By Jewel Fraser
PORT OF SPAIN, Feb 26 2020 (IPS)

The Environmental Defence Fund and its partners in conservation are this month celebrating a major milestone in Belize’s efforts to safeguard its fisheries.

On Feb. 14, the Belizean Parliament passed into law the Fisheries Resources Act that establishes legal safeguards for marine protected areas and that country’s managed access programme for fishers. The Central American country of Belize was a pioneer in 2016 in bringing its entire territorial waters under a system of licensed fishing rights that gave fishers designated spots.

Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist at the EDF, tells Voices from the Global South that this new law is a win-win for all, since the marine protected areas and the managed access programme reinforce each other, ensuring the livelihood of Belizean fishers. In this Voices from the Global South Podcast, IPS Caribbean correspondent Jewel Fraser speaks to Rader about the problems the law will solve and the ways Belize and neighbouring countries will benefit.

Magnus Tut a member of the Trio Cacao Farmers Association cuts open a white cacao pod from one of several bearing treen in his plot. The group is hoping to find more buyers for their organic white cacao and vegetables. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
BELMOPAN, Sep 5 2018 (IPS)

In one of Belize’s forest reserves in the Maya Golden Landscape, a group of farmers is working with non-governmental organisations to mitigate and build resilience to climate change with a unique agroforestry project.

The Ya’axché Conservation Trust helps farmers to establish traditional tree crops, like the cacao, that would provide them with long-term income opportunities through restoring the forest, protecting the natural environment, while building their livelihoods and opportunities. Experts say the farmers are building resilience to climate change in the eight rural communities they represent.

The agroforestry concession is situated in the Maya Mountain Reserve and is one of two agroforestry projects undertaken by the 5Cs, the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), in its efforts to implement adaptation and mitigation strategies in communities across the Caribbean.

Close to 6,000 people both directly and indirectly benefit from the project which Dr. Ulric Trotz, science advisor and deputy executive director of the 5Cs, noted was established with funding from the United Kingdom Department for International Development (UK DFID).

“It is easily one of our most successful and during my most recent visit this year, I’ve seen enough to believe that the concept can be successfully transferred to any community in Belize as well as to other parts of the Caribbean,” he told IPS.

The Trio Cacao Farmers Association and the Ya’axché Conservation Trust have been working together since 2015 to acquire and establish an agroforestry concession on 379 hectares of disturbed forest. The agroforestry project was given a much-need boost with USD250,000 in funding through the 5Cs.

According to Christina Garcia, Ya’axché’s executive director, the project provides extension services. It also provides training and public awareness to prepare the farmers on how to reduce deforestation, prevent degradation of their water supplies and reduce the occurrence of wildfires in the beneficiary communities and the concession area.

Since the start, more than 50,000 cacao trees have been planted on 67 hectares and many are already producing the white cacao, a traditional crop in this area. To supplement the farmers’ incomes approximately 41 hectares of ‘cash’ crops, including bananas, plantains, vegetable, corn and peppers, were also established along with grow-houses and composting heaps that would support the crops.

This unique project is on track to become one of the exemplary demonstrations of ecosystems-based adaptation in the region.

The 35 farming families here are native Maya. They live and work in an area that is part of what has been dubbed the Golden Stream Corridor Preserve, which connects the forests of the Maya Mountains to that of the coastal lowlands and is managed by Ya’axché.

Farmers here believe they are reclaiming their traditional ways of life on the four hectares which they each have been allocated. Many say they’ve improved their incomes while restoring the disturbed forests, and are doing this through using techniques that are protecting and preserving the remaining forests, the wildlife and water.

On tour of the Ya’axché Agroforestry Concession in the Maya Golden Landscape. From right: Dr Ulric Trotz, deputy executive director of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC); Dr Mark Bynoe, head of project development at the 5Cs; Isabel Rash, chair of the Trios Cacao Farmers Association; Magnus Tut, farmer and ranger and behind him Christina Garcia, executive director Ya’axché Conservation Trust. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

Other members of the communities, including school-age teenagers, were given the opportunity to start their own businesses through the provision of training and hives to start bee-keeping projects. Many of the women now involved in bee-keeping were given one box when they started their businesses.

The men and women who work the concession do not use chemicals and can, therefore, market their crops as chemical free, or organic products. They, however, say they need additional help to seek and establish those lucrative markets. In addition to the no-chemicals rule, the plots are cultivated by hand, using traditional tools. But farmer Magnus Tut said that this is used in conjunction with new techniques, adding that it has improved native farming methods.

“We are going back to the old ways, which my father told me about before chemicals were introduced to make things grow faster. The hardest part is maintaining the plot. It is challenging and hard work but it is good work, and there are health benefits,” Tut told IPS.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) supports the farmers’ beliefs, reporting that up to 11 percent of greenhouse gases are caused by deforestation and “between 24 and 30 percent of total mitigation potential” can be provided by halting and reversing deforestation in the tropics.

“The hardest part of the work is getting some people to understand how/what they do impacts the climate, but each has their own story and they are experiencing the changes which make it easier for them to make the transition,” said Julio Chun, a farmer and the community liaison for the concession. He told IPS that in the past, the farmers frequently used fires to clear the land.

Chun explained that farmers are already seeing the return of wildlife, such as the jaguar, and are excited by the possibilities.

“We would like to develop eco-tourism and the value-added products that can support the industry. Some visitors are already coming for the organic products and the honey,” he said.

Ya’axché co-manages the Bladen Nature Reserve and the Maya Mountain North Forest Reserve, a combined 311,607 hectares of public and privately owned forest. Its name, pronounced yash-cheh, is the Mopan Maya word for the Kapoc or Ceiba tree (scientific name: Ceiba pentandra), which is sacred to the Maya peoples.

Of the project’s future, Garcia said: “My wish is to see the project address the economic needs of the farmers, to get them to recognise the value of what they are doing in the concession and that the decision-makers can use the model as an example to make decisions on how forest reserves can be made available to communities across Belize and the region to balance nature and livelihoods.”

Scientists believe that well-managed ecosystems can help countries adapt to both current climate hazards and future climate change through the provision of ecosystem services, so the 5Cs has implemented a similar project in Saint Lucia under a 42-month project funded by the European Union Global Climate Change Alliance (EU-GCCA+) to promote sustainable farming practices.

The cacao-based agroforestry project in Saint Lucia uses a mix-plantation model where farmers are allowed to continue using chemicals, but were taught to protect the environment. Like the Ya’axché project, Saint Lucia’s was designed to improve environmental conditions in the beneficiary areas; enhance livelihoods and build the community’s resilience to climate change.

In the next chapter, the Ya’axché farmers project is hoping that, among other things, a good samaritan will help them to add facilities for value-added products; acquire eco-friendly all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to move produce to access points; and replace a wooden bridge that leads to the main access road.

Tut and Chun both support the views of the group’s chair Isabel Rash, that farmers are already living through climate change, but that the hard work in manually “clearing and maintaining their plots and in chemical-free food production, saves them money”, supports a healthy working and living environment and should protect them against the impacts of climate change.

Excerpt:

Fishermen from across Belize will see major benefits from the MCCAP project, which seeks to re-train them in alternative livelihoods to lessen the impact of climate change in their communities. Credit: Aaron Humes/IPS

By Aaron Humes
BELIZE CITY, Apr 9 2015 (IPS)

A five-year project launched here in Belize City in March seeks to cement a shift in view of climate change and its impact on Belize’s national development.

The Belize Marine Conservation and Climate Adaptation Project (MCCAP) has dual goals: putting in place structures to ensure continued protection for marine protected areas, and ensuring that those who benefit from use and enjoyment of those areas are educated on the dangers of climate change and given means of sustaining their lifestyles without further damage to precious natural resources.“Climate change is not an environmental issue. Climate change is a development issue." -- Enos Esikuri of the World Bank

Approximately 203,000 Belizeans live in coastal communities – both urban centres such as Belize City and the towns of Corozal and Dangriga, as well as destinations for fishing and tourism such as the villages of Sarteneja, Hopkins, Sittee River, Seine Bight and Placencia.

For these persons, and for Belize, “Climate change is not an environmental issue. Climate change is a development issue,” said World Bank representative and senior environmental specialist Enos Esikuri, who noted that keeping the focus on the environment on this issue would result in “losing the audience” – those who make their living directly from the sea through fishing and tourism.

According to Esikuri, there has been a change in Belize’s economy from a purely agriculture base to a service-based economy with tourism as a primary focus – but the marine resources in Belize’s seas and rivers are integral to the success of that model.

Belize also has to pay attention to the intensification of weather systems and how the reef protects Belize’s fragile coast and communities, he said.

Of Belize’s three billion-dollar gross domestic product (GDP), fishing accounts for 15 percent; 4,500 licensed fishermen and about 18,000 Belizeans are directly dependent on fisheries for their livelihoods.

However, tourism accounts for almost 25 percent of GDP and a significantly greater population living in coastal communities earn their livelihoods from this industry, Esikuri explained.

The Barrier Reef and its fish are a very important resource for this industry, he said, so protecting it safeguards more livelihoods.

The local Ministry of Fisheries, Forestry and Sustainable Development has received 5.53 million dollars from the World Bank’s Adaptation Fund, with the government contributing a further 1.78 million dollars for the programme, which seeks to implement priority ecosystem-based marine conservation and climate adaptation measures to strengthen the climate resilience of the Belize Barrier Reef system.

The MCCAP project will invest 560,000 U.S. dollars to raise awareness about the impacts of climate change, and educate people about the value of marine conservation, and how climate change will affect their lives.

The project will explore and develop strategies to help coastal communities become more resilient to climate change, and will encourage community exchange visits to help the people learn how they can adapt to climate change.

Project Coordinator Sandra Grant says that of the three components to the project – upgrades to existing protected areas in Corozal, at Turneffe Atoll and in South Water Caye off Placencia, developing community-based business ventures in aquaculture, agriculture and tourism and raising awareness on the impact of climate change and developing and exploring climate resilient strategies – it is the second one that she expects will have the most impact.

“We are going to look at the marine protected areas, but at the same time we are going to start the livelihood activities, because sometimes if you don’t show people the alternatives, then they will not buy in to what you are trying to do. So although it is three different components we decided to put them together simultaneously,” Grant said.

The selected protected areas were identified as priority by the project because of their contribution to the environment.

She added that fishermen and other stakeholders will be able to take advantage of new strategies for economic benefit such as seaweed planting, sea cucumber harvesting and diversification of business into value-added products.

Part of the project will help finance community-based projects to create small-scale seaweed farms to take advantage of the global demand for seaweed for use in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even in ice cream.

A cooperative in Placencia has already pioneered growing and drying seaweed for export. The bottom-feeding sea cucumber could become a cash cow as a prized delicacy and medicinal property in Asia and China.

Belize already exports about 400,000 pounds per year and prices range from 4-8 Belizean dollars per pound though the dried product fetches as much as 150 U.S. dollars per pound internationally. Again, one cooperative already has investments in this area.

Corozal Bay Wildlife Sanctuary, Turneffe Atoll Marine Reserve and South Water Caye Marine Reserve will install various features to assist in protection of their native marine and coastal ecosystems, including coral nurseries for the latter two.

Each of the components has its own budget and will be pursued simultaneously with each other.

Edited by Roger Hamilton-Martin

The humble CREWS buoy hosts several instruments designed to measure conditions above and below the water, and keep track of these developing threats. Credit: Aaron Humes/IPS

By Aaron Humes
BELIZE CITY, Oct 20 2014 (IPS)

Home to the second longest barrier reef in the world and the largest in the Western Hemisphere, which provides jobs in fishing, tourism and other industries which feed the lifeblood of the economy, Belize has long been acutely aware of the need to protect its marine resources from both human and natural activities.

However, there has been a recent decline in the production and export of marine products including conch, lobster, and fish, even as tourism figures continue to increase.“What happens on the land will eventually reach the sea, via our rivers." -- Dr. Kenrick Leslie

The decline is not helped by overfishing and the harvest of immature conch and lobster outside of the standard fishing season. But the primary reason for less conch and lobster in Belize’s waters, according to local experts, is excess ocean acidity which is making it difficult for popular crustacean species such as conch and lobster, which depend on their hard, spiny shells to survive, to grow and mature.

According to the executive director of the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (CCCCC), Dr. Kenrick Leslie, acidification is as important and as detrimental to the sustainability of the Barrier Reef and the ocean generally as warming of the atmosphere and other factors generally associated with climate change.

Carbon dioxide which is emitted in the atmosphere from greenhouse gases is absorbed into the ocean as carbonic acid, which interacts with the calcium present in the shells of conch and lobster to form calcium carbonate, dissolving those shells and reducing their numbers. Belize also faces continuous difficulties with coral bleaching, which has attacked several key sections of the reef in recent years.

Dr. Leslie told IPS that activities on Belize’s terrestrial land mass are also contributing to the problems under Belize’s waters. “What happens on the land will eventually reach the sea, via our rivers,” he noted.

To fight these new problems, there is need for more research and accurate, up to the minute data.

Last month, the European Union (EU), as part of its Global Climate Change Alliance Caribbean Support Project handed over to the government of Belize and specifically the Ministry of Forestry, Fisheries and Sustainable Development for its continued usage a Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS) buoy based at South Water Caye off the Stann Creek District in southern Belize.

Developed by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), it has been adopted by the CCCCC as a centrepiece of the effort to obtain reliable data as a basis for strategies for fighting climate change.

Dr. Leslie says the CREWS system represents a leap forward in research technology on climate change. The humble buoy hosts several instruments designed to measure conditions above and below the water, and keep track of these developing threats. The data collected on atmospheric and oceanic conditions such as oceanic turbidity, levels of carbon dioxide and other harmful elements and others are monitored from the Centre’s office in Belmopan and the data sent along to international scientists who can more concretely analyse it.

The South Water Caye CREWS station is one of two in Belize; the other is located at the University of Belize’s Environmental Research Institute (ERI) on Calabash Caye in the Turneffe Atoll range. Other stations are located in Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican Republic, with more planned in other key areas.

According to the CEO of the Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute (CZMAI), Vincent Gillet, this is an example of the kind of work that needs to be done to keep the coastal zone healthy and safeguard resources for Belize’s future generations.

A report released at the start of Coastal Awareness Week in Belize City urges greater awareness of the effects of climate change and the participation of the local managers of the coastal zone in a policy to combat those effects. Several recommendations were made, including empowering the Authority with more legislative heft, revising the land distribution policy and bringing more people into the discussion.

“We need to be a little more…conscious of climate change and the impacts that it has,” Gillett said. He added further that the Authority expects and has the government’s support in terms of facilitation, if not necessarily in needed finance.

The report was the work of over 30 local and international scientists who contributed to and prepared it.

In receiving the CREWS equipment, the Ministry’s CEO, Dr. Adele Catzim-Sanchez, sought to remind that the problem of climate change is real and unless it is addressed, Belizeans may be contributing to their own demise.

The European Union’s Ambassador to Belize, Paola Amadei, reported that the Union may soon be able to offer even more help with the planned negotiations in Paris, France, in 2015 for a global initiative on climate change, with emphasis on smaller states. Belize already benefits from separate but concurrent projects, the latter of which aims to give Belize a sustainable development plan and specific strategy to address climate change.

In addition, Dr. Leslie is pushing for even more monitoring equipment, including current metres to study the effect of terrestrial activity such as mining and construction material gathering as well as deforestation on the sea, where the residue of such activities inevitably ends up.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Solar-powered lights have been installed along the road to the VC Bird International Airport in Antigua. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Jan 28 2014 (IPS)

Despite having an abundance of wind and sunshine, Caribbean countries have found that going green is requiring significant shifts in policy, and most importantly, significant financing.

But despite these challenges, they are not daunted. Barbados, for instance, which spends an estimated 400 million dollars annually on fossil fuel imports, has announced plans for a wind, gas and solar energy programme that requires almost one billion dollars in investments.“The cost of renewables has fallen significantly and [they] are now for the most part cost competitive with traditional sources of energy." -- Selwin Hart

“Plans for the area include a 680-million-dollar waste-to-energy plant; a leachate treatment plant costing about 31.9 million dollars; a landfill gas-to-energy project to cost 9.4 million dollars; a solar project costing 120 million dollars; and a wind-to-energy facility projected to cost 24 million dollars,” said Environment Minister Dr. Denis Lowe.

The climate change financial adviser at the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), Selwin Hart, said the region’s premiere financial institution has identified the promotion of renewable energy and increased energy efficiency as a strategic priority.

“The bank is in the process of developing an energy sector strategy and policy which will be finalised in 2014,” he told IPS.

“[But] we are not waiting until that policy is finalised for us to make the necessary interventions within borrowing member countries giving the priority and urgency attached to making these investments,” Hart noted.

“We will be supporting the policy and regulatory reforms that are necessary to ensure the deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency technology.”

Citing the region’s “vulnerability to the negative effects of climate change”, Hart said the Caribbean must be in a position to secure some of the financing needed to help it cope, adapt and reduce vulnerabilities to the serious fall-out from the phenomenon.

“We are extremely vulnerable when it comes to the consequences of climate change and we must do everything to receive our fair share of the resources being made available,” he said.

Hart told IPS global investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency have quadrupled over the last decade and now stand at 244 billion dollars a year.

“The cost of renewables, and using solar, as an example, have fallen significantly and are now for the most part cost competitive with traditional sources of energy,” he said.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) in its World Energy Outlook 2013 conservatively estimated that by 2035, renewables will surpass coal as the main fuel for power generation.

In 2012, another Caribbean country, Belize, which currently generates 63 percent of its electricity from renewable energy sources, announced plans for a National Energy Policy and a Sustainable Energy Strategy.

“We have ambitious targets. We have set ourselves to change from fossil fuel to renewable energy and at the same time decrease our energy intensity,” Energy Minister Joy Grant told IPS.

“We are pursuing all types of renewable energy – hydro, bio energy, solar, ocean, thermal and wind and waste-to-energy,” Grant added.

But like all other small developing countries, Grant said Belize’s efforts in renewable energy were constrained by the high cost of renewable technologies; the lack of domestic capacity; inappropriate frameworks to incentivise the private sector to invest in renewable energy; and small population size.

Dominica’s Energy Minister Rayburn Blackmore said that 30 percent of his country’s energy consumption comes from hydro, and last year it spent 51.6 million dollars to import fuel for energy generation.

“The consumer pays over 30 percent of that in what is being called fuel surcharge. The consumer pays an average of 1.17 dollars per kilowatt hour,” he told IPS.

“From our standpoint in Dominica, we believe as a government and as a people that we must do something, once and for all,” he said.

Blackmore said Dominica was now moving into geothermal production with the hope of cutting the price of electricity to the consumer by 40 percent in the first instance when a 15MW power plant now being constructed is rolled out.

“Our ultimate goal of geothermal production we will also be contributing to the global effort to combat climate change,” he said.

The programme manager for Energy at the Guyana-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretariat, Joseph Williams, agreed that the cost of energy is just too prohibitive to achieve the economic growth and poverty reduction needed in the region.

“When one looks at the problems currently faced by the Caribbean it is important to note that the cost of electricity is two to three times that of other countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region,” Williams said, adding that this “represents a tremendous drag, not only on the ordinary household but on businesses and commercial activity within our region.”

Opposition legislator Gaston Browne told IPS Antigua and Barbuda presently has the highest cost of electricity in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), exclusive of taxes, even though it uses cheaper heavy fuel.

“We also have the worst ratio of fossil fuel generation versus renewables in the OECS,” he said.

Browne wants to see a diversification into renewable energy “with a view of having 25 percent renewable energy” within five years.

He told IPS his Antigua Labour Party would modernise the Antigua Public Utilities Authority “into a more efficient entity, thereby reducing the burden that unreasonably high cost of energy imposes on industry, commerce and residential consumers” when compared to Antigua’s OECS neighbours.

In August 2013, Antigua began the installation of solar-powered lights in the east of the island.

A government statement said the lights were intended to serve as a practical demonstration of the use of the nation’s renewable energy resources.

The CARICOM Energy Programme was established in April 2008 within the Directorate of Trade and Economic Integration to provide greater focus on energy matters in CARICOM towards development of the energy sector in the region.

Williams said the Caribbean is on the right track, putting in place a CARICOM Energy Policy and establishing targets for renewable energy in the electricity sector, while a number of the countries have advanced the whole question of policy at the national level.

“It has taken some time but we are making progress,” he told IPS.

St. Kitts (pictured here) and its northern neighbour Jamaica are increasing their energy efficiency with solar streetlights. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Peter Richards
BELMOPAN, Belize, Aug 23 2013 (IPS)

Every year, the Caribbean’s electric sector burns through approximately 30 million barrels of fuel. Overall, the region imports in excess of 170 million barrels of petroleum products annually.

Dr. Al Binger, technical coordinator for the recently launched multi-million-dollar Energy for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Caribbean Buildings Project, said that the region must now focus on ways to reduce the amount of fuel used to generate electricity, and in the process save millions of dollars.

He told IPS that building modifications, such as replacing windows and doors, installing solar water heaters and other retrofitting activities, are among the major components of the EDS project, which he hopes will eventually be embraced by all 15 members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

“Improving the efficiency of energy use in the building sector is a project priority. We’re looking for a 10 to 15-percent improvement across the whole electricity sector in this pilot project, which means we could save the equivalent of about 400,000 dollars per year for the pilot project [in five countries]. So you see, energy efficiency pays back quickly. It’s a good investment,” he told IPS.

Belize will be the first to begin implementation of the ESD project, which seeks to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent in the near term and increase the use of renewable energy.

Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago are next in line to participate in the four-year, 12.4-million-dollar project that was launched by the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) this week.

“The participating countries expressed interest in collaborating, which is exceptional as countries usually do these activities individually,” said the CCCCC in a release, noting that each country will establish a national steering committee, a project manager and an executing agency.

The centre says the EDS project will do a range of things to support the Implementation Plan, the landmark policy document that guides the Caribbean’s climate change response. This includes boosting capacity to perform audits, introducing new building codes, labelling appliances as energy-savers, and creating best practices for how the private sector can reduce its energy consumption.

A major focus is resilience, and helping economies adapt to new weather conditions.

Binger noted that Jamaica, for example, had to give up its banana industry after 100 years because it became unsustainable due in part to climatic changes.

“Jamaica built an entire railroad just to grow banana… So the Implementation Plan is about the economy of tomorrow, what will it look like, and that starts with the energy sector,” he said.

Earlier this month, the architect Brian Bernal, addressing a workshop hosted by the Jamaica Institute of Architects in association with the Caribbean Architecture Students Association of the University of Technology (UTECH), said that overhauling the island’s energy use profile would not be enough to protect it from rising sea levels, increased air temperature and more intense storms and hurricanes.

He argued that the effort has to be coupled with a deliberate move to ensure that buildings can withstand the anticipated shocks.

“We need to change the way we use energy resources to reduce our CO2 emissions, while simultaneously increasing our ability to resist the effects of climate change,” Bernal said.

“Robust and enforced building codes are highly effective in ensuring a better quality of building and when employed in conjunction with green building standards or practices will significantly increase the functional resilience of our buildings,” said Bernal, whose company serves as the lead consultant of the multi-disciplinary team for the “Build Better Jamaica — Developing Design Concepts for Climate Change Resilient Buildings project”.

That project is sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Institute of Sustainable Development and is aimed at helping Caribbean countries prepare for climate change, particularly in the design and construction of buildings that are more resilient to disasters, but which do not compromise the natural environment.

The CCCCC said that the main aims of the ESD project, the “first regional project of its kind in CARICOM”, are to increase the number of successful commercial applications of energy efficiency and conservation in buildings as well as expand the market for renewable energy technology applications for power generation.

“We will be primarily using photovoltaics, [and] some wind energy to a lesser extent,” said Binger.

At a 2010 Caribbean conference, the Climate Studies Group at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica, noted that small-scale wind for domestic use offers an advantage over total reliance on grid-supplied electricity if net metering is allowed and also for standalone systems where the wind is fairly consistent.