Seychelles hosts regional workshop on climate change |17 October 2013

Delegates from small island states (Sids) as well as coastal countries of Eastern and Southern Africa are since yesterday meeting at the Coral Strand Hotel at Beau Vallon with the objective of strengthening the planning and management of coastal and marine related issues in our region.

The ultimate aim of the two-day conference is to come up with recommendations in view of developing a common African position on climate change which will be presented at the 3rd International Sids Conference in Samoa in September next year.

The workshop was officially opened by the principal secretary for Environment and Energy Wills Agricole, in the presence of members of the diplomatic corps, the principal secretary for foreign affairs Maurice Loustau-Lalanne and other invitees.

Mr Agricole said that the meeting has come at an opportune time, prior to the 3rd International Sids Conference, where the vulnerability of Sids to climate change will top the agenda.

Mr Agricole also announced that in its quest to build its national capacity in climate and meteorological research and observation, Seychelles will be building its very own Earth Observatory to be stationed at Ile Soleil.

This initiative, he said, is also well aligned to the regional initiative to establish a regional climate observatory in the Western Indian Ocean region under the realms of the Indian Ocean Commission’s ISLANDS project, facility which Seychelles has offered to host.

Mr Agricole warned that climate change which causes ocean acidification, natural disasters and extreme weather events, will continue to be the most serious threat to human and economic development in Sids and will affect their pursuit of sustainable development and survival.  Consequently, he said, we need to integrate what he has called  « critical adaptation needs in terms

of water management, sanitation, coastal protection, and protection of coastal infrastructure, into the post-2015 development agenda».
 
He added that those actions must be supported by industrialised countries, which paradoxically are the most responsible for climate change, in the form of assistance to Sids :

“Seychelles as member of the Alliance of Small Islands States (Aosis) is telling the international community that unless urgent and dramatic action is taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the next few years, the opportunity to avoid global warming could be forever lost and the cascade of catastrophes that would follow will include the loss of entire nations.”

The conference is being attended by Indian Ocean island states which include Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles, and also the Eastern and Southern coastal countries of Kenya,

Tanzania and Mozambique. The sub regions are also represented by organisations like the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC). In order to bring an integral approach to the African position on climate change, countries and organisations from the Caribbean and Pacific have also been invited to share their experiences and concerns.