Pacific stance frustrated at Bonn climate talks - SPREP

Transcript

Espen Ronneberg: During the summit last year, the report had been been released and been welcomed widely by Pacific Island countries and many other countries, for that matter. It was a sort of a coalescence of the most up to date science, really showing that there is a need for urgency and ambition in taking action on climate change. And so it was a bit of a disappointment that basically four countries were able to block adoption of that report. So under the rules of procedure, what happens then is that the President of the of the conference basically just pumped the issue forward to the next available session, which was last week in Germany. And so we were at least able to have some discussions, albeit continuously interrupted and interfered with in the process by the countries who were opposed to the agreement in the first place. So it was it was a very stressful process for the Pacific delegations, they really wanted to have this report properly endorsed by the process, so that the relevant decision making processes such as on climate change financing would take that report into account. Basically agreeing to increase ambition, and therefore providing the resources to do so.

Mackenzie Smith: You mentioned the disappointment from the Pacific states, what are going to be the next steps from here?

ER: Well, the next step is that we were able to get the report back on the table for the next conference in November, which will be held in Chile. So there will be an appropriate discussion. Again, we don't know whether some countries will seek to block the outcomes of that with procedural decisions, which is what was attempted in in the summit last year. So we just have to do our homework and be prepared to argue the merits of the case and hope to to isolate the doubters, and those who seek to obstruct the process as much as possible.