Glasgow Cover Decision – Presidency consultations
1/CP.26, 1/CMP.16 and 1/CMA.3

Intervention by Minister Flavien Joubert (Seychelles)
8 November 2021

I speak on behalf of the 39 members of the Alliance of Small Islands Developing States, AOSIS.

I thank the COP Presidency for circulating this Non-Paper to focus our discussions.

Overall, the paper has put forward descriptive bullet points that appear to address some low-hanging fruits. This approach avoids controversy but misses the opportunity to set us off on a bold, course correcting direction.

On balance, we support the mitigation section and would like to see adaptation elevated to this level of detail.

Permit me to share a few specifics.

Context
• AOSIS has reservations about the framing of a “critical decade”. This kicks the can down the road and delays the urgency of action that is needed now.
o We need to set ourselves short-term milestones.
o We have to remember that 2021 is in fact a critical year as outlined in the recent assessment reports
o It is likely to be unintentional, but in practice, this deflects what is expected of us today, to 10-years down the road. We trust that everyone here is negotiating in good faith to address the urgency before us.

Adaptation
• Would like to see more details, along the lines of the Africa Group’s proposals to operationalize the global goal on adaptation, to provide support to Parties and for the IPCC to do technical work on adaptation

Adaptation Finance
• The alliance of small island developing states would like to see numbers and deliver-by dates.
• AOSIS called for at least doubling adaptation finance above current levels – which, according to OECD data, as of 2019 is $20 billion. Let us set a target of at least $40 billion in 2022, aiming for parity with mitigation finance.
• Adaptation financing should be primarily grants.

Mitigation
• While there are “different pathways according to national circumstances”, I remind colleagues that there is only one global pathway, and that is to limit warming to 1.5-degrees.

Finance, capacity building and technology transfer
• There should be stronger and more specific language on access to climate finance. We should call on all climate finance providers to simplify and harmonize their respective application procedures, and to report to us on progress at COP27
• We should urge the G20 members to phase out fossil fuel subsides by 2023 and to report on progress to the CMA next year, if we are to give our disappointing climate finance levels a fighting chance of having any impact at all

Loss and Damage
• We would like to see an explicit reference that financial support is required to address the loss and damage that is already occurring

Implementation
• On support for transparency reporting requirements, we request a specific call to allocate at least 2 million dollars per Biennial Transparency Report for at least 3 reporting cycles, for SIDS, LDCs, and all developing countries.

Process
• We seek clarity on the Presidency’s plans to carry us forward in a transparent and inclusive manner
• Ministerial Consultations are being convened on cover decision-related topics, and we would like to know if and how the outcomes will be captured and integrated here.
• We call on the Presidency to be bold, to raise the bar now so we may prevent the worst that is yet to come. Every year of delayed action comes with a tremendous cost.

I thank you.