Valletta: Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said on Sunday that a climate change agreement signed by the Commonwealth’s 53 countries made clinching a deal at the upcoming Paris COP21 talks more likely.
“The fact that we have achieved convergence and near unanimity on a very focused statement on climate change puts the possibility of a success at COP21 in better shape,” he said at the close of a three-day summit on the Mediterranean island.
Leaders from the Commonwealth family, which represents around a third of the world’s population, on Saturday pledged to demand an “ambitious”, legally binding outcome from the world climate change summit in Paris, which starts officially on Monday.
The Commonwealth said it was “deeply concerned” about the disproportionate threat from an ever-hotter planet to its most vulnerable members — many of whom said reaching a deal was “a matter of life and death”.
“Climate change unites us, it puts us all in the same canoe. If a big wave comes, that canoe is going to be washed away with everyone in it,” President Baron Waqa of Nauru warned at a closing press conference in Malta.
Freundel Stuart, the prime minister of Barbados, called on Paris attendees to wake up, saying world leaders no longer have the luxury of arguing over whether global warming is a threat.
“When the planet speaks, we have no choice but to listen, and it has been speaking to us with a daunting eloquence over the last few years. If we don’t reach a sensible agreement in Paris we can all prepare for disaster,” he said.
Because its membership includes industrialised G7 powers like Britain and Canada, emerging giants like India and tiny island microstates such as the Maldives, agreement in the Commonwealth has historically boded well for deals being struck beyond its bounds.
Among the few things concluded at the flop 2009 Copenhagen global climate change summit were items that had been agreed beforehand by the Commonwealth.
The organisation said it was confident its agreement “joined and implemented by all parties, should put the global community on track towards low-emission and climate-resilient societies and economies.”
Some 150 leaders will kick off the UN conference, tasked with reaching the first truly universal climate pact, in Paris on Monday.
The goal is to limit average global warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over pre-Industrial Revolution levels by curbing fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change.
Small island members of the Commonwealth have insisted the two degree limit does not go far enough, and called repeatedly this weekend for a 1.5 degree cap to be adopted.
