UN General Assembly
2015

Against the backdrop of the existential threat climate change poses, especially to atolls and low- lying islands, SIDS have long advocated for ambitious mitigation efforts to be undertaken by Member States with the capacity to do so, and for a global goal of limiting the rise in average global temperature to well below 1.5°C in order to prevent some of our low-lying islands from being submerged by sea-level rise. We have also consistently called for a loss and damage mechanism to be anchored in a new Paris agreement to be treated separately from adaptation. With the gradual operationalization of the Green Climate Fund, we have asked SIDS representatives on the Green Climate Fund Board to ensure that the spirit and letter of the governing instrument of the Fund, as they relate to those areas that will be beneficial to SIDS, are retained and not compromised.