23 November 2010: The Department of Sustainable Economic Development and Trade Department of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Secretariat organized a conference on 23 November 2010, in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss climate change challenges confronting ACP countries.

The conference launched a series of debates on sustainable development in ACP States and gathered ACP ambassadors and high-level speakers including Lucas Assunção, UN Commission for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and Yacob Mulugetta, UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). Discussions were organized around the theme “Climate Change and Sustainable Development of ACP States: challenges and financing prospects,” and participants focused on existing financing mechanisms for low-carbon growth, as well as mitigation and adaptation strategies in ACP regions.

Discussions highlighted: the fragility of the majority of ACP States, particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS), confronted by the problem of climate change; the fast-tracking of resources pledged by the EU to provide developing countries in general, and ACP countries in particular, with resources to tackle climate change challenges; the existence of various common positions among ACP regions and the EU in the area of climate change; and the urgent need to translate into concrete actions ACP-EU Declarations on climate change adopted in May 2009 in Brussels, Belgium, and June 2010 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. A follow-up conference is expected to be scheduled after the Cancun Climate Change Conference, to assess its results and agree on the way forward on climate change both at the regional and the ACP levels. [ACP Press Release]