John Culatto
MINISTERS from British overseas territories have discussed the upcoming COP28 climate change summit that started Thursday at a meeting chaired by Gibraltar’s own Minister for the Environment.
John Cortes, who heads the climate change portfolio in the current Gibraltar government, was chairing the UK overseas territories’ Council of Environment Ministers in London.
The COP28 in the United Arab Emirates opened on November 30 with ‘an urgent call to speed up climate action,’ the UN said on its website.
The UK overseas territories’ council of environment ministers meet twice a year to discuss leading topics
Minister Cortes discussed the ‘30 by 30’ initiative with council members.
This global programme asks governments to designate 30% of its land and sea to be defined as protected areas by 2030.
Plastic in the oceans – which greatly affects the territories that are mostly islands – was also covered.
The latest research on the problem helped contribute to the discussion.
Officials from UK Department for Environment, Road and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) researchers from the Zoological Society of London attended the meetings.
Representatives from the UK Overseas Territories Conservation Forum provided the Secretariat for the Council.
“Gibraltar will be involved in all of these initiatives, either by participating in research or sharing experience,” its government said in a statement.
The COP28 has already discussed key funding to help poorer nations cope with the impact of climate crisis, in its first meetings on November 30.
“If we do not signal the terminal decline of the fossil fuel era as we know it, we welcome our own terminal decline,” UN Climate Change Executive Secretary Simon Stiell said Thursday.
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