COP 25 MUST trigger “Our Decade of Ambition!”

Madrid, Spain; November 30, 2019 – On the eve of COP 25, the United Nations Environmental Programme Emissions Gap Report confirms an ecocidal degree of global inaction and dithering. Current unconditional national commitments under the Paris Agreement puts us on course to a world that is more than twice as warm as the catastrophic threshold of 1.5-degrees.

We are mired in a Planetary Emergency of existential proportion. We have breached 60% of the 15 planetary tipping-points. The impacts are real and current for people living on small islands. The entire atoll of Tuvalu is at risk of flooding from sea-level rise by 2050. Even greater segments of other small island states are at risk much earlier than previously projected. Our schools, ports, hospitals, centuries old monuments, sacred sites and other critical infrastructure are at risk of inundation and destruction.

This does not have to be our destiny or legacy. Our clarion call is compelling and irrefutable: This is our last opportunity to act decisively! COP 25 must be a definitive trigger for “Our Decade of Ambition” to secure our climate legacy. 

The future of our world, especially small island and low-lying coastal states, depends on bolder national plans and decisive action throughout the 2020s to hold global temperature rise well below 1.5°C. 

 For AOSIS, Our Decade of Ambition MUST:

1. Close the mitigation gap to safeguard the Paris goal of achieving 1.5°C.
2. Enhance action and support for Loss and Damage through a fit-for-purpose Warsaw International Mechanism on Loss and Damage
3. Deliver US$100B of new climate finance per year by 2020 and ambitious replenishment of the Green Climate Fund
4. Deliver a new collective climate finance goal that reflects our ambition for a 1.5°C world
5. Guarantee robust guidance and rules on markets under Article 6 that
   • Moves beyond the old zero-sum game of pure offsetting;
   • Foster ambition,
   • Ensures environmental integrity; and
   • Deliver overall reduction in global emissions

We have been faithful stewards of partnerships and have no choice but to maintain and scale meaningful engagement. However, anything short of a vastly greater commitment to emission reduction through new national plans that are consistent with our fight for a 1.5 degree world, greater momentum towards honouring outstanding 2020 climate finance commitments, a new climate finance goal suitable for achieving a 1.5 degree world and tangible support for disaster risk reduction and reconstruction in SIDS will signal a willingness to accept catastrophe. We urge those with greatest culpability for this crisis to honour their responsibility to the most vulnerable by not sacrificing small island developing states.

AOSIS remains unbowed. Guided by our common humanity, we urge engagement, no retreat.

Let’s make the 2020s “Our Decade of Ambition Campaign” Card

Contact: Dr Tyrone Hall via tyrone.hall@aosis-website.azurewebsites.net or (437) 333 8414.

The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) is the most consistent champion for climate action. Formed in 1990 and currently Chaired by Belize, AOSIS is a group of 44 low lying small island and coastal developing states facing insurmountable challenges to our sustainable development due to the escalating impacts of climate change.