DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, 14 December 2023 – Minister of Environment, Climate Action et al, Hon Dr Joyelle Clarke welcomed Canada’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Honourable Steven Guilbeault to the St. Kitts and Nevis Pavilion at the UN Climate Conference in Dubai on 5 December 2023.
This meeting aimed to cement the growing relationship between both countries, building on months of strategic outreach to Canada, through active participation in the UN Conference of the Parties on Biodiversity in Montreal in December 2022 and the Ministerial on Nature in Vancouver in August 2023.
The bilateral encounter resulted in St. Kitts and Nevis joining the Canada-lead, Nature Champions Network to intensify global action to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030. Minister Steven Guilbeault’s participation in COP28 is focused on marrying the global campaigns to reverse biodiversity loss and scale up climate ambition.
As neighbours in the Atlantic and Americas, St. Kitts and Nevis are natural partners for environmental stewardship. Citing Dr Clarke’s leadership, Minister Guilbeault invited her to Ottawa for a Plastic and Pollution Conference that Canada will convene in April 2024. As St. Kitts and Nevis aims to transition away from plastic, Canada is poised to becoming a partner in this endeavour through the exchange of information and best practices.
Minister Clarke also used the opportunity to congratulate Canada on its chairmanship of the Caribbean Development Bank and encouraged the Minister to leverage the role to secure changes in international financial systems that lock Small Island Developing States, like St. Kitts and Nevis, from accessing critical concessional and climate financing for resilient development. Canada also represents the Caribbean at the
International Monetary Fund and The World Bank and is well placed to forcefully implement a MultiDimensional Vulnerability Index to account for unique exposure of island states to the climate crisis.
The meeting in Dubai comes one month after Prime Minister Hon Dr Terrance Drew and Foreign Minister Rt Hon Dr Denzil Douglas met with Minister Guilbeault in Ottawa during the Canada-CARICOM Summit which pledged to reorient their relationship toward a strategic partnership for a resilient future. This ambition syncs with St. Kitts and Nevis’s monumental effort in becoming the world’s first, model Sustainable Island State and provides boundless opportunities for joint action in building capacity, mobilizing youth activism, and upskilling for the green and blue economy.
Minister Clarke was accompanied to the meeting by Eustace T. Wallace, Chargé d’affaires ad interim at the High Commission of St. Kitts and Nevis to Canada and by Sharon Rattan, former Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Climate Action and Constituency Empowerment and Senior Technical Adviser.
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