A crucial precursor, a roll-out conference for the world’s small island developing states (SIDS), will be represented at next month’s Rio+20 conference in Brazil.
That’s how Elizabeth Thompson, an executive coordinator for the second United Nations Global Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro June 20 to 22, has described the UN high-level conference that begins in Barbados today and is being attended by energy and environment ministers, experts and others from SIDS in the Caribbean, Asia and elsewhere. It ends on Wednesday.
“My hope of what the meeting in Barbados would achieve is twofold. The first is that given my special responsibility in the UN system for Rio, we are hoping to raise the level of understanding across the region amongst civil servants, technocrats, experts and others of the implications of the results of Rio+20 going forward,” Thompson told the DAILY NATION in New York before heading for her homeland today.
“In addition, the leaders and the other delegates who are going to Brazil would recognize what the outcome of Rio would mean to the international development agenda and the implications for the Caribbean, the Pacific and Africa, [and] small island developing states generally.
“I would hope too that the participants in this week’s meeting would see the sustainable energy initiative as something which raises opportunities for the small island developing states and so they see how they can capitalize and maximize on those opportunities,” added Thompson, a former Barbados energy minister but currently an assistant secretary general at the United Nations in New York. (TB)
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