New York, 23 September 2017 – President Danny Faure was today elected President of SIDS DOCK, the small island developing states initiative for renewable energy and sustainable development, for the coming year.
The election took place at the third annual meeting of the SIDS DOCK Assembly on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) General Debate by world leaders in New York.
SIDS DOCK is the only small island developing states body to be officially recognised by the United Nations as a UN Treaty organisation.
Ambassador Ronny Jumeau, Seychelles Permanent Representative to the UN, was re-elected a member of the SIDS DOCK Executive Council for a second term at the same meeting.
The day before, Ms Jeanette Larue, Technical Advisor for Environment Education in the Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change, was elected Vice Chair of the SIDS DOCK Island Women Open Network (IWON) and head of the SIDS DOCK Public Education and Awareness Programme (PEP).
Speaking for Seychelles, Amb Jumeau noted that Seychelles was actively involved in, and an enthusiastic supporter of the establishment of SIDS DOCK from the beginning.
“Small island developing states have led on the issues of clean energy and sustainability long before the term Sustainable Development Goals was coined, and when we still had no idea when the world would reach a climate change agreement,” he said.
Indeed, plans and strategies for transitioning to clean energy featured prominently in SIDS’ pledges or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement on climate change, whose spirit had lived on stronger than ever during the UNGA General Debate.
Sadly, this was very much due to the disastrous hurricanes in the Caribbean which had devastated some member states of SIDS DOCK.
“President Faure and Seychelles send you our condolences reinforced by a message of strength, solidarity and island resilience in the face of the incredible human and economic challenges you now face, and which threaten all members of SIDS DOCK and the Alliance of Small Island States in future,” Amb Jumeau said.
President Faure succeeds the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, and his term ends in September next year when the next SIDS DOCK Assembly is once again held on the margins of the UNGA General Debate.
SIDS DOCK, based in Belize, is an initiative among countries of the New York-based Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) to provide small island developing states with a mechanism to help them transform their national energy sectors to renewable energy and into a catalyst for sustainable economic development.
Another objective is to help generate financial resources to help SIDS address adaptation to climate change. This has become even more urgent given the devastation increasingly violent storms are causing to SIDS.
Potential projects discussed by today’s Assembly included an energy-focused captive insurance multiwindow facility for SIDS, the potential for ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) and waste to energy (WtE), as well as, from IWON, a pilot initiative to develop a global sustainable botanical and herbal supplier market for member states
The organisation is called SIDS DOCK because it is designed as a “DOCKing station,” to connect the energy sector in SIDS with the global markets for carbon, finance and sustainable energy technologies.
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