When 11-year-old Mitali Padhi hugged her childhood friends to say goodbye, she felt a deep-seated foreboding.
Jamaica and other Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are embracing renewable energy as part of their plans to become decarbonised in the coming decades.
Jua Kali is a social enterprise tackling waste management and helping to reduce reliance on St. Lucia’s only landfill, which will reach the end of its lifespan in 2023. The company, with its slogan ‘Trashing the Idea of Waste,’ hosts waste collection drives through pop up depots that encourage residents to bring in glass, plastic and tin cans in exchange for supermarket shopping points.
Fishers in Anguilla saw posted on Youtube this week a video they helped produce that depicts the impacts of climate change on their industry. Titled “Anguilla’s Fishing Dilemma”, the four-and-a-half minute video highlights some of the main challenges Anguilla’s 92 licensed fishers face in earning a living.
In 2008, the then president of Guyana, Bharrat Jagdeo, established within the Ministry of the Presidency the Office of Climate Change. Guyana became the first country in the region to do so. A year later, Jagdeo set out a vision to forge a new low carbon economy in the Caribbean nation.
In 2015, the Caribbean was “the region that could” on the climate change scene. Countries rallied under the ‘1.5 to Stay Alive’ banner, in the face of an existential threat. The now former Sustainable Development Minister of Saint Lucia Dr. James Fletcher emerged as a climate change champion at the time. But now, three years on, the scientist is giving regional climate action a C- in an assessment.
Trinidad and Tobago unveiled its monitoring, reporting and verification system in mid-March with a flourish, with government authorities underscoring the launch of the Monitoring, Reporting, Verification as a milestone in that country’s efforts to reduce its emissions in line with its commitments under the 2016 Paris agreement.
From an influx of sargassum in near-shore waters, to fish venturing further out to sea to find cooler, more oxygenated water, fishers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines are battling the vagaries of climate change. The country is doing what it can to respond.
Karlis Noel spends his days in his lab in the small, picturesque community of Laborie in St. Lucia. The former fisherman’s story might sound like an overnight success, but his present accolades in the field of engineering are the result of years of hard work and an unceasing drive to make life easier for communities in the throes of a water crisis.
For several decades, Guyana has been using mangroves to protect its coasts against natural hazards, and the country believes its mangrove forests should be included in programmes like the REDD+ of United Nations, in order to access financing to continue their restoration and maintenance, as they complement miles of seawalls that help to prevent flooding.
In the tiny eastern Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, proverbs relating to the weather are very common.
Everyone knows that “Who has cocoa outside must look out for rain”, has nothing to do with the drying of the bean from which chocolate is made or the sudden downpours common in this tropical nation.
Caribbean countries have been signalling their willingness to dedicate time and resources to implement and sustain effective multi-hazard early warning systems.
The Caribbean Climate Smart Accelerator launched last year June with the backing of Virgin’s Richard Branson has given itself five years to help the region become climate resilient.
In recent years Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries have experienced escalated climate change impacts from hurricanes, tropical storms and other weather-related events thanks to global warming of 1.0 ° Celsius (C) above pre-industrial levels. And it has had adverse effects on particularly vulnerable countries and communities.
A group of youngsters in the Caribbean who promote environmental protection in the region is on a drive to empower other youth to address some of the big issues facing their generation.
The Caribbean will not be left out of the negotiations at COP24 – the 24th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – that will take place from Dec. 3 to 14 in Katowice, Poland.
Water-scarce Grenadians will soon get some relief through a Green Climate Fund-approved project to be launched next year that will make Grenada’s water sector more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
As the 24th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change – is set to take place from December 3-14 in Katowice, Poland, the Caribbean insists on a seat at the table of negations.
As a child growing up in Mayreau four decades ago, Filius “Philman” Ollivierre remembers a 70-foot-wide span of land, with the sea on either side that made the rest of the 1.5-square mile island one with Mount Carbuit.
If there is one lesson that Dominican Reginald Austrie has learnt from the devastation Hurricane Maria brought to his country last September, it is the need for “resilience, resilience, resilience”.
And it is not just because he is his country’s minister of agriculture.
Recent research at a centre in Guyana shows that some types of butterflies and lizards in the Amazon have been seeking shelter from the heat as Amazonian temperatures rise.