I REALLY can’t say I was impressed with a lot of what took place at last week’s heads of government conference in Georgetown. In fact, I was mildly surprised that given the sort of urgency that was placed on the Summit — although this state of urgency mainly came from regional commentators — that there would have been more introspection on the governance of the community.

I was pleased, though, that many of the speakers referred to the issue of climate change and the need to be actively involved in the debate leading up to Copenhagen in December to seek agreement on a successor pact to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, whose first commitment period ends in 2012.

Small countries such as ours, which emit a negligible amount of greenhouse gases, need to keep the pressure on the chief polluters in the industrialised countries to reduce impact on the environment.

Last week, leaders of the G8 industrial nations agreed to cut emissions by 80% by 2050, but critics have said that the big cuts are needed sooner rather than later.

Earlier this year, we saw the G20 group attended by major world economies reduce the critically important issue of low carbon economy and the climate change negotiations to two paragraphs in their communiqué, with no specific commitments.

As one of the regions facing the greatest impact of climate change, we need to be on our guard at all times, and ensure that continuous pressure is brought to bear on the large economies of the world, and ensure that they not only accept responsibility as the major polluters — but that they commit themselves in a serious way towards reducing greenhouses gases, blamed for the planet’s warmer atmosphere.

Global warming has also been blamed for increasing the temperature on the top layer in the ocean, causing the average hurricane to become a lot stronger.

We’re currently in the hurricane season, and so far, it has been quiet.

But no one yet knows how many of the named storms will become hurricanes, or how devastating they will be.

The 2008 hurricane season, which had 16 named storms, has gone into the history books as the fourth most costly on record. There were eight hurricanes: Two Category 1 (Hanna and Kyle); one Category 2 (Dolly); two Category 3 (Bertha and Omar); and three Category 4 (Gustav, Ike and Paloma).

When combined, these storms produced over an estimated US$11 billion in insured losses.

According to the Climate Change Declaration at the end of the CARICOM meeting, the total annual impact of potential climate change on all CARICOM countries is estimated at US$9.9 billion in the total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2007, or about 11.3% of the total annual GDP of all 20 CARICOM countries, according to the World Bank.

The Caribbean leaders said they are gravely concerned that efforts to promote sustainable development and achieve internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), are under severe threat from the devastating effects of climate change and sea level rise.

This has led to increasingly frequent and intense weather events, damage to biodiversity, coral bleaching, coastal erosion and changing precipitation patterns.

They noted that dangerous climate change is already occurring in all Small Island and Low-lying Coastal Developing States (SIDS) regions, including the Caribbean.

They feared that many SIDS will cease to exist without urgent, ambitious and decisive action by the international community to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions significantly, and to support SIDS in their efforts to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change, including through the provision of increased levels of financial and technical resources.

Given these daunting realities, it was reassuring to hear other leaders speak on it — apart from Guyana’s President Bharrat Jagdeo, who has been waving the red flag for some time — and adding their voices to the debate on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to shape the international agreements by the end of the year.

As the Guyana leader, host of the meeting, urged, countries must vociferously advocate an ambitious climate change agreement in Copenhagen that puts the region on a sustainable pathway to achieve a concentration of greenhouse gases, and that will not cause major shifts in global temperatures and catastrophic consequences, particularly for small islands and low-lying states.

The agreement, he said, must provide mechanisms to generate sufficient funds for adaptation, mitigation, and technology transfer. Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, inclusive of avoided deforestation, must be a prominent part of the agreement.

This, according to Jagdeo, will be important for Suriname, Belize, and Guyana.

It must be noted that Guyana last month launched an ambitious Low Carbon Development Strategy that sets out a pathway to a new economy, which, the president says, will build future prosperity that is low-deforestation, low-carbon, and climate resilient.

The key focus areas of the strategy will be investments in low carbon economic infrastructure; investments in high-potential low-carbon sectors; expanding access to services and new economic opportunities for indigenous and forest communities.

It is also aimed at transforming the village economy, as well as improving social services and economic opportunities for the wider Guyanese population, and investments in climate change adaptation infrastructure.

At the opening of the CARICOM conference, Grenada’s Prime Minister, Tillman Thomas, said the new global climate change regime would be important for small states such as those in the Caribbean Community, as decisions taken on emission reductions will directly influence the amount of damage to the environment, and other problems caused by climate change.

He called on leaders to study the proposals for adoption in Copenhagen, and to ensure that the most beneficial results are obtained for the region.

Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Baldwin Spencer, declared that any failure or delay to secure a consensus for action on climate change will present significant challenges in terms of the human, infrastructural and financial impacts on countries.

For CARICOM, securing urgent, effective and equitable action on climate change that is robust and dynamic is the overriding global policy challenge, according to Spencer.

He described the impact of climate change as overwhelmingly severe to the region, and which has started to threaten development milestones achieved over a number of years. This will continue to exert significant pressure on existing island-nation vulnerabilities that have the real potential to worsen socio-economic condition.

He suggested that the Copenhagen agreement should, at a minimum, include binding commitments aimed at halving world greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; a doubling of public investments in low-carbon technology by 2015, and a significant boost in funding from both public and private sources to fight global warming.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a message to the Caribbean leaders at their summit, noted that climate change is also a serious threat to the economic and physical viability of Caribbean countries.

He called on Caribbean leaders to support a more integrated implementation of the Mauritius Strategy — the Programme of Action for the Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States — particularly in the context of next year’s mid-decade.

He also urged them to continue showing leadership in efforts to ‘seal the deal’ — a global UN campaign which aims to galvanise political will and public support in Copenhagen in December.

In Trinidad and Tobago, the lone petroleum producer in the Caribbean, the government is preparing a Draft Green Paper on Renewable Energy, which would form the framework to guide the development and usage of renewable energy forms.

Energy Minister, Conrad Enill said last week, that as a hydrocarbon producing country, Trinidad and Tobago must address the thrust towards cleaner fuels and usage of alternative or renewable energy forms, as well as methods for improving energy efficiency.

Its state-owned Petrotrin company has already taken the bold step to stop refining and marketing leaded gasoline, and further steps are being undertaken to upgrade the refinery to produce cleaner fuels.

Commonwealth heads of government, meeting in Trinidad in November, are also urged by their Ministers of Health to use the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference to forge strong post-2012 International Climate Change arrangements that will support the smallest, poorest and most vulnerable regions, and underpin effective mitigation and adaptation to reduce the potential health impacts of climate change on health and development.