PORT OF SPAIN Buoyed by a membership of 53 countries, delegates to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) left Trinidad and Tobago yesterday convinced that their collective voice would have a huge influence on the outcome of the United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen, Denmark next month.

The Trinidad and Tobago meeting was the last big multilateral forum ahead of the Copenhagen climate change talks starting December 7.

World leaders are focusing on the Copenhagen talks to hammer out concrete and sustainable solutions to global climate change challenges.

Although a number of Commonwealth countries were skeptical about how each should respond to greenhouse emissions, their common understanding was that only a collective voice would add greater value and influence the outcome of the Copenhagen talks.

Queen Elizabeth II emphasised at the start of the three-day meeting that the Commonwealth had over the years provided leadership that shaped global opinion and action on challenges facing the world.

Accordingly, CHOGM 2009, said the Queen, availed yet another opportunity for the Commonwealth show strong leadership on issues of global climate change during the Copenhagen talks.

She said the threats to the environment were not a new concern, but warned that unless decisive action was taken to address them, global peace, security and stability remained under threat as well.

Botswana also supports a collective CHOGM voice to the Denmark talks.

Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation minister, Mr Phandu Skelemani, who represented Botswana, said that such a stance must also be accompanied by a plan of action without which everything would be in vain.

Mr Skelemani said the plan of action must also provide both monetary and technical assistance to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gases in developing countries as well as help affected poor countries with strategies to regain their positions. from the developed world.

He underscored the relevance of this years theme Partnering for a more equitable and sustainable future, arguing that it was only through partnership that Commonwealth countries could confront such global challenges.

He observed that Botswana was currently making efforts to extract coal in an environmentally friendly and sustainable manner through partnerships and expertise from developed countries.

Botswanas Ambassador to the UK, Mr Roy Blackbeard said the fact that this years CHOGM focused more on climate change underpinned Botswanas attendance, given that climate change affected rainfall patterns, hence the agricultural sector.

In his recent State of the Nation Address, President Lt Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama unveiled an ambitious plan to turn the countrys agricultural sector around to make it more productive.

However, such grand plans could be scumpered by lack of decisive action to reverse or mitigate the effects of climate change.

Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister, Patrick Manning, who is also CHOGM chairperson, said the diversity of nations in the Commonwealth provided the grouping with more clout to exert influence and add value to the outcome of the Copenhagen talks.

Perhaps to shore up and lend credence to CHOGMs position at the talks, Prime Minister Manning broke the groupings tradition by inviting leaders from non Commonwealth countries in French President Nicolaz Sarkozy, Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen as well as United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to attend the Trinidad and Tobago meeting.

He noted: We thought that we could add value weight to the voice of the Commonwealth if other non-Commonwealth agencies and countries are associated with us.

The Prime Minister also underscored the imperative of bringing on board developing countries given that they were home to a majority of the worlds poor and vulnerable populations whose plight has been made acute by the current global economic recession.

Empathy is required here, he called.

He said climate change was a global challenge, hence his country rejected arguments that greenhouse emissions should be broken down on a per capita basis.

When the earth responds to the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, it does not do so on a per capita basis. It responds on the basis of absolute emissions. The population of China is 100 times the size of the population of Trinidad and Tobago and when we look at the question of absolute emissions, China is the largest emitter in the world, followed by the United States. Therefore, per capita argument is one that we consider unsustainable, said the prime minister.

He acknowledged that his country was in the top 10 of countries that spewed huge amounts of greenhouses gases into the atmosphere but was not convinced that the per capita basis argument was sustainable.

Meanwhile, other issues discussed during the meeting included consideration of Rwandas application to join the Commonwealth as well as beefing up the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) to give it more teeth to deal with issues of human rights, democracy, corruption and the rule of law which underpin the 1991 Harare Declaration in which member countries bound themselves to uphold fundamental political values.

Mr Blackbeard said CMAG had not been able to deal effectively with other issues of governance because it was only mandated to deal with coup situations. BOPA