The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

CLIMATE financing will top the list of priorities for The Bahamas when a 70-person delegation attends COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt next week.

An official in the Office of the Prime Minister said the government is only paying for its technical members to attend the event, saying some others who are going are funded by the private sector.

The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference is taking place from November 6 to 18.

 Mr Davis will be there among world leaders from November 6 to 12.

 The delegation includes Mr Davis, Attorney General Ryan Pinter, Agriculture and Family Island Affairs Minister Clay Sweeting and a number of other people, including a strong youth presence, officials from the Department of Meteorology and Ministry of Health.

 Yesterday, Rochelle Newbold, Mr Davis’ special advisor on climate change and environmental matters, appealed to Bahamians to take climate change and its effects on the country seriously.

 “We cannot excuse ourselves from what is going on in our region, nor can we from what’s going on in the global environment in general,” Ms Newbold said.

 “I am telling you Bahamians keep your minds, keep your hearts open and be positive. We are facing this and we have to face it. It’s not going to go away. We cannot pretend it’s not going to happen because every time it rains and we just looked at what was going on with our partners in Trinidad the other day, rivers in the streets, land being washed out, all of that has an impact and we can’t sit here thinking ‘oh that is not going to happen to us’. It will happen to us.

 “Dorian was our time and another hurricane is their time, another tropical storm is someone else’s time but it’s all cyclic and we will find ourselves in the same vein again.

 “It’s important for us to make those policy and legislative changes but then we also need to be able to access the financial resources that are out there globally.”

 Asked about the trip’s cost, she said: “All those individuals that I said were going are help funded. Even our youth, we are so glad to have partnered with the private sector who was able to 100 percent support all the youth that are going. The government is only paying for its technical members.”

 She declined to reveal who the private sector donors were.

 Last year, during COP26 at Glasgow, Scotland, Mr Davis called on world leaders to take concrete action on climate change.

 He said The Bahamas is among one of the top ten most vulnerable island nations in the world due to climate change, but is not the cause of the crisis.

 He called on world leaders to take specific action and make concrete policy changes to tackle the issue.

 “Do what is needed, not what you can get away with,” Mr Davis said during a speech at COP26’s World Leaders Summit.

 “Turn promises to small island developing states into action.”