Costa Rica will seek to position the issue of trade and deforestation at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP28) to be held in the United Arab Emirates between November 30 and December 12.
According to Franz Tattenbach, Minister of the Environment, these will be issues that will be insisted on given that climate change must stop being seen only from the reduction of fossil fuels.
“We believe that it is an issue where we can ignite a great impulse, there is a lot of interest in this, many years ago (…) climate change was not wanted to be seen with biodiversity, it was almost a bad word and a separation began to be created between biodiversity, climate change, forests and conservation; “Costa Rica manages to overcome that together with Papua New Guinea and puts its net into the climate change agreement,” he recalled.
“That division has been completely erased, things are very tight, there is a certain level of fear that climate change may not be mitigated, that we can no longer be so purist that it is only with the reduction of fossil fuels, now the hand to everything,” continued Tattenbach.In this way, he considered that it should focus on industry and transportation, particularly buses.
Adaptation goals
Another theme that Costa Rica will bring to the event is that “we want to see increased commitments to the implementation of adaptation goals, we are going to put the fire there,” warned the leader.
This goes hand in hand with seeking the adaptation of sectors, such as the productive sector, to a climate that would increase by two degrees Celsius and therefore, a way must be found to mitigate the effects that this will have on societies.“Yes, we are going to have to adapt some sectors of the economy,” warned Tattenbach.
“For example, you tell a coffee producer to invest in adaptation, he has to change the production model, plant differently. And the profitability? It depends on how they lend you the money and that depends on (the credit) whether I do it or not and the benefit is that you will lose less than what you would have lost in less than 2 degrees,” he highlighted.
TomásSoley, General Superintendent of Insurance, who participated in the press conference, pointed out regarding this issue that we must insist to prevent losses from being greater in the short term due to climate change.
“We must be optimistic and one cannot resign ourselves to the fact that climate change is going to generate permanently increasing losses, which is why the issue of adaptation is key, the only way to overcome this wave is with adaptation,” Soley warned.
Meeting the goals
On the other hand, the head of the Environment recognized that the world is required to reduce greenhouse emissions because otherwise, temperatures will increase above two degrees.
“What was promised is enough to take us to 1.8 degrees Celsius (…) the implementation of announced policies takes us to about 3 degrees, so where is the real gap? It is being implemented and not on the side of Costa Rica, but on the rest of the world,” Tattenbach pointed out.
Regarding the goals that Costa Rica set at COP27, he assured that there is progress in Sustainable Agro Landscapes that is already linked to emissions-free exports.
“The project has positioned itself, today it already has partial financing from the IDB, in the first stage through GUEF (Global Undergraduate Economic Forum) rapprochement with the World Bank, the project has taken off and we expect full implementation in 2024,” he assured.
The Costa Rican delegation will be made up of 27 people, 13 of them from the Ministry of Environment and Energy (Minae), which includes Sinac, IMN and Fonafifo.
There are also six people from the Foreign Ministry, including the head Arnoldo André, three from the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, one from the MOPT, another from the Central Bank, one from the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity and one from Icafé.
