Speech
The pandemic has taught us that national solutions to global problems do not work. We come to
Glascow with global ambition, to save our people, and to save our planet. But we now find three
gaps. On mitigation: climate pledges are NDCs. Without more, we will leave the world on our
pathway to 2.7℃ and with more, we are still likely to get to 2 ℃. These commitments, made by
some, are based on technologies yet to developed. And this is at best reckless and at worst
dangerous. On finance: we are $ 20 billion dollars short of the $100 billion and this commitment,
even then, might only be met in 2023. On adaptation; adaptation finances remains only at 25 per
cent, not the 50/50 split that was promised nor needed given the warning that is already taking
place on this earth. Climate finance to frontline small island developing states declined by 2 per
cent in 2019.
So I ask to you: what must we say to our people living on the front line in the Caribbean, in
Africa, in Latin America, in the Pacific, when both ambition and, regrettably, some of the needed
faces at Glascow are not present? What excuse should we give the failure? In the words of that
Caribbean icon Eddy Grant: “Will they mourn us on the front line?”.
