The Prime Minister of Cape Verde defended this Monday the “urgent” implementation of the financing mechanisms and instruments assumed to support mitigation and adaptation actions against climate change, which especially affects the islands.
Ulisses Correia e Silva was speaking at the opening of the Ocean Race Summit, which takes place in the Cape Verdean city of Mindelo with the presence, among others, of the Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres.
For the head of the Cape Verdean Government, “the climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy to respond to emergency situations and increase resilience requires financing with dimension and consistency over time to produce structural transformations, financing that includes development skills and technology transfer.
However, he stressed that “financing and decision time are critical variables”, because “developing countries are up against the wall, facing serious crises, with economic, social and humanitarian impacts, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. 19, weather and environmental emergencies and, more recently, the war in Ukraine”.
And he added: “The dynamics of economic growth has been reduced, public debt has skyrocketed and poverty has increased in several African countries, due to the crisis situation.”
“It is in this context that it is urgent to operationalize the financing mechanisms and instruments assumed to support mitigation and adaptation actions against climate change.”
Ulisses Correia e Silva also defended the creation of conditions for the private sector “to invest in sectors that have an impact on increasing the resilience and diversification of the economy.”
The government official left a word of encouragement to António Guterres -about whom he said he was in charge of tasks for a superman- in the sense that he continues “with determination in the construction of the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index so that it can be voted as a criterion relevant in the access to financing in favor of the sustainable development of the SIDS” (acronym in English of Small Island Developing States, which means small island developing state).
“These crises seriously affect all countries and islands in a particular way. The climate and environmental crisis is global, solving it is the responsibility of each country and, at the same time, of all countries”, he continued.
For Ulisses Correia e Silva, “it is a greater responsibility of the countries with the greatest participation in the production of pollution and harmful effects of climate change in the world.”
“It is in this sense that Cape Verde expresses its full adherence to the call of the Secretary General of the Unity of Nations to action to save the oceans and protect the future of planet earth,” he said.
Cape Verde has, according to its prime minister, “justified expectations in the coalition of small island states that develop through nature, created to create means for ambitious objectives in terms of biodiversity.”
“We would like the issues and commitments proposed by the Coalition for Nature to be considered at the Future Summit, to be held in September 2023, and at the next United Nations Ocean Conference, in 2025.
The Ocean Race Summit is part of the first trip to Cape Verde of the Ocean Race, the largest and oldest regatta in the world, and this morning in Mindelo, São Vicente Island, brings together politicians, government officials, specialists and other personalities to address the future of the oceans.
Source: TSF
