RECOMMENDATIONS are for developed countries to limit rising global temperatures to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for the rest of the century, but Jamaica has a more ambitious target.

“Jamaica maintains that 1.5 per cent should be the goal… We are convinced that two degrees is too high for us. That position has also been taken at Caricom and AOSIS (Alliance of Small Island States),” principal director in the Climate Change Division of the Ministry of Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change Albert Daley said.

“The current trend is toward 3.9 degrees with mitigation pledges possibly offsetting it to 3.1 degrees, but if maintained this will be very disastrous for SIDS (Small Island Developing States),” he added.

He was speaking at a recent town hall meeting organised by the Embassy of France in Jamaica to educate the public about climate change and its impacts on the various facets of daily life.

Daley and his team will be seeking to convince developed nations of this when the countries that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change meet for their 21st session in Paris in December. The most critical goal of the high-level meeting, dubbed COP 21, is to secure legally binding agreements to reduce emissions to levels that will keep global temperatures at or below two degrees.

Among the other things which the Jamaica team will be seeking to achieve at COP 21 are:

* A balance in the funding available for climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. (In 2013, for example, the mitigation funding available internationally was US$302 billion, while the allocation for adaptation was US$25 billion);

* a decision to treat adaptation and loss and damage separately;

* financing or adaptation initiatives in vulnerable countries;

* relaxed reporting requirements;

* simplified access to financial assistance; and a

* common but differentiated approach to responsibility for climate change.

“Those who contribute more to climate change should have more responsibility because those who contribute more also benefit more from it,” Daley argued.

Putting the temperature debate into context, director of the Climate Studies Group at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Professor Michael Taylor explained that the Earth has warmed by one degree in the last century, which has resulted in 22 warmer days and 22 warmer nights than in 1960.

“And the (number of) warmer nights are increasing more than the warmer days,” Prof Taylor said.

The one degree change has also brought on a shift in the pattern and characteristics of rainfall, causing the number of dry days between rain events to become longer.

“But two is greater than one,” he stressed, comparing the impact of the current one degree rise with the two degrees projected for the end of the century.

“Two is also less than four, (but) two may be too much,” he continued, pointing out that “a two-degree rise will result in a four-fold increase in dengue”.

“Four degrees will mean that 98 per cent of all days will be warmer and two per cent of all nights will be cool by the end of the century. It will mean that it will be 25-30 per cent drier between June and October, there will be more intense hurricanes, and one to two metres in sea level rise,” said Taylor.

” We need to talk about this two degrees. Is it really what we need to go after?” he added.

According to Daley, a two per cent rise in sea level would eat away one per cent of the island’s land mass, displace one per cent of the population, damage 20 per cent of hotels and other coastal infrastructure, and inundate 60 per cent of all air and sea ports.