Barbados is way ahead of the curve”. The “curve” Selwin Hart, a top international climate change expert with impeccable United Nations (UN) credentials, has in mind is the path which all countries should follow in switching to a low carbon consumption pattern now that almost 200 countries have signed on to a new climate change accord that was negotiated in Parlis earlier this month.
“The accord,” added the Barbadian, who is the top climate change adviser to Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, “is good for all countries, including the members of the Alliance Of Small Island Developing States (AOSIS), which have been pressing for years for many of the provisions of the climate change accord.”
Hart, director of the UN Secretary General’s Climate Change Support Team in New York that advised the world body’s top administrator, knows what he is talking about. For almost a decade, the former Barbados diplomat known around the UN and in international circles for his top notch negotiating skill, quiet diplomacy and knowledge of the climate change issues worked night and day to give Barbados, AOSIS and later Ban, the best possible advice on the accord and the strategy to complete a deal that everyone could sign. Now, the deal is a fact of life, Hart said Barbados and its neighbours were well placed to take advantage of it.
“What Paris has clearly signalled is that the transition to a low carbon future is inevitable and I believe that Barbados is way ahead of the curve,” he told BARBADOS BUSINESS AUTHORITY. “The country is already on a low carbon trajectory and it has a long experience with renewable energy. What it really needs is to bring it up to scale. The agreement also signals that the days of high carbon economy are numbered. The economies that switch to a low carbon future will be winners.”
That’s why the man who often met daily with the UN Secretary General in the weeks leading up to the Paris summit and during the two weeks of negotiations, wants his birthplace “to build on its past successes”, especially with solar energy, and move forward.
“I honestly believe that Barbados has the potential to be an exporter of low carbon technologies, given its experience as well as its position in the Caribbean region,” said Hart, a graduate of Harrison College, the University of the West Indies and New York’s Fordham University. “Solar is the way of the future and Barbados has considerable experience with solar energy. It has already put legislation and systems in place to take advantage of the new agreement.”
Hart was quick to explain that Barbados couldn’t do it alone. It must work alongside other members of CARICOM and it should establish links with international corporations that possess the technology needed to catapult developing states forward.
“It might require Barbadian companies partnering with other entities globally that have the technologies. But Barbados can be a base for exporting these technologies not only to the Caribbean but the entire Latin American and Caribbean region as well,” insisted the 45-year-old father of two children. “There is no reason why Barbados can’t serve as a hub for exporting these types of technologies.
Hart’s upbeat assessment of the outcome of the Paris summit was in lockstep with the general conclusion that the 43 islands and low lying coastal states in the Caribbean, Pacific, Africa, Indian Ocean and the South China Sea were the major winners of the Paris Summit.
“I do agree with the experts, government officials, analysts and others who say the small states emerged as the winners,” he said.
As evidence of the beneficial outcome of Paris, Hart and other experts cite the global commitment to a worldwide effort to limit the earth’s warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a figure which the Caribbean had placed on the international negotiating table as long as six years ago. In addition, the agreement recognises that small states need financial and technical help to grapple with the damage caused by climate change.
That’s why Hart is urging the Caribbean, for instance, to move swiftly and meet as a region, all the governments and the regional institutions with an interest in mitigating the impact of climate change and in protecting the area from such things as powerful hurricanes, dangerous floods, persistent drought, coastal erosion and troubling sea level rise, among other things.
The reason is clear. For as Freundel Stuart, Barbados’ Prime Minister and chairman of CARICOM, and Timothy Harris, the new leader of St. Kitts and Nevis quite rightly told the UN two months before the Paris summit began, climate change was an “existential threat” to the economic development and social well-being of the various islands and coastal states and therefore should be addressed.
The historic climate change pact indicates the international community listened to the Lilliputians. The accord can, if implemented effectively, change disastrous global weather patterns and can prevent the slide into environmental chaos. The small island developing states which contribute the least to global warming but suffer the most can look forward to better environmental days and economic times.
Hart advocates a regional approach by the Caribbean to follow up on the global pact and to reap the benefits.
“It can’t be one country doing it. We must act together as a region,” he advised.
Barbadian Selwin Hart is director of the United Nations Secretary General’s Climate Change Support Team. (FP)