15 April 2010: The 14th Caribbean Community (CARICOM)-Japan Consultations were held at CARICOM Secretariat headquarters in Georgetown, Guyana, on 15 April 2010, in preparation for the Second CARICOM-Japan Ministerial Meeting, which will convene in Tokyo, Japan, in September 2010. Participants discussed bilateral cooperation as well as regional and global issues such as the financial and economic crisis, security, climate change and disaster management.
Opening the Consultations, Amb. Elizabeth Harper, Guyana, stressed that climate change has a debilitating impact and poses significant risks for the sustainable development of the small island developing and low lying coastal States of the Caribbean Community. She recalled that CARICOM calls for: limiting temperature increases to 1.5° C; the Bali Action Plan (BAP) to be the principal road map to guide global negotiations on climate change; and the adoption of a legally binding global agreement at the 16th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC in Mexico. [CARICOM Press Release][Harper’s Speech]