Republic of Seychelles
Country Statement
By
H.E. Mr. Ronald Jumeau
Ambassador/Permanent Representative of the Republic of Seychelles to the United Nations
At The High Level Segment of The Fourteenth Session of The
Conference of The Parties to The United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP14) serving as The
Meeting of The Parties to The Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP4)
Poznan, Poland
12th December 2008
Mr. President, Distinguished Delegates, Ladies and Gentlemen
Seychelles associates itself with the statement yesterday by the distinguished representative of Grenada on behalf of AOSIS, the Alliance of Small Island States.
Mr. President, the Small Island Developing States, the LDCs and the indigenous peoples will leave Poznan on the bumpy road to Copenhagen more worried and frustrated than ever in the face of unrelenting climate change, brought on by still increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
We are frustrated over the dire lack of progress here in Poznan. We are worried that new scientific evidence shows the Arctic and the Antarctic are melting at a far greater rate than even the IPCC states.
Meanwhile, the task we set ourselves in Bali to reach agreement on the full, effective and sustained implementation of the Convention, now and into the future, has been called into question from Day 1 of our meeting here.
Nevertheless, Mr. President, the Small Island Developing States, the LDCs and the indigenous peoples are more determined than ever to make our voices heard and have our rights respected.
Seychelles fully subscribes to AOSIS’ position that further Long-Term Cooperative Action on climate change must safeguard the development aspirations and survival of all nations, especially SIDS and LDCs.
I would also like to echo the insistence of the Alliance of Small Island States that global emissions peak by 2015 and reduce sharply to 1990 levels thereafter by more than 85% by 2050. The long-term stabilization of GHG gas concentrations should return to well below 350ppm of CO2 equivalent.
Mr. President, AOSIS also stand firm on our call for the increase in global warming to be kept well below 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels to give the SIDS and the indigenous peoples the chance of at least a semblance of survival.
As AOSIS negotiators have repeatedly said these past weeks, to ask Small Island Developing States to sign on to a two-degree threshold is to ask us to sign a suicide note. To impose it on us would condemn us to death.
Mr. President, the Annex 1 polluters have, on the contrary, backpedalled from their commitments throughout these negotiations and continue to do so. And yet, we small islands, the least responsible for climate change, are doing what we can to mitigate, even if adaptation is far more crucial to us.
But timely adaptation to the increasingly adverse effects of climate change we are already suffering and future impacts we can do nothing to avoid requires assistance in a manner that does not put SIDS at a disadvantage.
To borrow terminology from another ongoing global crisis, the Small Island Developing States need to be bailed out because we have an inalienable right to survival and cannot be allowed to fail.
Mr. President, special consideration for the unique plight of SIDS and the other most vulnerable peoples must therefore be one of the key benchmarks of a post-2012 deal.
For indigenous peoples such as the Many Strong Voices in the melting Arctic, for the populations of LDCs and low-lying coastal areas, and for the small island developing nations watching our coastlines shrink as we speak, anything less will be, definitely, NO DEAL…
I thank you all for your kind attention.