News
President to lead largest-ever Lankan delegation for climate summit in Dubai next week
View(s):By Tharushi Weerasinghe
A high-level delegation led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe and consisting of as many as 80 delegates, including Foreign Affairs Minister Ali Sabry, Power and Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera, Environment Minister Keheliya Rambukwella, Climate Change Presidential Advisor Ruwan Wijewardene, Foreign Affairs Advisor Dinouk Colombage, and four Parliamentarians, will fly to Dubai for the UN Conference of Parties (COP28) summit next week.
The technical delegation will consist of 15 negotiators and ministry officials. The overflow delegation, consisting of private sector organisations and one of Sri Lanka’s biggest-ever contingents of 20 youth delegates, forms the largest part of the representation at the climate summit.
Sri Lanka will host its first-ever pavilion at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of Parties in Dubai next week, where multiple climate-related policies and lobbies are set to be spearheaded by Sri Lanka.
While the Sunday Times does not have information on the nature of funding for the political and technical delegations, it has confirmed that the overflow delegates are self-funded or sponsored by other organisations.
“We are focusing on three main initiatives: the tropical belt initiative, the climate justice forum, and the international climate change university,” Presidential Climate Change Advisor Ruwan Wijewardene told the Sunday Times.
Sri Lanka would launch the “Climate Justice Forum” and the “Tropical Belt Initiative” with a focus on the triple planetary crisis and continue to work on the Climate Change University at COP28 this year, he said. The International Climate University would also focus on more research on protecting the tropical belt and other climate initiatives.
Mr. Wijewardene noted that the Climate Prosperity Plan, which was launched at COP27 with the Maldives, would also come into play as it would list out green initiatives and projects for the global north to invest in tropical belt countries.
Explaining their interlinkage, Mr. Wijewardene noted that the Tropical Belt Initiative would be used to press developed countries to invest in more green initiatives like renewable energy and green technology for countries in the tropical belt. “The tropical belt has the countries that are most vulnerable but are also struggling with poverty and are debt-ridden,” Mr. Wijewardene noted.
He added that this was where the Climate Justice Forum would help by seeking to reduce the debt burdens by appealing to the creditors of these countries to offset and cut part of the debt.
“We have taken leaps this time in terms of our representation at COP28,” Environment Ministry Secretary Dr. Anil Jasinghe told the Sunday Times yesterday as he delved into the inner workings that pushed for these focus initiatives in particular.
The question of responsibility in terms of mitigation, the reduction of greenhouse gases, and combating climate change has shifted from developed countries since the 1992 Earth Summit, which established the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, to all party countries thanks to the Paris Agreement.
“But different countries have responsibilities in different proportions, which still means developed countries have to take the lead in mitigation,” said Dr. Jasinghe, who held that the responsibility that developed countries accepted in 1992 was somewhat diluted in 2015.
Acknowledging that the battle for climate justice has been going on for decades in various forms, the Ministry Secretary noted that Sri Lanka was championing global solutions as one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change impacts.
The Paris Agreement clauses for the “means of implementation” form the crux of climate action, according to Dr. Jasinghe. He noted that it essentially calls on developed countries to support developing countries in three areas: finance, technology development and transfer, and capacity building.
“This is also precisely what isn’t being addressed adequately, and developing countries have been battling for it,” he said, noting that an agreement for a loss and damage fund, which was agreed on last year, took decades.
Sri Lanka’s move for climate justice, however, will not take a confrontational approach. It is where the concept of the tropical belt comes in. The Ministry Secretary noted that the tropical belt, northwards and southwards from the equator, was rich in biodiversity and renewable energy, with biomass potential that was much higher in comparison to polar and subtropical regions. Some 134 out of the 198 UN countries were either fully or partially located in the tropical belt, and 40% of the landmass and the global population were concentrated in this belt too. “This is also the area that has suffered the most historically in terms of pollution, climate events, and biodiversity loss. That is why they are considered vulnerable countries—90% of vulnerable countries are located in the tropical belt.”
Echoing Senior Advisor Wijewardene on the call for investments into green transitions in the tropical belt, Dr. Jasinghe noted that if developed countries start investing in these areas regardless of political affiliations and geopolitics, the whole world would benefit. “The tropical belt is the natural shield for the globe.”
The Sri Lankan pavilion is set to host 25 side events at COP28, which will be attended by thousands of stakeholders, from state leaders to NGOs and the private sector.
With climate catastrophes exacerbating across the world and even here in Sri Lanka, each COP becomes more decisive than the next. The reverberating calls for fossil fuel phase-outs and just transitions from activists and scientists will be voiced out for the 28th year in a row; implementation and impact rest with those in the high-level negotiations.
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