Fiji’s delegation to the COP29 has prepared thoroughly through the agency and technical working group.
This year’s COP29 will be taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from November 11-22. Fiji’s delegation will be departing on the 11th of next month.
Permanent secretary for Environment, Dr Sivendra Michael said the technical working group comprised civil society and private sector stakeholders.
He said mitigation measures, bilateral carbon trading and carbon market trading would also be discussed; however, prior to this, the 16th UN Biodiversity Conference would be held from October 21 to November 1 in Cali, Columbia.
“This is the convention on biological diversity and that happens in Cali, Columbia, (for which) the delegation is leaving on 13th of October (yesterday),” he said.
He said the delegation to the COP29 would provide an update on Fiji’s national positions which had been endorsed by Cabinet.
“What do the national positions mean, it’s the inter-agency and multi-stakeholder group meeting together for the last month and a half and how we come about national positions is we analyse the decision notes.
“There are currently 66 agenda items and last year’s COP, we had 94 agenda items, 63 were agreed upon, 31 were not agreed upon and when they’re not agreed upon, they move into the next COP.
“We have to analyse it, say, for example, they will give you option one, option two and some text will be fully bracketed, what is acceptable language, what is not an acceptable language, so we’ve done that, and we formulated the national position papers.”
He said other focus points included thematic areas such as climate finance, fallback strategies, and certain areas where Fiji would not be able to negotiate any further.
“In 2009, we had the $100billion target to be mobilised to help developing countries meet their adaptation and mitigation priorities, now that $100 billion is not in real terms, it’s in nominal dollars, so a $100b in 2009 might be $150b today.
“So the discussion this year is if you set a new number, what would that number be and what will be the transparency mechanisms around it.”
He said small island developing island states had special circumstances such as finance.
“When we have a natural disaster, 30 per cent almost a third of our GDP is wiped out so we are more vulnerable, it’s like the financial system is able to absorb more pressure because of the amount of impact that we are experiencing.”
He said this had ramifications on Fiji’s debt levels because it would have to absorb the cost from the national budget.
“We will have a discussion on the 1.5 degree, so how do countries commit to language that will meet the 1.5-degree target, which is the Paris Agreement target, so currently the world is in between 1.9 to 2.1.
“Our global temperature levels are above the Paris Agreement threshold of 1.5, so how do we mobilise efforts to come back to the 1.5 degrees.”