SIDS DOCK holds first executive council meeting in New York

NEW YORK, USA -- The SIDS DOCK executive council held its first meeting on Thursday, 16 June 2016, chaired by Dr Vince Henderson, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary and permanent representative of Dominica to the

United Nations.  NEW YORK, USA -- The SIDS DOCK executive council held its first meeting on Thursday, 16 June 2016, chaired by Dr Vince Henderson, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary and permanent representative of Dominica to the United Nations.    Other elected members of the Council include vice chairs, Ronnie Jumeau, climate change ambassador, Seychelles, and Sione Foliaki, assistant chief executive officer, Energy Policy Coordination and Management Division, Ministry of Finance, Samoa.    Dr Rhianna M. Neely-Murphy, ministry of environment and housing, The Bahamas, was nominated rapporteur. The meeting was hosted by the Permanent Mission of Barbados to the UN.   The first meeting of the executive council represents an historic moment in “SIDS-SIDS” relations in terms of the urgent need to invest in building climate change resilience in small island developing states (SIDS).    SIDS DOCK is designed as a “DOCKing station,” to connect the energy sector in SIDS with the global market for finance, sustainable energy technologies and with the European Union and the United States carbon markets, and able to trade the avoided carbon emissions in those markets. Estimates place the potential value of the US and EU markets between US$100 to 400 billion annually.   With the entry into force of the SIDS DOCK Treaty, small island developing and low lying states are now vested with a SIDS-appropriate framework to assist member states to mobilise financing in excess of US$20 billion, by 2033, to invest in the transformation of the SIDS energy sector to achieve a 25 percent (2005 baseline) increase in energy efficiency, generation of a minimum of 50 percent of electric power from renewable sources, and a 25 percent decrease in conventional transportation fuel use, in order to increase availability of financial resources to invest in building climate change resilience in SIDS.   The SIDS DOCK treaty was opened for signature in September 2014, in Samoa, at the third UN international conference on SIDS; ratified in September 2015, at the UN, on the margins of the 70th UN General Assembly. The first meeting of the SIDS DOCK Assembly was held in Paris, in December 2015, on the margins of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties meeting (COP 21).    On 3 June 3016, the secretary general of the UN issued a certificate of registration, certifying that the SIDS DOCK treaty was duly registered, signalling that SIDS DOCK was officially open for business. SIDS DOCK business matters will be advised by the global law firm, Squire, Patton, Boggs (SPB), who were officially appointed SIDS DOCK attorneys by the Council. SPB will provide pro bono services to SIDS DOCK.     As mandated by the SIDS DOCK Assembly last December, the Council reviewed documentation adopted by the Assembly, including but not limited to the rules and procedures of the Assembly and Executive Council; selection procedure for the secretary-general; and the SIDS DOCK Secretariat work programme and indicative budget (2016-2020). More