Small Island Developing States Action Day at COP23

In light of climate change impacts that are causing catastrophic damage, recently seen in the Caribbean, that shows the growing risk of unrecoverable extreme weather events, UNESCO organise the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Action Day to bring together experts, policy-makers, government officials, civil society and community representatives to engage in a transdisciplinary dialogue about SIDS and climate change impacts, mitigation and adaptation.

UNESCO, with its unique multidisciplinary mandate in Education, Natural Sciences, Social Sciences, Culture, Communication and Information, will focus reflections on:

• Innovative approaches to address Loss and Damage at national and local level;
• Strengthen communities & ecosystems resilience: Pacific RESCCUE & INTEGRE;
• Citizen science participatory production of climate change-related data to enhance community resilience, and support policy planning and decision-making;
• Building bridges between local & indigenous knowledge holders, scientists and policy-makers;
• UNESCO contribution to strengthen resilience to weather related hazards in the Caribbean.

Speakers:
• Ronald Jumeau, Ambassador Permanent Representative, The Permanent Mission of the Republic of Seychelles to the United Nations
• Elisabeth Holland, Director, Pacific Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (PaCE-SD), The University of the South Pacific, Fiji.
• Jean-Baptiste Marre, RESCCUE Project Deputy Coordinator at Pacific Community-SPC, New Caledonia.
• Tristan Pearce, University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia and University of Guelph, Canada.
• Nigel Crawhall, Chief, Small Islands and Indigenous Knowledge Section, UNESCO.
• Karuna Rana, Co-Founder and Executive Director, SIDS Youth AIMS Hub (SYAH).
• Irina Pavlova, Section on Earth Sciences and Geo-Hazards Risk Reduction, UNESCO.
• Marcel Beukeboom, Climate Envoy, Kingdom of the Netherlands.
• Tarran Simms, Sustainable Tourism Unit, Bahamas Ministry of Tourism, Bahamas.
• Shantana Barbe, President of the Youth NGO SYAH-Seychelles, Seychelles.

In particular, UNESCO, through its Science Sector, supports SIDS Member States to launch frameworks, cooperation and capacity building to deal with climate vulnerability, in line with the SAMOA Pathway, the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda.

For more information contact:
• Khalissa Ikhlef (k.ikhlef@unesco.org)