As the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) seeks to enhance its leadership in global climate forums, former Minister for Public Service, Information, Broadcasting, Sustainable Development, Energy, and Science and Technology of Saint Lucia, Dr James Fletcher has been appointed CARICOM Climate Envoy with effect from January 1 2025.
This follows a 2024 Decision taken by the Conference of Heads of Government to appoint a climate envoy as part of measures to ensure that the Region’s climate priorities are effectively communicated and advanced at the highest diplomatic levels.
Commenting on the appointment, CARICOM Secretary-General, Dr Carla Barnett, noted that CARICOM has been taking every opportunity to advocate for ambitious climate action.
Dr James Fletcher
“CARICOM has long recognised the existential threat posed by climate change to the region’s social, economic, and environmental sustainability, and there is increasing urgency to take action to ensure that limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius remains viable.”
Dr Fletcher is a well-recognised climate change advocate. During his ministerial tenure, he played a leading role in the Caribbean’s ‘1.5 to Stay Alive’ civil society campaign. He was invited by the President of Conference of the Parties (COP) 21 to be part of the ministerial team that helped to achieve consensus on the historic Paris Agreement, for which he received recognition by the climate change advocacy group, “Global Optimism”.
CARICOM and the Battle against climate change
CARICOM remains on the frontlines of global climate crisis, an issue the Region has been aggressively advocating on for the past thirty years. Despite the many commitments and promises of international partners, the window of opportunity to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels is rapidly closing.
Heads of Government are concerned that while COP 28 was widely regarded as a historic event, with the completion of the first Global Stocktake (GST), on progress in achievement of the Paris Agreement goals, the outcomes of GST show that emissions of greenhouse gases continue to rise and the nationally determined contributions (NDCs) of Parties will not keep global temperatures below the 1.5-degree goal enshrined in the Paris Agreement.
Caricom Secretariat Turkeyen Georgetown, Guyana
The Conference noted that Small Island Developing States (SIDS), recognised as the most vulnerable group of countries and a special case for sustainable development, have been facing strong push back against the recognition of their special circumstances especially in the context of climate finance. There is limited international support for special allocations for SIDS within financing arrangements and available climate finance from international and private sources is limited, expensive and too onerous to access.
In light of the preceding, Heads of Government had called for CARICOM to take a strategic, unified and coordinated approach to ensure that the Region remains influential in the climate and development arena through engagements with key partners and advocacy groups.
They called for renewed focus by the Region to advocate for inclusion of forests, nature-based solutions and blue carbon into market mechanisms with the aim of articulating clear regional positions and strategies.
Heads of Government also reiterated the calls for improved readiness programmes, simplified approval procedures, a change to the criteria for determining access to low-cost finance, and for the adoption of programmatic approaches to address the bottlenecks in accessing finance.
Moreover, last November CARICOM Secretary-General, Dr Carla Barnett held discussions with key figures in the margins of COP29 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in Baku, Azerbaijan.
The Secretary-General met Dr Mohammed Nagdee, Executive Director of the Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CCREEE). The Secretary-General held talks also with Jeyhun Bayramov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Discussions centred on prospects for future areas of cooperation and activities with CARICOM, priorities of the COP29 presidency, and Azerbaijan initiatives on support for climate action efforts of Small Island Developing States.
