Prime Minister Samuel Hinds speaking during the opening ceremony of the meeting. Other officials at the head table, from left to right are: Director of Sustainable Development, Caricom Secretariat, Garfield Barnwell; Assistant Secretary-General, Foreign and Community Relations, and Officer-in-Charge of the Caricom Secretariat, Ambassador Colin Granderson; and COTED Chairman and Commerce and Trade Minister of Barbados, Haynesley Benn
The Caribbean Community’s (Caricom) collective interests would be best served if it continued to strive for harmonised regional positions on the environment, and on sustainable development, including climate change.
This was the view of Prime Minister Samuel Hinds at the opening of the 37th Meeting of the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) on the Environment and Sustainable Development, at the headquarters of the Caricom Secretariat, Georgetown, Guyana, the Caricom Secretariat reported.
COTED ministers began meeting on Thursday, September 1, to inform the region’s preparations for United Nations’ (UN) high level environmental negotiations, and to deliberate on a slate of issues on the community’s environment and sustainable development agenda. These issues include the environmental dimension pertaining to the implementation of the CSME; sustainable land management; renewable energy; and matters related to the Caribbean Sea Initiative.
Prime Minister Hinds observed that the critical importance of the environment and sustainable development had not escaped the attention of Caricom leaders.
This was aptly demonstrated when the conference of Caricom heads of government, at its 32nd regular meeting in St. Kitts and Nevis, requested that the Caricom Secretariat convene this meeting of COTED to consolidate Caricom’s preparations for the 17th conference of the state parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to be held in Durban, South Africa in December 2011.
In this context, he said, the government of Guyana welcomed the space the meeting offered towards proposing a regional approach to environmental challenges, which “may very well appear intractable” if they were tackled by individual member states.
He recalled the concern Caricom heads of government articulated in 2009 at Liliendaal, East Coast Demerara Guyana; the severe threats the community faced in achieving internationally- agreed development goals; as well as efforts to achieve sustainable development, noting that those threats still persist today.
It was therefore incumbent on the community to forge ahead with harmonised approaches towards addressing environmental challenges, PM Hinds said.
Giving weight to the need for collective action, he pointed to the damage wrought by Hurricane Irene on The Bahamas and on the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Those events, he stated, should “make it even more pressing” for the community to strengthen its resolve in advocating for the adoption of measures to avert catastrophic effects of climate change.
In preparation for the United Nations Rio+ 20 Conference, which will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2012, Prime Minister Hinds suggested that an inventory should be made of the actions taken in implementing the provisions of the Rio Conventions, the Mauritius Strategy and the Barbados Plan of Action, notwithstanding the constraints.
“We should recognise how far we have progressed in our efforts to transform our economies while sustainably managing our environment, and our own innovation and leadership in this area which have led to initiatives which can provide useful lessons for key issues such as the green economy – a key theme for Rio+ 20,” Prime Minister Hinds stated.
Against that backdrop, he noted attempts by Guyana to contribute to the global fight against climate change through its Low Carbon Development Strategy, from which it seeks to receive performance-based payments for sustainable forestry management. He also underscored the country’s steps towards the establishment of a green economy through a hydro power project that would meet the majority of its electricity power needs with clean, reliable and economical energy.
