Vulnerable countries find their voice
A practical example of our desire to help climate vulnerable countries find their voice, was the invitation to a number of them to attend the Major Economies Forum (MEF) which Ed Miliband hosted in central London earlier this week.
This was the sixth meeting of that group, bringing together the world's largest established and developing economies to look at climate issues outside the framework of the main UN negotiations. As hosts and co-chairs with the US, we agreed to invite some vulnerable countries to participate for the first time throughout, and Lesotho and the Maldives were able to do so at Ministerial level. That allowed the meeting to hear views direct from such countries on critical issues such as climate finance (as a number of NGOs have also urged us to do). That in turn should inform our and other countries' positions in the run up to Copenhagen.
One unintended consequence of the attendance at the MEF of Maldives Environment Minister Mohamed Aslam, was that he missed the underwater Cabinet meeting held last Saturday in the Maldives by his President. Minister Aslam told me he was particularly sorry about that as he'd been doing the preparatory diving training in with his collleagues over the previous weeks. However, I think it adds to the story that, at the time the Maldives Cabinet was so dramatically drawing world attention to the consequences of global warming - one of their key members was on a mission to take that same message in its technical and political complexity to the heart of the world's biggest economies.
If you haven't already picked this up, you'll want to look out for the 4 degree map which our Ministers launched yesterday. It brings out starkly the threat not just to the less developed, poorer regions of the world - but to us all. That's a sobering reminder that the moral and economic case for helping the countries already on the global climate frontline, is integral to generating the will to protect the whole human race.
Posted at 20:56 23 October 2009 by Robin Gwynn | Comments[0]
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