By Josephine Naaeke, GNA
Accra, Oct. 26, (GNA) – Ghanaian negotiators
who will be attending the United Nations climate talks slated for December 2 to
14, 2018 (COP24) in Poland have been urged to play active roles during the
negotiation period and make relevant contributions.
Dr Seth Osafo, a retired Legal Advisor to the
climate change secretariat said this at a day’s pre-Conference of Parties to
the United Nations framework Convention on Climate Change organised by the
Environmental Protection Agency for stakeholders to take stock of what had been
done since their return from the last conference in Bonn, Germany in 2017 and
what was needed to be looked at during the upcoming conference.
Dr Osafo asked participants to be on the alert
for any new document from the secretariat of the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change to guide them as they prepared to attend the
conference with their counterparts from other African and developed countries
and make sure they were present at the African group meetings.
He said there would be five to six days for
negotiation which will not be enough, so negotiations would stretch into the
night, therefore negotiators needed to also prepare themselves against the
hazards of the weather to be able to stay through to work.
He said Presidents from the various countries
would be attending a summit where declarations would be made and urged that
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo be informed about the key issues since
whatever came out of the declaration would serve as a guide to the negotiators.
He said this was the time ‘we’ are going to
develop new Intended Nationally Determined Contributions since what was
provided previously was done hurriedly and were not tied down to any specific
guidelines and were also beyond ‘our’
abilities.
Dr Osafo however complained that the Ministry
of Finance was not visible at the Green Climate Fund meetings and urged
officials to make themselves visible and appealed to the officials to make
follow ups on projects that were sent to the GCF
He said the GCF was there and ‘we’ can have
access so there should be continuity of participation at meetings and the GCF
officials should be talked about projects that were available and ‘we’ will
make a headway.
He mentioned issues of transparency,
mitigation and finance as important issues to be touched on during the
conference saying that finance had been a major issue that developed countries
saw as something that developing countries wanted to hear about but noted that
developed countries also wanted to know what was being done to the finance
provided them.
Mr Foster Gyemsi of the Ministry of Finance
said Finance was in constant touch with the GCF as they were at both the
regional and global meetings adding that during the last COP23, officials of
the Authority had discussions on various proposals.
He said the last meeting with GCF was in
October this year in Korea where issues of projects, proposals among others
were highlighted and noted that what may be making finance invisible was an
issue of communication.
Abibiman Foundation, an NGO will organise site
events on adaptation and Green Impact International will showcase its
activities at the conference.
GNA