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Prime Minister Dean Barrow had his opportunity to address the 15th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark today. As expected, Barrow took up the cause of the most vulnerable countries, particularly low-lying coastal countries. According to European studies, Belize is of the ten countries in the world most affected by climate change. He said relief must come in real terms and it must come quickly.

Hon. Dean Barrow, Prime Minister
“As a developing country and low lying coastal nation, Belize is among the most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and is now classified as one of the top ten most affected countries. In the past 11 years, Belize has seen devastation from six major hurricanes; Mitch, Keith, Iris, Chantal, Dean, and Arthur fuelled by high sea surface temperature destroyed our crops, battered our coral reefs, flooded our streets, washed away our bridges, ruined our tourism infrastructure and ran us out of our homes. Those reefs, jewels in our environmental crown, have also been turned into skeletons by massive coral bleaching events in 1995, 1998, 2005, 2008, and 2009. Those reefs, resplendent and life giving, internationally famous, are in too many spots now, nothing more than graveyards.

Now Belize with its low level of industrialization and low population is one of the tiniest contributors to green house gas emissions, global warming knows no boundaries and those green gas emissions from the heavily industrialised nations will quite literally continue to sink us. We therefore must depend on those nations who are responsible for the highest emissions, whether developed or developing, to act urgently and decisively here in Copenhagen.

To us vulnerable, the most at risked, any compromise on these targets constitutes a violation of our human rights. And so we call upon the developed countries to provide comprehensive financing that will generate predictable new and additional resources to support our adaptation and mitigation actions.”

And while world leaders are each given a chance to address the conference, we should note that there has been unprecedented chaos in the process of the negotiations themselves, talks have stalled three times with developing countries simply walking out after accusing the host country Denmark of overtly promoting the agenda of developed countries. And outside the meeting its chaos too as Danish police have arrested have used teargas and batons to fight back protestors. 250 have been arrested this week.

The bottom line? Developing countries, which will face the brunt of the effects of climate change, want an agreement that will hold the temperature increase to about 3 degrees Fahrenheit, while industrialized countries want to give the green light to a 2-degree increase. But there is one bright spot: Negotiators are apparently close to a deal to reimburse forested countries like Belize for preserving their forests.