Message from Mr. Vergès

President of the Regional Council of Réunion, President of the Regional Agency for Energy in Reunion (ARER) and President of the National Observatory on the Effects of Global Warming (ONERC).

One conclusion shared by all 4,000 scientists on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is that our islands and regions are today gearing up to adapt our territories and societies to the impact of global warming and future climatic changes.

The number one priority in adapting and alleviating these effects is to move our energy systems towards clean and renewable technologies. The time cycle to make this shift is estimated at about 50 years. This is a key local and global action plan for the sustainable development of our societies. It may also help continents to adapt by enacting their own changes.

Our regional authorities, energy operators in our own island and in certain other islands and regions who are considering deploying renewable forms of energy on a large scale met in Reunion Island on 26 October to 4 November 2005, to establish five workshops for the period 2006 to 2013. Their role is to organise, draft, finalise, disseminate and update a database entitled:

Energy Self-sufficiency Strategies for Islands: 2000-2025-2050

Adapting to Climate Change and Mitigating its Impact

As part of this process, the Regional Agency for Energy in Reunion Island (ARER) is responsible for assembling all research studies and for publishing the database under its 2006-1 version. The latter will be available via the web site www.island-news.org and will also be forwarded to the ONERC (National Observatory into the Effects of Global Warming), the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change) which held a meeting in Reunion Island at the beginning of 2005, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) which held a meeting in 2004 on the island of Mauritius as well as to governments, islands, regions and experts who have decided to take part in these workshops.

Thanks to the contributions of Europe and the Réunion Regional Council, an expert from each island and region that we identified was invited to attend this first meeting in Reunion. They were invited to submit offers with a view to compiling the technical database. This has led to the building of a knowledge base fed by the five workshops mentioned above. This knowledge will be shared and freely available on our web portal. It will also be regularly updated through invitations to bids organised on the said portal.

In addition to the attendees at the Energy in Reunion Island meetings, many islands, regions and numerous experts have expressed their support for such cooperation.

Tomorrow's island and regional energy strategies will need to rally international institutions and must be structured around the critical mass provided under our cooperation programmes in terms of dissemination and action plans.

We therefore invite all islands, regions, bodies and institutions involved in knowledge-building, projects or the implementation of local and island energy self-sufficiency strategies aimed at developing clean and efficient forms of energy to join us (via our website: www.island-news.org).

Our aim is to develop and build a network of lasting exchanges. We seek to share experience and knowledge gained around the world with a view to training technicians and decision-makers in these key issues and to enact the necessary changes to our island and world energy systems.

 

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