, they know that there is a very high price to pay for inaction.
- Category: Voices of the 1.5°C Allies
NEW STATESMAN: "It is climate inaction that will lead to people living more difficult lives"
4 NOVEMBER 2021 - MICHAEL MANN
To borrow from the iconic film The Usual Suspects, the greatest trick the fossil fuel industry ever pulled was convincing the world that climate action would require sacrifice, for just the opposite is true.
→ READ MORE ON THE NEW STATESMAN
- Category: 1.5°C Press
CNG MEDIA: "OECS signs Glasgow declaration on climate action in tourism"
5 NOVEMBER 2021
CASTRIES, St Lucia — The Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has committed to working with tourism stakeholders on Climate Change, and announced that it has become a signatory of the Glasgow Declaration on Climate Action in Tourism.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
Dr. JAMES FLETCHER: "SIDS continue to have to fight tooth and nail to get the smallest concessions"
4 NOVEMBER 2021 - Dr. JAMES FLETCHER
Prime Minister Mia Mottley delivered the speech at COP26 that all negotiators from Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have been waiting and yearning to hear a SIDS head of government deliver on our behalf for years. She hit on all the right points, she spoke with the authority and confidence of someone who understood the subject, she commanded the stage and she delivered with a passion and eloquence that caused every international leader and celebrity in the audience to listen with rapt attention.
- Category: Voices of the 1.5°C Allies
POLITICO / USA: "A $130T climate promise is greeted with suspicion"
3 NOVEMBER 2021
Political leaders are showering financial titans with praise at global climate talks. But their show of pageantry and back-patting is masking a deeper concern: that the banking industry’s pledges to help fight global warming are vague and unenforceable.
- Category: 1.5°C Press
FINANCIAL TIME / LONDON: "COP26: where does all the climate finance money go?"
2 NOVEMBER 2021 - LESLIE HOOK - JOANNA S KAO
In 2009, rich nations promised they would send at least $100bn a year in climate finance to poorer countries by 2020. That understanding formed the basis of the 2015 Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C, ideally 1.5C.
“Suddenly you had this really emblematic ‘$100bn’ — where, unless you work this out, it is difficult to have the global agreement [at COP],” recalls Josué Tanaka, who helped launch the climate finance unit at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. “It became the signal, the base of trust, between developed and developing countries.”
But last week, on the eve of COP26, donor countries admitted they missed that target in 2020. Now they expect to reach it in 2022 or 2023, years later than planned.
Everyone agrees there should be more money for climate finance. But that is where the consensus ends.
→ READ MORE ON THE FINANCIAL TIME
- Category: 1.5°C Press
THE CLIMATE VULNERABLE FORUM: "DHAKA-GLASGOW DECLARATION"
2 NOVEMBER 2021
We, Heads of State and Government, and high representatives, of the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, and the Pacific, and forming a significant number, and a representative group, of those countries most vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change, meeting in-person and virtually, as convened from Dhaka, and in Glasgow during the World Leaders Summit of UNFCCC COP26, in October and November 2021,
Alarmed at the recent findings of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report (AR6) which confirmed that the warming of the climate system is accelerating with the world on track to reach 1.5ºC as early as 2030, with certain adverse impacts of climate change, such as extreme heat spells, set to nearly double in scale by then compared to impacts at 1ºC, as society now finds itself firmly within an escalating climate emergency,
Further alarmed at the conclusions of the UNFCCC Secretariat’s 2021 reports on Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, wherein a large number of parties to the Agreement, including a number of major emitting countries, failed to comply with the Agreement by updating or renewing enhanced NDCs, and whereby a major shortfall in contributions to limiting warming to 1.5ºC prevails, though highlighting that the 1.5ºC goal can still be kept alive if 2030 emissions are 45% below their 2010 levels, which requires drastic, constant and urgent ambition raising especially of major emitting countries prior to 2030,
All the more alarmed by reports of the unmet UNFCCC collective climate finance commitment of the developed countries to mobilize $100 billion in annual, additional climate finance, with balanced funding for adaptation and mitigation, from 2020, and the threat that this default poses for confidence in the Paris climate regime in addition to weakening support for climate action by developing countries and our member states,
→ READ THE FULL DECLARATION ON THE CVF WEBSITE
- Category: Voices of the 1.5°C Allies
Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK): "A Brief History of CO2 Emissions"
A Brief History of CO2 Emissions from Fachhochschule Potsdam on Vimeo.
- Category: 1.5°C Facts
TENEMENT YAAD: "So Said, Not So Easily Done"
1 NOVEMBER 2021
Steve D. Whittaker, PhD, MSc - edited by Sherine Andreine Powerful, MPH
Since the 2020 storm season started, the Caribbean region has seen (perhaps) unprecedented downpours disrupt the daily lives of many communities and citizens. Even the most unorganized of cyclonic systems resulted in substantial damages* to infrastructure in Dominica, St. Lucia, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Antigua & Barbuda, St. Kitts & Nevis, and Trinidad & Tobago. And yet, despite flooded streets, sweeping power outages, and buildings literally sliding off their foundations, many regional residents defer, if not decline, to act or adapt, even as the risks of these incidents increase. Almost entire governments, a plethora of private sector representatives, and a generous portion of the general public continue to operate as though these extreme weather events are within some familiar range of hurricane-adjacent horror, as opposed to reacting to the aforementioned incidents. It’s as if these events fail to serve as evidence of the existential crisis that is a change in global climate.
→ READ MORE ON TENEMENT YAAD WEBSITE
- Category: 1.5°C Press
Climate Analytics: "The Global Methane Pledge and 1.5°C"
2 NOVEMBER 2021 - CLIMATE ANALYTICS
53 countries have signed up to the Global Methane Pledge, committing to cut methane emissions by 30% in 2030 from 2020 levels. In 2019, these countries made up 30% of global methane emissions and around 34% of total global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This analysis quantifies the potential impacts of the pledge if all countries were to adopt it.
→ READ MORE ON CLIMATE ANALYTICS
- Category: 1.5°C Facts
CARIBBEAN LEADERS SPEECHES - COP 26 OPENING
GASTON BROWN - ANTIGUA & BARBUDA
ANDREW HOLNESS - JAMAICA
- Category: Voices of the 1.5°C Allies
