A climate change official in the Office of the Prime Minister gave her take at the end of the first day of talks at the Regional Climate Change Meeting being held here on New Providence. Dr. Rochelle Newbold, Special Advisor on Climate Change and Environmental Matters and Director of the Sustainable Development Goals Unit spoke with ZNS news stating, “today was definitely a historical moment. This is the first meeting that Caribbean region has been unified in its attempt to prepare itself to go into COP 27 negotiations. What we found, as we always knew, that we have common issues, issues as it related to loss and damage, finance situations, as well as damage associated with hurricanes. How do we as small island states with tourism as our major contributor, how do we deal with this. And how do we get our partners to understand that they need to act and they need to act more involved and be more aware of the fact that we need their support in addressing the issues of global climate change.”
Discussions on the first day of the conference covered topics such as mitigation. Dr. Newbold, who sat in on the meetings held, highlighted what was covered. She stated, “I think we have beaten the horse to death on mitigation and adaptation and technology but what we need to do is assess, for the region, what makes sense. What makes sense for us. What makes sense for our population. What can we really do to achieve what is necessary. Bringing down the cost of living, ensuring that we hurricane events, ensuring that we have food security, energy security, these are the key things. And as we meet today as agents and representatives within the region, we also nee dto make sure we come up with a unified plan and that plan we need to put into action.”
Dr. Newbold also foreshadowed what she expected on the second and final day of the conference. She said that she expects to advance even further with specific examples and that a determination would have to be made of how the things discussed in day one would be implemented.
