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Se­nior Tech­ni­cal Of­fi­cer at the Caribbean Cen­tre for Re­new­able En­er­gy and En­er­gy Ef­fi­cien­cy, Char­lin Bod­ley, is urg­ing stronger glob­al com­mit­ments and fi­nanc­ing mech­a­nisms as the re­gion pre­pares for the first in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence ded­i­cat­ed to phas­ing out fos­sil fu­els.

Speak­ing in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, Bod­ley said the con­fer­ence, to be held in San­ta Mar­ta, Colom­bia, rep­re­sents a crit­i­cal mo­ment for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) to de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty from ma­jor green­house gas emit­ters.

“We con­tribute less than one per cent of glob­al emis­sions, yet we are on the front lines of cli­mate im­pacts,” she said, not­ing that Caribbean na­tions con­tin­ue to face se­vere con­se­quences from cli­mate change de­spite their min­i­mal con­tri­bu­tion.