Minister Orlando Habet Departs for COP 29 Climate Summit in Azerbaijan

Minister of Sustainable Development and Climate Change, Orlando Habet left the country today to attend the United Nations Conference of the Parties (COP 29) in Azerbaijan. The annual international climate summit brings together world leaders determined to tackle climate change, particularly in developing nations. Earlier this month, Belize’s technical team left to attend high-level meetings with international institutions, funding agencies, and delegations worldwide. The team will share Belize’s experiences of climate change and will engage in negotiations to secure available funding to support the country’s climate change agenda. According to Habet, he is representing Belize as well as the Caribbean region, and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS).

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development: “My responsibility, though, apart from Belize, is that I have been selected to champion the cause for AOSIS and CARICOM. And of course CARICOM are also considered small island developing states, and so we are members of EOSIS. So our job would be to still seek out the possibility of advancing the NCQG to see how we can upscale the financing that is coming through for climate change and make certain that we try to get as much as possible. As you realize the past finance goal was $100 billion per year. Now countries are saying that it’s not enough. It took too long to obtain that $100 billion. So they’re trying to see how else we can do it. But there are some of the developed countries who are still holding back and not wanting to contribute the funding that they were committed to do under the Paris Agreement. The Paris Agreement has this Article 9, which goes 9.1 through 3.9, where it clearly states that developed countries will contribute the financing for developing countries. It also states that these finances have to be transparent so you have to know where it’s coming from, where it’s going, how much it’s supposed to go to mitigation and we are advocating that more money is supposed to go to adaptation. And of course we want to also look at the position of the Loss and Damage Fund. In Dubai the Loss and Damage Fund was established. It is going through the World Bank as the financing institution, I think the host country would be the Philippines, and also that they already secured the position for the CEO. However, as we all know also, that funding is just a little bit over $400 million which is nothing. So what we are going to do as EOSIS, one of the things we’re trying to push is that it be part of the NCQG the new collective quantified goal so that if it goes in there then there is a bigger possibility that those monies for loss and damage can be really scaled up instead of being where it is at present.”

Many have questioned the success of previous conferences and whether developing nations like Belize have benefited from its participation. Habet responded by speaking of alternative ways of demanding climate justice. 

Orlando Habet, Minister of Sustainable Development: “The thing is that based on the way these agreements are framed especially the three Rio Conventions  they are binding but I don’t know how binding it is as to take it to court. For example, Belize joined Samoa and some of the other small island states asking for an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice and also from ITLOS, which is the International Treaty on the Law Of the Sea, to see whether or not we would be able to have a claim if something like that happened, right? And we already went through the ITLOS case and now we are preparing for the ICJ case where we are looking at the advisory opinion which is really just an advisory opinion, it doesn’t take anybody to court. But I don’t know if any country can really take another country to court. And then in this case, the way the Paris Agreement is framed, it doesn’t specify country, it says developing states are supposed to get the funding from developed states so it doesn’t call a name. So we’re trying to pressure them as much as possible. We realize that there are some countries that have a lot more power, have a lot more push and I don’t know how much more we can do as small island development states because we are really on the receiving end of the impacts of climate change but also on the receiving end of, on their mercy to say the least on the financing. I think what we can still do though, while that works out or hopefully it works out, is to try to have these bilateral meetings, try to see how we can work with certain groups where we can still get some financing for adaptation, maybe some mitigation, try to get some capacity building in country and in the region so that then we can start doing a lot on our own. I think the transfer of technology is very important so some of the financing is for transfer of technology. We want the transfer to be like immediate. I don’t want to say, okay, the U.S. has this technology 20 years ago and we’ll get it 20 years later. It’s too late.”

The conference ends on November 22.