Forest cover on the east of Saint Lucia. Forests and trees play a significant role in poverty alleviation and ultimately, eradication. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
NEW YORK, United States, Oct 15 2020 (IPS)

With extreme poverty (living on $1.90 a day) projected to rise for the first time in over 20 years, a new study has concluded that global poverty eradication efforts could be futile in the absence of forests and trees.

Twenty-one scientists and over 40 contributing authors spent the last two years studying the role of forests and trees in poverty alleviation and ultimately, eradication.  The Global Forest Expert Panel issued its findings on Oct. 15, in a report titled, “Forests, Trees and the Eradication of Poverty: Potential and Limitations”.

The report comes amid two global challenges that are disproportionately impacting the poor and vulnerable – the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. According to the United Nations, 71 million people are expected to be pushed back into extreme poverty in 2020, a major threat to Sustainable Development Goal 1, ending poverty in all its forms, everywhere.

Lead researcher and chair of the International Union of Forest Research Organisations Professor Daniel C. Miller told IPS that while forests and trees can help the severe losses at the intersection of climate change, zoonotic disease outbreaks and poverty alleviation, they continue to be overlooked in mainstream policy discourse.

“A quarter of the world’s population lives in or near a forest and trees actively contribute to human well-being, particularly the most vulnerable among us. This research hopes to bring to light the available scientific evidence on how forests have contributed to poverty alleviation and translate it in a way that is accessible to policy makers,” he said.

Globally forests are a vital source of food, fuel and ecotourism services. They also help to conserve water and soil resources and boast climate change mitigating properties such as carbon sequestration, the process of absorbing and storing carbon.

The report states that the rural poor need forests for subsistence and income generation, but in one of its chief findings, reported that inequality in the distribution of forest benefits continues to hurt the vulnerable. 

“To illustrate, in large scale logging on indigenous lands or where marginalised people live, timber is the most valuable forest product, yet that value is often not accrued to the people who have to deal with the aftermath of not having forests anymore,” said Miller.

The researchers are hoping that the report can help to inform policy on issues such as equitable and sustainable forest use and conservation. Along with their findings, they have prepared a policy brief for lawmakers. That document takes a multi-dimensional look at poverty, assessing both the monetary value of forests and tree resources and their impact on human well-being, health and safety.

For two small islands in the Eastern Caribbean, the report’s findings complement ongoing sustainable forestry for poverty alleviation programs. In 2o16, Saint Lucia, which boasts 25,000 acres of forest or 38 percent of its land area, launched a 10-year forest protection plan. The country’s most senior forester Alwin Dornelly told IPS that this document was ahead of its time, as Saint Lucia’s is well in keeping with some of the report’s major recommendations.

“We simply cannot do without our forests. 85 percent of our country’s water sources are in the forests. Our fresh water supply depends on the trees. The plan underscores forest protection for lives and livelihoods; from charcoal for fire and timber for furniture to agricultural produce for household use and for sale by residents of rural communities. Sustainable use of forest resources is a hallmark of this plan,” he said.

The forestry department monitors the country’ eco-trails, popular with nature tourists who take part in camping, hiking and bird watching, activities that create employment for nearby residents and based on the sustainable forest livelihoods component of the 10-year plan. According to the global report ecotourism activities are among the practices that may lead to greater equity in forest benefits.

The report is also a morale booster for forestry officials on the island of Dominica, who are celebrating reforestation gains. Known for its lush, green vegetation, forests carpet 60 percent of the island and its Morne Trois Piton National Park is a U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site. It has taken just over three years, but the country has recovered the almost one-third of forest coverage destroyed by Hurricane Maria in 2017.

“Dominicans have the right to reap the benefits of sustainable forest resources. We suffered 90 percent defoliage after the 2017 hurricane and 33 percent forest destruction. We are thankful for both natural regeneration and our national tree planting initiative. We have eight community plant nurseries and propagation centres for sustained reforestation – nurseries we hope turn handover for community ownership. We understand that forest loss is livelihood loss, especially for those in rural areas,” the country’s forestry chief Michinton Burton told IPS.

The English-speaking Caribbean is not wildly cited in the study, something Miller says falls under its ‘limitations’ segment, adding that more research is needed on smaller islands. The forest experts who spoke to IPS, however, say the report’s warnings, calls to action and findings are instructive for policy makers globally.

The researchers have made it clear that forests and trees are not a cure-all for poverty but are essential to the overall solution. With health experts predicting future pandemics due to ecological degradation and climate scientists warning that the Caribbean will experience more intense hurricanes like Maria, the report states that these challenging times call for a rethink of current poverty eradication measures. It adds that the ability of forests and trees to positively impact lives, health and livelihoods must be a central part of discussions to lift people out of poverty, particularly in rural settings.

The report was launched ahead of this year’s observance of International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, World Food Day and the International Day of Rural Women – three important days on the U.N. calendar that promote sustainable livelihoods, food security and poverty eradication.

Excerpt:

The island nation of Dominica, once know as a modern-day Garden of Eden, was ravaged by Hurricane Maria in September 2017. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Dec 4 2017 (IPS)

McCarthy Marie has been living in the Fond Cani community, a few kilometres east of the Dominica capital Roseau, for 38 years. The 68-year-old economist moved to the area in 1979 following the decimation of the island by Hurricane David.

But even though David was such a destructive hurricane, Marie told IPS that when Hurricane Maria hit the island in September, islanders witnessed something they had never seen before.“How many of the countries that continue to pollute the planet had to suffer a loss of 224 percent of their GDP this year?” --Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit

“The entire city of Roseau was completely flooded,” Marie told IPS. “There is a major river flowing through the centre of the city. The river rose pretty quickly and that was compounded by the fact that we have five bridges crossing the river and a couple of those bridges, especially those we built more recently, were definitely built too low so they presented a barrier to the river and prevented the water from flowing into the sea as it would otherwise have done.”

Hurricane Maria, a category five storm with sustained winds reaching 180 miles an hour, battered the Caribbean nation for several hours between Sep. 18-19. It left 27 people dead and as many missing, and nearly 90 percent of the structures on the island damaged or destroyed.

Marie said Dominicans have been talking a lot about climate change for quite some time, but the island was not fully prepared for its impacts.

And while Dominicans in general have not been building with monster hurricanes like Maria in mind, Marie said he took an extraordinary step following his experience with Hurricane David.

“I prepared for hurricanes by building my hurricane bunker in 1989 when I built my house. When the storm [Maria] started to get serious, we went into the bunker and we stayed there for the duration of the storm,” he said.

“I have been seeing more and more buildings going up that have concrete roofs but it’s not the standard by far. The usual standard is a house made of concrete and steel with a timber roof. So, most of the houses, the damage they suffered was that the timber roof got taken off and then water got inside the house and damaged all their stuff.

“We need to build houses that can withstand the wind, but the wind is not so much of a big problem. Our big problem is dealing with the amount of water and flooding that we are going to have,” Marie explained.

Like Marie, Bernard Wiltshire, who is a former attorney general here, believes Dominica is big on talk about climate change but the rhetoric does not translate into tangible action on building resilience.

He cited the level of devastation in several countries in the Caribbean over the last hurricane season.

“We certainly did not act fast enough in Dominica, we know that. And from looking at what happened in Puerto Rico and in Antigua and Barbuda, I didn’t see any evidence that we have really come to grips with what is required to make us more resilient in the face of those conditions that are going to confront us,” Wiltshire said.

“It brings us to the question how do we make ourselves more resilient, what do we do? I would say we have to look not just to the question of making buildings stronger and more rigid, but we also have to look at ways in which the community is made more resilient; our pattern of production and consumption, we’ve got really to reorient our society to eliminate the causes that prevent those communities from being able to withstand the effects of these disasters.”

Dominica acts as a microcosm of the climate change threat to the world, and the island’s prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, has called for millions of dollars of assistance so the country can build the world’s first climate-resilient nation.

“How many of the countries that continue to pollute the planet had to suffer a loss of 224 percent of their GDP this year?” asked Skerrit.

“We have been put on the front line by others. We were the guardians of nature, 60 percent of Dominica is covered by protected rain forests and has been so long before climate change,” he said.

The island’s Gross Domestic Product has been decimated, wiped out due to severe damage to the agriculture, tourism and housing sectors.

It is the second consecutive year that all 72,000 people living on Dominica have been affected by disasters.

Skerrit is convinced that the only way to reduce the number of people affected by future severe weather is to build back better to a standard that can withstand the rainfall, wind intensity and degree of storm surge which they can now expect from tropical storms in the age of climate change.

As Dominica seeks to become the world’s first climate-resilient nation, Skerrit said they cannot do this alone and need international cooperation.

But Wiltshire said Caribbean countries must shoulder some of the blame for climate change.

“I don’t want us in the Caribbean simply to point fingers at the bigger countries and completely ignore our own role. There is a problem I think, in our islands, if not causing climate change, in contributing to the degree of damage that is actually done, the severity of these disasters,” Wiltshire said.

“In Dominica for example, one of the most obvious things was the deluge of debris from the hillsides, from the interior of the country, carried by the rivers down to the coast. It is up there where we have unplanned use of the land, building of roads, the construction of houses without a proper planning regime. So, we ourselves have a role to play in this where for example we are giving away our wetlands and draining them for hotel construction,” he added.

Head of the Caribbean Climate Group Professor Michael Taylor said climate change is happening now and Caribbean residents no longer have the luxury to see it as an isolated event or a future threat.

“I think the first thing that we have to think about is how in the Caribbean are we really perceiving climate change and not necessarily only at the government level but at the individual level, at the community level,” he said.

“Do we perceive climate change as something that is an event or are we beginning to recognise that climate change for us in the Caribbean is a developmental issue? We have to begin to see that climate change is interwoven into every aspect of our lives and it impacts us daily. It’s where you get your water from, the quality of your roads. Until we begin to realise that climate change is interwoven into life then we will always be almost with our foot on the backburner, always trying to catch up.

“We do have resource constraints within the region, we do have other pressing issues which sometimes tend to cloud over both at the community level going right up to the government level, but I think climate has put itself on the forefront of the agenda and that said, we need now to mainstream climate into the very short-term planning and at all levels of community going right up through government and even regional entities,” Taylor added. 

This article is part of a series about the activists and communities of the Pacific and small island states who are responding to the effects of climate change. Leaders from climate and social justice movements from around the world will meet in Suva, Fiji from 4-8 December for International Civil Society Week.

A tree felled by the outer bands of Hurricane Maria in Antigua. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ST JOHN’S, Antigua, Sep 20 2017 (IPS)

As Hurricane Maria continues to barrel its way across the Caribbean, details are slowly emerging of the number of deaths and the extent of the devastation left in its wake in Dominica.

Maria made landfall on the tiny island of 72,000 on the evening of Sept. 18 with maximum sustained winds of nearly 160 miles per hour.“Our governments must redouble their determination to confront the naysayers of climate change, however big and powerful they may be." --Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Lester Bird

Hartley Henry, Principal Advisor to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, said he had spoken with the prime minister early this morning via satellite phone.

“It’s difficult to determine the level of fatalities but so far seven are confirmed, as a direct result of the hurricane,” Henry said in a message. “That figure, the Prime Minister fears, will rise as he wades his way into the rural communities today, Wednesday. The urgent needs now are roofing materials for shelters, bedding supplies for hundreds stranded in or outside what’s left of their homes and food and water drops for residents of outlying districts inaccessible at the moment.

“The country is in a daze – no electricity, no running water – as a result of uprooted pipes in most communities and definitely to landline or cellphone services on island, and that will be for quite a while.

“In summary, the island has been devastated. The housing stock significantly damaged or destroyed. All available public buildings are being used as shelters; with very limited roofing materials evident. The country needs the support and continued help and prayers of all.”

In a Facebook message a few hours after Maria’s arrival, Skerrit said the island’s immediate priority was to rescue people who were trapped and provide medical care to the injured.

“I am honestly not preoccupied with physical damage at this time, because it is devastating… indeed, mind-boggling,” Skerrit said.

The Prime Minister had earlier posted that roofs were being torn off everywhere by the powerful storm’s winds. He himself had to be rescued from his official residence.

Following Skerrit’s social media posts, everything went silent. Communication with Dominica since then has been close to impossible.

According to Henry, “Little contact has been made with the outer communities but persons who walked 10 and 15 miles towards the city of Roseau from various outer districts report total destruction of homes, some roadways and crops.

“Urgent helicopter services are needed to take food, water and tarpaulins to outer districts for shelter. Canefield airport can accommodate helicopter landings and it is expected that from today, the waters around the main Roseau port will be calm enough to accommodate vessels bringing relief supplies and other forms of assistance.”

Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne said Wednesday, “The last I’ve heard, which would have been this morning, is that there is widespread damage to property, there has been up to seven fatalities so far. I understand that there are some remote areas that they have been unable to get to.

“They are asking for supplies including tarpaulin, water, food cots. As you know, in the case of Antigua and Barbuda, we have some supplies here. We are awaiting the all-clear so that a chopper that we have on stand-by could fly into Dominica. They have not given any landing permission yet so we are just waiting to hear from them.

Browne added that he spoke with Skerrit the night of the hurricane until after he lost his roof.

Dominica was still in the recovery phase following Tropical Storm Erika which hit the island on Aug. 27, 2015, killing more than two dozen people, leaving nearly 600 homeless and wreaked damages totalling more than a billion dollars.

That storm dumped 15 inches of rain on the mountainous island, caused floods and mudslides and set the country back 20 years, according to Skerrit. The island was inadequately prepared for a storm such as Erika. Many roads and bridges were simply not robust enough to withstand such high volumes of water.

In a national address shortly following the storm, Skerrit said that hundreds of homes, bridges and roads had been destroyed and millions of dollars in financial aid were needed to help the country bounce back.

“In order to get back to where we were before Tropical Storm Erika struck, we have to source at least 88.2 million dollars for the productive sector, 334.55 million for infrastructure and 60.09 million for the social sectors,” Skerrit said.

Skerrit and his counterparts in the Caribbean have long argued that large industrialized nations are to blame for the drastic change in the climate and the more frequent and stronger hurricanes being witnessed in region.

“Climate change is real.  We are the victims of climate change because of the profligacy in the use of fossil fuels by the large industrialized nations,” Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister Gaston Browne told IPS on his way to the 72^nd General Assembly of the United Nations in New York.

“These nations, that have contributed to global warming and sea level rise, have an obligation to assist in the rebuilding of these islands. The funds required to rebuild is beyond their means and I join the clarion call of Sir Richard Branson, for a Marshall plan to rebuild the islands.

“Our common humanity, as citizens of a common space, called planet earth mandates a spirit of empathy and cooperation among all nations, large and small,” Browne told IPS.

Just over a week earlier, Browne’s own country Antigua and Barbuda suffered a similar fate as Dominica when Hurricane Irma decimated Barbuda, the smaller island of the twin-island nation.

A powerful Hurricane Irma, churned its way across the tiny island, killing a two-year-old child and leaving millions of dollars in damages.

When Irma’s core slammed into Barbuda, its maximum sustained winds were 185-mph, well above the 157-mph threshold of a Category 5 storm.

Browne estimates that it will take up to 300 million dollars to rebuild Barbuda, home to 1,800 people. All of the island’s inhabitants had to be evacuated to mainland Antigua after the hurricane.

At the time, Irma was one of three hurricanes in the Atlantic basin, the first time since 2010 that three active hurricanes have been in the Atlantic, according to reports.

“The whole idea is to deal with this Barbuda situation and to speak to the issue of climate change,” Browne said of his attendance at the United Nations General Assembly.

“I don’t think they care,” Browne said when asked if he believed the United States in particularly would be listening very carefully to what he has to say.

“But we have an obligation at the same time to advocate on what is clearly an existential threat, one of the most significant threats facing the planet. And no matter what they think, I know that America think that their interest is first, second, third until they get to last but we have a common humanity, we all occupy a planet called Earth and as far as we are concerned we are all inter-dependent on each other and perhaps sooner than later they will come to that reality,” Browne said.

During a special sitting of Parliament to discuss the devastation caused by Hurricane Irma on Barbuda, former Antigua and Barbuda prime minister Lester Bird said it’s time the “naysayers of climate change” wake up and face reality.

“Our governments must redouble their determination to confront the naysayers of climate change, however big and powerful they may be, even when we have a President of the United States, who should really be chastised for withdrawing the United States from [the Paris Climate Agreement],” Bird said.

Although the United States remains part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in June this year President Donald Trump ceased all implementation of the non-binding Paris accord.

That includes contributions to the United Nations Green Climate Fund (to help poorer countries to adapt to climate change and expand clean energy) and reporting on carbon data (though that is required in the US by domestic regulations anyway).

“Hurricane Irma nails the lie to all who claim that climate change and global warming are fantasies,” said Bird, who served as the second prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, from 1994 to 2004.

“The increased heat of the sea fed Irma’s size and intensity. The world has never witnessed a hurricane of the strength and size of Irma when it stormed through Barbuda leaving destruction and devastation in its path. Little Barbuda stood no chance against such a gigantic force,” Bird said.

“That is why I urge the government to continue to fight in the international community for mitigation against climate change and for the means to build up resilience in our island states; not just Barbuda but all of the island states that are low level.

“The prospect of climate change could even bring Tsunamis and undermine the existence of these islands as is demonstrated in Barbuda,” Bird added.

Meantime, Bird said Caribbean civilization is under threat because of climate change.

“Barbuda now lies prostrate, dispirited and depressed, a mangled wreck as the Prime Minister [Gaston Browne] has said. It is positive proof that the very existence of our civilization is now under deadly threat,” Bird said.

“This is the first time since the 18^th century that there is no human person legally living on Barbuda. Over 300 years of human habitation has been abruptly interrupted. That must not be the fate of our island communities. Our heritage, our civilization, our identity depends on it.”

Hurricane Maria is the third in a string of devastating hurricanes to sweep through the region in recent weeks.

Some 42 deaths have been blamed on Hurricane Irma which has decimated many countries in the Caribbean including Anguilla, British Virgin Islands and the Dutch and French island of St. Maarten / St. Martin.

Dominica says it plans to establish a small geothermal plant despite a few “hiccups’’ with investors. Credit: Charles Jong

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Sep 6 2017 (IPS)

The tiny Caribbean island of Dominica has moved one step closer to its dream of constructing a geothermal plant, a project that is expected to reduce the country’s dependence on fossil fuels.

The Dominica government is contributing 40.5 million dollars towards the project and has been seeking to raise the additional funds from various sources.The road towards geothermal has been a long and arduous, not only for Dominica but also its Caribbean neighbours.

“In addition to government’s contribution we have secured all the funds required to construct the plant from our development partners,” Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said, noting that the funding will include EC$30 million from Britain, EC$5.4 million from New Zealand and also EC$5.4 million from SIDS DOCK.

SIDS DOCK is an initiative among member countries of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) to provide the Small Island Developing States with a collective institutional mechanism to assist them transform their national energy sectors into a catalyst for sustainable economic development and help generate financial resources to address adaptation to climate change.

It is called SIDS DOCK because it is designed as a “DOCKing station,” to connect the energy sector in SIDS with the global market for finance, sustainable energy technologies and with the European Union (EU) and the United States (US) carbon markets, and able to trade the avoided carbon emissions in those markets. Estimates place the potential value of the US and EU markets between 100 to 400 billion dollars annually.

Skerrit noted that the environmental and social impact assessment for the geothermal project is ongoing in the Roseau valley.

“Every effort will be made to ensure that adverse impacts on the communities and the environment will be mitigated,” he said, adding that land owners in the area can also expect to be compensated for use of their property and support will be provided to residents who occupy lands to ensure that they are not left worst off.

The designs for the plant are progressing and should be completed by the third quarter of 2017.

“Once the plant has been commissioned, the DGDC will sell power to DOMLEC (Dominica Electricity Company) to be distributed throughout the country.

“So far, I have been advised, that based on the regulations of the Independent Regulatory Commission (IRC) DOMLEC must pass on the lower tariff to the consumer. That is to say DOMLEC is not allowed to add to the cost at which the power will be sold. This will ensure that the lower cost of electricity from geothermal will pass through to the consumers of our country,” Skerrit said, adding that negotiations are ongoing with DOMLEC to finalize the terms of the power purchase agreement.

Dominica has also applied for grant funding from the United Arab Emirates Caribbean Renewable Energy Fund and is expecting between EC$8.1 million and EC$13.5 million to fund a battery storage system to be used on the national electricity grid.

Skerrit said funding for this project will also be obtained from the World Bank in the form of a loan of EC$16.2 million at a highly concessionary rate of 0.75 per cent with a 10-year grace period and 44-year repayment plan.

“We have invested millions thus far,” Skerrit said, adding he is confident citizens “all look forward to the significant reduction in the cost of energy that will follow”.

He said the development of the plant “will be a positive impact on businesses and this should also stimulate investments by others establishing new businesses”.

The road towards geothermal has been a long and arduous, not only for Dominica but also Caribbean neighbours St. Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Last December, Energy Minister Ian Douglas said Dominica was moving closer to harnessing geothermal energy.

He said the Dominica Geothermal Company had been registered, and planning of the power plant is progressing.

“We are moving ever closer to the vision of realizing power from our geothermal resources. The Dominica Geothermal Company has been duly registered, and plans for the construction of the power plant are progressing satisfactorily,” he stated.

This follows a decision made by the government to run the geothermal project as a company solely owned by the government and people of Dominica.

Earlier this year, the St. Lucia-based Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission said financing and government policy had been identified as the major challenges to the development of geothermal energy in the Eastern Caribbean.

A survey, conducted by the Energy Unit of the OECS Commission, gathered the views of 86 people involved in geothermal energy, half of whom were based in the OECS region.

The respondents of the survey were geothermal stakeholders working with or with an interest in geothermal energy in the nine-member sub-region.

According to the OECS Commission, most of the respondents (82 percent) were employees of government or utility companies pursuing geothermal energy initiatives.

With respect to non-OECS respondents, almost 50 percent were private sector geothermal experts with past experience working on geothermal projects.

“There was clear consensus amongst all survey participants that finance and government policy are the main challenges to geothermal energy development in the region. These were followed closely by competition from other energy sources, and technological issues,’ the Commission said.

It said the majority of survey participants would like to see the establishment of a regional mechanism to support geothermal development in the region.

“The geothermal stakeholders are convinced that such a mechanism would be beneficial to the industry, especially as it relates to policy, legislation, and regulations.”

The Commission noted that all countries of the Eastern Caribbean are almost totally dependent on imported fossil fuels, despite their significant potential for renewable energy such as solar, hydro, wind, and geothermal.

In recent years geothermal energy has emerged as a priority for the OECS region. Currently, seven of the ten OECS member states are working towards the development of their geothermal resources. The scientific evidence shows a strong potential for development as countries continue to assess and quantify their geothermal potential.

The Bouillante geothermal plant on the French island of Guadeloupe is the only geothermal power plant currently operating in the Caribbean. It’s been operating since 1986 and currently provides about six percent of the electricity in Guadeloupe.

A poorly constructed house in Gelée, Les Cayes, Haiti is further damaged by trees that fell during the passage of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. A senior Caribbean diplomat assigned to the European Union says climate change events are preventing many Caribbean countries from moving up the development ladder. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jul 14 2017 (IPS)

With Antigua and Barbuda joining St. Kitts and Nevis as the two eastern Caribbean nations to attain middle-income country status, a senior diplomat has identified climate change as a major factor preventing other nations in the grouping from taking the same step forward.

According to the World Bank, a middle-income economy is one with a gross national income per capita of between 1,026 and 12,475 dollars in 2016, calculated according to the Atlas method — a formula used by the World Bank to estimate the size of economies in terms of gross national income in U.S. dollars."Those who are indigent, they would enter...an avenue in Dante’s Hell which is indescribable. So that is the real story.” --Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves

“What I do want to say is that the other countries, the independent ones in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) like Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent, all of them are exposed to climate events annually and the climate events are devastating for us and you could have situations where 90 per cent of our GDP is wiped out in 22 hours, 23 hours, 15 hours, depending on how long a tropical storm sits on you,” says Sharlene Shillingford-McKlmon, chargé d’affaires at the Eastern Caribbean States Embassy to Belgium and Mission to the European Union

She was speaking to Caribbean journalists on a tour of the European Union Headquarters as part of activities to mark the 40th anniversary of the European Union Mission to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.

Shillingford-McKlmon’s comments came as she spoke to some of the developmental challenges affecting OECS nations and the response options available to them.

Between Dec. 23 and 24, 2013, Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia began reporting heavy rain with accumulations over that 12- to 24-hour period recorded at 406 mm in St. Lucia, 156 mm in Dominica, and 109 mm in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The heavy rains were associated with a low-level trough system, and with the traditional hurricane having ended almost a month earlier, many residents had dismissed the rains as just another tropical downpour.

However, by the time the hours-long downpour subsided in St. Vincent and the Grenadines around 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve, nine people were confirmed dead, three were missing and presumed dead, and 37 were injured.

Over 500 people were affected, of which 222 had to be provided with emergency shelter, while 278 took refuge with family, friends and neighbours.

The Caribbean Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA) said that sectoral damage assessment estimated that 495 houses were damaged/destroyed; over 98 acres of crops damaged; 28 bridges damaged/destroyed; and the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital suffered major losses.

The total damage/losses and cost of clean-up operations were estimated at 58.44 million dollars — some 17 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product wiped out in a matter of hours.

In St. Lucia, there were six confirmed deaths related to the weather system and an estimated 1,050 persons were severely affected.

In Dominica, an estimated 106 households in approximately 12 communities were affected by the Christmas Eve weather system.

And, just over 18 months later, Dominica would be struck by yet another weather system, this time by Tropical Storm Erika on Aug. 24, 2015, which left at least 20 persons dead, and a number of other missing.

The storm also rendered 574 persons homeless and resulted in the evacuation of 1,034 others due to the unsafe conditions in their communities.

Damage and losses were estimated at EC$1.3 billion or 90 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

In noting the impact of these weather system on OECS nations, Shillingford-McKlmon pointed out that previously, it was only when a hurricane struck that the Caribbean saw such levels of destruction.

“Now, we have to be concerned about a tropical storm, because you really don’t know what is going to happen. And what has happened is that with respect to graduation from middle- to high-income status, if you do not retain your GDP per capita level for three years in a row, you can’t graduate — and it is really sad to say that some of our countries, the only reason they have not graduated to higher income status, where we receive less help, less official development assistance, less concessionary loans, is because of a storm or hurricane comes and devastates us.”

She said such a position puts Caribbean nations in a quagmire, because they want to be proud of the development they have achieved. However, at the same time, once they graduate to high-come countries status, one climate event can wipe out all those gains even as the countries would no longer qualify for official development assistance.

“You are going to lose financing and at the same time you don’t want to be hit by a hurricane, you don’t want to be in a situation where … if a hurricane comes and something happens, I may not graduate because I lose my GDP. Who wants to be in that position? What an awful place to be.”

Shillingford-McKlmon said that currently, OECS nations do not have an alternative with respect to the criteria for graduation but are having that conversation with the European Union and other development partners.

“A country will graduate when its GDP per capita remains at a certain level for a three-year period and then it will move from one category to another. And so what we are doing, we are arguing this at the European Commission level and they’ve begun to have discussion with us that give us the impression that they are willing to consider new criteria or alternate criteria for graduation,” she said.

The diplomat argued that with the severe impact of climate events on OECS economies, “GDP per capita is not a full and complete reflection of a country’s development.

“We have inherent vulnerabilities as small island developing states that make it very difficult for us to be graduated and not receive aid when we could be struck down by environmental and other exogenous shocks and be severely affected,” she said.

Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves has also spoken to the impact on climate change on national development – particularly the economic situation of individual families.

“Let us understand this. When we have a natural disaster, you go to bed at night middle class and after three hours of rainfall and landslides, torrential downpour, like we never used to have before the acceleration of man-made climate change, that person, in three hours, would move from middle class to poor,” he said in late June at Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum.

Gonsalves further said that after a few hours of intense rainfall, some persons who are poor become indigent.

“And those who are indigent, they would enter…an avenue in Dante’s Hell which is indescribable. So that is the real story.”

Prime Minister of The Bahamas Perry Christie says special consideration needs to be given by international financial institutions to the unique circumstances of his country. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Mar 1 2017 (IPS)

When Tropical Storm Erika hit the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica on Aug. 27, 2015, it killed more than two dozen people, left nearly 600 homeless and wreaked damages totaling more than a billion dollars.

The storm dumped 15 inches of rain on the mountainous island, caused floods and mudslides and set the country back 20 years, according Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit. The island was inadequately prepared for a storm such as Erika. Many roads and bridges were simply not robust enough to withstand such high volumes of water.“It is critical that there must be relatively quick access to this Fund by those it is intended to assist." --Dominica's Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit

In a national address shortly following the storm, Skerrit said that hundreds of homes, bridges and roads had been destroyed and millions of dollars in financial aid were needed to help the country bounce back.

“In order to get back to where we were before Tropical Storm Erika struck, we have to source at least 88.2 million dollars for the productive sector, 334.55 million for infrastructure and 60.09 million for the social sectors,” Skerrit said.

Dominica’s neighbours in the Caribbean were the first to deliver aid in the form of medical assistance, telecommunications engineers, and financial aid, and were followed by essential supplies and manpower from Venezuela and doctors and nurses from Cuba.

Now, 18 months later, Skerrit said the island is still in the initial recovery stages of the devastation wrought by the storm, and he is pleading for swift action from international funding agencies for his country and its Caribbean neighbours which have been impacted by severe storms in recent years.

“Of particular importance to us is the Green Climate Fund (GCF) which has been established to assist in adapting to and mitigating the effects of climate change,” Skerrit told IPS.

“It is critical that there must be relatively quick access to this Fund by those it is intended to assist. As laudable as it is, it will be of minimal impact if disbursement is as sluggish as has been the experience with other institutions and agencies.

“The increasing intensity and frequency of these climatic events force us to face the reality of climate change. Hardly any of us in the region has been untouched in some form by the effects of the phenomenon and this emphasizes the need for the implementation of the measures contained in the Paris Agreement,” Skerrit added.

The GCF was established with a mission to advance the goal of keeping earth’s temperature increase below 2 degrees C.

The Fund is a unique global initiative to respond to climate change by investing in low emissions and climate-resilient development.

The GCF was established by 194 governments to limit or reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries, and to help adapt vulnerable societies to the unavoidable impacts of climate change. Given the urgency and seriousness of the challenge, the Fund is mandated to make an ambitious contribution to the united global response to climate change.

The Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) was accredited as a regional implementing entity by the Board of the GCF in 2015.

CCCCC Executive Director Dr. Kenrick Leslie said it speaks to the high caliber of work being done in the region and the strength of the centre’s internal systems.

“We will now move forward with a set of ambitious and bankable projects that we have been developing under a directive from CARICOM Heads,” he said.

As the first regionally accredited organization, the CCCCC is now the interface and conduit for GCF funding to the Small Island Developing States (SIDS) of the Caribbean.

Skerrit, who wrapped up his tenure as chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in February, said he visited Haiti and The Bahamas during his chairmanship of the 15-member regional grouping to see first-hand the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew.

Last year, Hurricane Matthew rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to hurricane status as it moved over the Caribbean Sea. Matthew continued to intensify to a Category 5 storm and into one of the strongest in Atlantic basin history, which made landfall and devastated portions of The Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, and the eastern United States.

“In both countries, the extent of the damage was severe,” said Skerrit, who was accompanied by the CARICOM Secretary-General, Ambassador Ambassador Irwin LaRocque and the Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), Ronald Jackson.

He noted that the Government of Haiti reported more than 500 deaths along with 1.5 million people in urgent need of humanitarian assistance, including 120,000 families whose homes were destroyed or severely damaged.

The worst of the devastation occurred in the agricultural belt, which affected the food supply of the country.

“Agriculture and fishing were also badly affected in The Bahamas along with homes and infrastructure on the three islands which were hardest hit,” Skerrit described.

“The damage was estimated at more than 500 million dollars. It is my hope that the recovery process is well underway to reconstructing the lives and livelihoods of all those affected.”

Prime Minister of The Bahamas Perry Christie described how his country also faced a 600-million-dollar assessed impact from a Category 4 hurricane (Joaquin) in 2015 and encroachment by the sea with Hurricane Matthew a year later.

The Bahamian leader said special consideration needs to be given by the international financial institutions to the unique circumstances of the country.

“Our people are spread over a hundred thousand square miles of ocean [and] as we modernize we began to feel the effects of having rich people in our countries drive our economy and the measure of our economy on the basis of per capita income. And we were being graduated to the point where we are not qualified for concessionary loans,” he explained.

“There is this paradigm that lumps the country together and does not take into consideration the unequal development that exists in our country. The people who live on the island of New Providence are entirely different to those on the remote islands.

“We are judged harshly. When there is a 600-million-dollar assessed impact from a hurricane, and an encroachment by the sea as happened with Hurricane Matthew, the country has to withstand the impacts and then you are downgraded because they say there is no assurance you are going to be able to have the revenue. These are the challenges that the countries in our region face,” Christie added.

Over the past two decades, 99 percent of India’s vultures have disappeared. Credit: gkrishna63/CC-BY-ND-2.0

By Stella Paul
PYEONGCHANG, Republic of Korea, Oct 16 2014 (IPS)

The Mountain Chicken isn’t a fowl, as its name suggests, but a frog. Kimisha Thomas, hailing from the Caribbean island nation of Dominica, remembers a time when she could find these amphibians or ‘crapaud’ as locals call them “just in the backyard”.

Known also as the Giant Ditch Frog, these creatures form a crucial part of Dominica’s national identity, with locals consuming them on special occasions like Independence Day. Today, hunting mountain chicken is banned, as the frogs are fighting for their survival. In fact, scientists estimate that their numbers have dwindled down to just 8,000 individuals.

Locals first started noticing that the frogs were behaving abnormally about a decade ago, showing signs of lethargy as well as abrasions on their skin. “Then they began to die,” explained Thomas, an officer with Dominica’s environment ministry.

“People also started to get scared, fearing that eating crapauds would make them ill,” she adds. In fact, this fear was not far from the truth; preliminary research has found that Chytridiomycosis, an infectious disease that affects amphibians, was the culprit for the wave of deaths.

Some 2,599 of 71,576 species recently studied are thought to be endangered -- International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN)
Besides the mountain chicken, there has been a sharp decline in the population of the sisserou parrot, which is found only in Dominica, primarily in the country’s mountainous rainforests. Thomas says large-scale destruction of the bird’s habitat is responsible for its gradual disappearance from the island.

Dominica is not alone in grappling with such a rapid loss of species. According to the Red List of Threatened Species, one of the most comprehensive inventories on the conservation status of various creatures, some 2,599 of 71,576 species recently studied are thought to be endangered.

Compiled by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Red List aims to increase the number of species assessed to 160,000 by 2020. But even with only half the world’s biological species included in the index, the forecast is bleak.

While the extinction or threat of extinction of thousands of species poses huge challenges across the board, tribal and indigenous communities are generally first to feel the impacts, and will likely bear the economic and cultural brunt of such losses.

As Thomas points out, “The crapaud was our national dish. The sisserou parrot [also known as the Imperial Amazon] sits right in the middle of our national flag. Their loss means the loss of our very cultural identity.”

A similar refrain can be heard among the Parsi community of India, whose culture dictates that the dead be placed in high structures, called ‘towers of silence’, that they may be consumed by birds of prey: kites, vultures and crows. The unique funeral rites are an integral part of the Zoroastrian faith, which stipulates that bodies be returned to nature.

But over the past two decades, 99 percent of India’s vultures have disappeared, making it impossibly difficult for the Parsi community to keep up with a centuries-old tradition.

Rising economic burden

Besides severely affecting ancient cultural and spiritual practices, the disappearance of various species is also taking an economic toll on indigenous communities according to 65-year-old Anil Kumar Singh, who was born and raised in the village of Chirakuti in India’s northeastern hill districts.

Singh says that as a child, he never saw a doctor for minor ailments like the common cold or an upset stomach.

“We used Vishalyakarni [a herb] for pains and cuts. We drank the juice of basak leaves (adhatoda vasica) for a cough and used the extract from lotus flowers for dysentery,” he tells IPS.

“But today, these plants don’t grow here anymore. Even when we try, they die out soon and we don’t know the reason. We now have to buy medicines from a chemist’s shop for everything,” he asserts.

Sometimes, the cost is much higher. Northern Indian states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have experienced an explosion in the population of stray dogs, giving rise to health risks among locals.

By way of explanation, Neha Sinha, advocacy and policy officer of the Bombay Natural History Society in India (BNHS), a Mumbai-based conservation charity, tells IPS that the phenomenon of increasingly feral dogs can be traced to Indian farmers’ practice of leaving dead cattle out in the open to be consumed by birds of prey.

With no vultures to pick the beasts clean, dogs are now getting to the carcasses, growing more and more vicious and resorting to attacks on humans. BNHS is currently breeding vultures in captivity in order to prevent their complete extinction, but it is unlikely the birds will regain their numbers from 20 years ago.

Meanwhile, according to a study by Birdlife International, the population of feral dogs in India has grown by 5.5 million due to the disappearance of vultures.

The report says there have been “roughly 38.5 million additional dog bites and more than 47,300 extra deaths from rabies, [which] may have cost the Indian economy an additional 34 billion dollars.”

Legal and knowledge gaps

The near extinction of vultures in India is attributed to diclofenac, a painkiller that is often given to cows and buffalos to which vultures are allergic. Intense campaigning against use of the drug led to a government ban in 2004, but implementation of the law has been poor, and diclofenac is still widely used, according to Singh of BNHS.

“The farmers know [the drug] is banned but they continue to use it because the law is not being enforced,” she said.

In several other cases, communities are left confused as to the reasons behind species loss, making it increasingly hard to settle on a solution. For instance, even after a decade of seeing their unique creatures vanish, Dominica still does not know what brought the Chytridiomycosis fungus to their soil, or how to deal with it.

This knowledge gap is a double whammy for indigenous communities, whose lives and livelihoods depend heavily on the species they have lived side by side with for millennia.

Lucy Mulenekei, executive director of the Indigenous Information Network (IIN), tells IPS on the sidelines of the 12^th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 12), currently underway in Pyeongchang, South Korea, that the decline in the livestock population in Kenya has affected the Maasai people, a pastoral tribe that has always relied on their herds for sustenance.

Now forced to live off the land, the tribe is faltering.

“The Maasai people don’t know what kind of farming tools they need, or how to use them. They don’t know what seeds to use and how to access them. There is a huge gap in knowledge and technology,” explains Mulenekei, who is Maasai herself.

In response to the growing crisis, governments and U.N. agencies are pushing out initiatives to tackle the problem at its root.

Carlos Potiara Castro, a technical advisor with the Brazilian environment ministry, is leading one such project in the Bailique Archipelago, 160 km from the Macapa municipality in northern Brazil, where local fisher communities are taught to conserve biodiversity. Already, community members have learned the properties of 154 medicinal plants.

The annual cost of the project is about 50,000 dollars, but Potiara says a lot more funding will be needed in order to scale up the work and replicate such efforts around the country.

This might soon be possible under a new initiative launched by the government of Germany together with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environment Facility (GEF), which offers 12.3 million euros over a period of five years to indigenous communities in over 130 countries to help them conserve protected areas.

Yoko Watanabe, a senior biodiversity specialist at the natural resources team of the GEF Secretariat, tells IPS the grants will also cover the cost of trainings, to pass on necessary skills to indigenous communities who are recognised as “indispensable to biodiversity conservation.”

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

The Caribbean Debt Network meets in Grenada. Credit: Bernard Lauwyck

By Eric LeCompte
WASHINGTON, May 5 2014 (IPS)

Last Fall, I witnessed the Grenada Council of Churches insert themselves into negotiations between their government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) around the island’s debt restructuring and presumed austerity policies. Religious leaders called from pulpits across the tiny island for a “Jubilee” or national debt cancellation.

When I recently returned to the Spice Isle, I was awed by what I saw – the religious experiment in Grenada was spreading like wild fire to other Caribbean countries."Our churches are on the front lines of fighting poverty in the Caribbean. We see how the debt crisis is hurting the poorest people on the islands." -- Presbyterian Minister Osbert James

At Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, overlooking the Caribbean Sea, the Caribbean Council of Churches, four Catholic Dioceses and various religious leaders from across the region gathered to launch the Caribbean Debt Network.

They came from St. Vincent’s and The Grenadines, Barbados, Dominica, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and Grenada, knowing their unity is more vital than ever.

Out of the 20 most heavily indebted countries in the world, six are Caribbean countries.

The islands are dotted with makeshift shacks, where depending on the island, 20 percent to 50 percent of the population lives in poverty. Various islands see high unemployment rates from 30 to upwards of 50 percent.

Like dominoes, island after island is going through International Monetary Fund IMF debt restructurings that demand austerity policies that hurt millions of people living in extreme poverty.

Among most Caribbean tourist areas, you can’t avoid the working poor.

In fact, the plight of the vulnerable along with infrastructure challenges are so palpable on the small islands, you scratch your head wondering why the IMF calls these countries “Middle Income.” When a poor country is defined as Middle Income, they cannot apply for existing debt relief processes such as the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative or HIPC.

The process by which economists define a country as Middle Income is by averaging the total income of everyone in the country (per capita). In other words if 99 people make one dollar and one person makes 100,000 dollars, the average income per person is 1,001 dollars.

In a place like Grenada, where the poverty rate ranges from 38 to 50 percent, the income levels are skewed. The religious community uses the words “social sin” to describe how income inequality is hidden from us as struggling Caribbean economies are denied relief because of what they are called.

Even with HIPC, any poor country will tell you it’s not a walk in the park. The IMF and other international financial institutions acknowledge that the process offers too little debt relief, too late, with too many benchmarks. However, when struggling economies go through the painful act of debt restructuring without even the framework of HIPC, it’s wrangling a hurricane.

And real hurricanes are real threats. In 2004, 200 percent of Grenada’s GDP was wiped out in three hours by Hurricane Ivan. With powerful hurricanes landing every 10 years and financial crises in other parts of the world impacting the Caribbean’s primary industry of tourism, countries across the region seem destined for never-ending cycles of austerity and debt.

“Our churches are on the front lines of fighting poverty in the Caribbean. We see how the debt crisis is hurting the poorest people on the islands,” notes the new chair of the Caribbean Debt Network, Presbyterian Minister Osbert James.

James’s historic cathedral, among many structures unrepaired since the 2004 Hurricane, still lacks a roof.

While it’s still too early to assess Grenada’s debt restructuring, we can see that the Jubilee model is opening up shop on other Caribbean islands.

At Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, the regional Caribbean religious leaders launched the new coalition in a conference room aptly named The Upper Room. For Christians, it evokes Pentecost when the Holy Spirit empowered religious leaders to inspire others. Pentecost is derived from the more ancient Jewish holiday, Shavuot, which celebrates the gift of our covenant with God and God’s abundance.

At the founding conference last week, the religious community sought to spread Pentecost and Shavuot. They resolved the following:

1. To raise the awareness of the effects of the sovereign debt on Caribbean Countries

2. To establish a structure within which our countries can resolve indebtedness fairly

3. To build a Jubilee coalition to achieve debt resolution, sustainable development and fiscal responsibility at all levels

4. To illustrate how sovereign debt impacts issues of concern, such as human trafficking, drug trafficking, climate change and HIV/Aids.

5. To work with governments and with our international partners on all aspects of debt

6. To encourage the Governments of Grenada and Antigua & Barbuda to champion the cause of a special initiative for resolving Caribbean indebtedness to achieve a sustainable debt level

Eric LeCompte is the Executive Director of Jubilee USA Network and serves on UN expert working groups that focus on debt restructuring and financial reforms. He recently returned from Grenada where he supported the launch of the Caribbean Debt Network.

A section of the major roadway leading from Dominica’s Melville Hall Airport to the capital, Roseau. The island is highly vulnerable to flooding and landslides. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
MERO, Dominica, Apr 8 2014 (IPS)

Christmas 2013 was the most “dreary and depressing” Don Corriette can remember in a very long time.

“It was a bleak time. People obviously did not plan their Christmas to be like this,” said Corriette, 52, Dominica’s national disaster coordinator.“The reconstruction efforts are crucial as the hurricane season in the Caribbean is fast approaching." -- Sophie Sirtaine

Days of holiday preparations were swept away when a slow-moving, low-level trough dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on the island on Dec. 24 and 25. The “freak weather system”, which also affected St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, killed 13 people and destroyed farms and other infrastructure.

Officials said the impact from the extraordinary torrential rainfall, flash floods and landslides was concentrated in areas with the highest levels of poverty.

Just six months earlier, in July 2013, tropical storm Chantal battered Dominica’s southern tip. The worst affected was the tiny southern community of Gallion, where the population is under 100.

“It [the Dec. 24 trough] did cause a high level of distress and anxiety, leaving many not knowing what to do next,” Corriette told IPS.

“There is no doubt that within my lifetime, not only in Dominica but throughout the region and the world by extension, we have seen some very significant differences in patterns of weather over the last 30-40 years that indicate that something is happening and we have to tie it to probably climate change,” he said.

“There are those who do not believe that theory but we have seen it developing and unfolding in front of our very eyes – the melting of the glaciers in the northern regions, the expansion of dry lands in Africa and other places, and the higher intensity of rainfall in the Caribbean islands – not that we are getting more rain but we are getting more intense rainfall in a shorter period of time,” Corriette added.

Flooding as a result of climate impacts has been identified as a threat to a number of communities in Dominica.

Under the Reduce Risks to Human and Natural Assets Resulting from Climate Change (RRACC) project, administered by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a demonstration project to improve drainage in the Mero community is expected to inform the rest of the country on how to mitigate the impacts of flooding.

The RRACC Project evolved after a series of one-day stakeholder meetings in July 2010 on Climate Variability, Change, and Adaptation in the Caribbean region with individuals from national governments, nongovernmental organisations, the private sector, and donor agencies.

These meetings were convened by the USAID, the OECS, and the Barbados Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU). As a result of these meetings, USAID formulated a five-year (2011-2015) framework for climate change adaptation strategy for the Caribbean region to be implemented using “fast-start” financing as part of the U.S. commitment at the December 2009 U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

The strategy draws from regional and national climate change plans and addresses high priority vulnerabilities in sectors key to the region’s development and economic growth, while identifying specific interventions that could contribute to greater resilience in the Eastern Caribbean.

In St. Vincent and St. Lucia, more than 30,000 people affected by the December 2013 flash floods will start recovering and regaining access to markets, water and electricity through an extra 36 million dollars approved by the World Bank’s Board of Directors under the International Development Association (IDA) Crisis Response Window.

A cleric prays with Colleen James in Cane Grove, St. Vincent hours before it was confirmed that James’ sister had died in the floodwaters. Her two-year-old daughter was also missing. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

The Governments’ Rapid Damage and Loss Assessments conducted in January with assistance from the World Bank, the Africa Caribbean Pacific – European Union (ACP-EU) Natural Risk Reduction Programme and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), estimated total losses to be around 108 million dollars, or 15 percent of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ gross domestic product (GDP); and 99 million dollars or eight percent of GDP in Saint Lucia.

“We will never forget the people who lost their lives as a result of this disaster, and will use their deaths as a wake-up call for the entire nation that we are a country that is highly vulnerable to natural disasters and the impacts of climate variability,” St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves told IPS.

The disaster happened at the peak of the tourism season. While the full financial impact remains unknown, early estimates conclude that this event will affect the agriculture and tourism sectors and result in economic contractions in both countries.

“While services and transport access have been largely reinstated, parallel efforts will need to be undertaken to mobilise resources required to stabilise and permanently rehabilitate, reconstruct and retrofit damaged infrastructure,” St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony told IPS.

Within a few weeks of the disaster, the World Bank was able to make 1.9 million dollars in emergency funds available to support the governments’ recovery efforts.

“The reconstruction efforts are crucial as the hurricane season in the Caribbean is fast approaching,” said Sophie Sirtaine, World Bank country director for the Caribbean. “Our financial support will not only rebuild critical infrastructure and boost the economy, it will also help build long-term climate resilience.”

Last week, St. Lucia announced it is conducting a survey to determine the potential impact of climate change on the supply of and demand for freshwater as well as on the exposure, sensitivity and vulnerability of the livelihoods of communities.

The Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Water Resources and Human Livelihoods in the Coastal Zones of Small Island Developing States (CASCADE) is being undertaken by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) of the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in collaboration with the Italty-based Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) and the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC).

The survey will also seek to determine how households view environmental issues affecting their communities.

“The survey results will provide guidance for future public awareness programmes and policy development. The knowledge obtained will also allow government agencies, NGOs and community groups to take appropriate measures to adapt to and, hopefully, minimize the negative impacts identified, which will be to the benefit of all the citizens of St. Lucia,” according to a statement issued by the government.

It said that surveyors would be visiting households throughout the island until May 13, reiterating that the results of the exercise “will be of critical importance to individuals, their families and to St. Lucia”.

A farmer shows the damage to his banana crop following the passage of a storm. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
LONDONDERRY, Dominica, Feb 26 2014 (IPS)

When Dean, the first storm of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, lashed Dominica on Aug. 16, it left behind a trail of destruction, claimed the lives of a mother and son, and decimated the island’s vital banana industry.

Seven years later, Dominica’s agricultural sector remains painfully vulnerable to natural disasters and climate variability. Every year, farmers lose a significant portion of their crops and livestock during the six-month hurricane season.“Climate change is clearly the greatest development challenge of the 21st century.” -- Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit

“Our first major hurricane was Hurricane David in 1979, which ravaged the entire country. Everything went down,” former prime minister Edison James, himself a farmer, told IPS. “Since then we’ve had storms and hurricanes from time to time which have caused damage of varying extent.

“Sometimes we have 90 percent crop damage, particularly bananas and avocados and tree crops generally.”

The banana industry is a valuable source of foreign exchange for several Caribbean countries, including Dominica.

The island produces approximately 30,000 tonnes of the fruit annually, earning an estimated 55 million dollars. The neighbouring islands of St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which together market their fruit under the Windward Islands Banana brand, earn an average of 68 million dollars.

The banana industry is also the second largest employer on the island after the government, providing work for 6,000 farmers and many others within the sector. Research has found that even slight temperature increases can damage banana production or even eliminate it altogether.

James, a longstanding legislator who served as prime minister from 1995-2000, has shifted to “multi-crop farming” over the last decade. But he has suffered huge losses of bananas, plantains, coconuts, okra, and other crops. He blames unpredictable rainfall, ironically in a country best known for its many rivers and abundance of water.

“There has been drought from time to time and it has been very intense in areas like Woodford Hill and Londonderry,” he told IPS.

So intense was the drought that “the country was moved to take action to put in place irrigation systems,” James explained. “So wind and drought have been the climatic factors affecting us here in Dominica.”

A water resources specialist with the Reducing the Risks to Human and Natural Assets Resulting from Climate Change (RRACC) project in the OECS Secretariat, Rupert Lay, said the potential losses to farmers in Londonderry and Dominica as a whole are hitting across the board, a situation which is increasingly common in the region.

“Climate change and variability is disrupting the modus of operation of farmers and as a result their output volumes are unpredictable and sporadic,” he told IPS.

“The variations in output are wide-ranging, from bumper harvests to zero yields for respective periods, and these stressors apply not only to crops but also to livestock production,” Lay added.

The World Bank reports that agriculture’s share of GDP in Dominica has fallen consistently with each major natural disaster, with the sector failing to recover previous levels of relative importance.

Most of this decline is attributable to crop losses, and specifically the decline in banana production.

According to World Bank figures, agricultural production accounted for 12.2 percent of total GDP, and overall the sector is estimated to have declined by 10.6 percent in 2010 on the heels of a 1.5 percent growth rate for 2009.

The performance of the crops sub-sector was severely affected by the extended drought in 2010, the World Bank said, adding that agriculture’s decline has been particularly marked since Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Environment Minister Kenneth Darroux notes that for a country that could be self-sufficient and provide food to neighbouring countries, Dominica’s food imports constitute an increasing burden on the economy, and threaten food security.

He called for “adaptive measures [to] build resilience to the stressors of climate change in that a farmer will be better able to maintain predicted levels of production, thus protecting expected levels of livelihoods and sustenance,” Lay told IPS.

These could include better farm management, pest control, and broader agricultural improvement programmes.

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said Dominica’s vulnerability to climate change is exacerbated by its present economic performance, its particular socio-economic structure and high concentration of infrastructure along the coastline.

“The additional stress that climate change places on ecological and socio-economic systems is not to be underestimated,” Skerrit said.

“Climate change is predicted to have severe, if not catastrophic, consequences over the short to medium term across sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, energy, human settlements and water, if immediate action is not taken to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 50 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels.

“Climate change is clearly the greatest development challenge of the 21st century,” Skerrit said.

His St. Vincent and the Grenadines counterpart, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, told IPS regional countries will be pushing to strengthen their institutional arrangements to deal with the impact of climate change.

Gonsalves said that the issue would be discussed at the upcoming CARICOM Inter-sessional summit in Kingstown, Mar. 10-11.

“There are several dimensions to climate change [and] clearly an immediate one for us is how do we better prepare ourselves for national disasters and how do we better recover from natural disasters, and we have to look at the strengthening of our institutional arrangements against the backdrop of increased vulnerabilities arising from the frequency and intensity of natural disasters,” Gonsalves told IPS.

He said this was a serious matter because “we do not contribute greatly to man-made climate change but we are on the frontline and there is lots of talk all the time about monies for adaptation and mitigation.

“We haven’t seen those monies yet. There are some limited resources which come out of the World Bank but the kinds of monies which have been pledged…are yet to be delivered,” he told IPS.

Gonsalves said this is a matter where the region would have to do much more coordinated work, adding “we have a lot of good allies – the British are now talking in a very serious way because of what is happening there”.

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.

People go about their daily lives in Roseau, Dominica. The country’s chief medical officer says climate change is taking a toll on the health of people. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Jan 20 2014 (IPS)

Caribbean countries, struggling to emerge from a slump in exports and falling tourist arrivals brought on by the worldwide economic crisis that began five years ago, have one more thing to worry about in 2014.

Dominica’s chief medical officer, Dr. David John, said climate change and its effects are taking a toll on the health of people in his homeland and elsewhere in the region.“A lot of diseases will essentially create havoc among people who are already poor." -- Dr. Lystra Fletcher-Paul

“You have seen what is happening [with] the effects of climate change in terms of our infrastructure, but there are also significant effects with regards to climate change on health,” John said, adding that “these effects relate to the spread of disease including dengue fever and certain respiratory illnesses.”

John said the Dominica government would be seeking assistance from international agencies, including the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), to mitigate “the effects of climate change on health as it relates to dengue, leptospirosis and viral disease.”

In late 2012, the Ministry of Health in Barbados alerted members of the public about a spike in leptospirosis cases. Senior Medical Officer of Health-North Dr. Karen Springer said then that five people had contracted the severe bacterial infection, bringing the number of cases for the year to 18.

Springer explained that the disease, which includes flu-like symptoms such as fever, headache, chills, nausea and vomiting, eye inflammation and muscle aches, could be contracted through contact with water, damp soil or vegetation contaminated with the urine of infected animals. Bacteria can also enter the body through broken skin and if the person swallows contaminated food or water.

In recent years, dengue has also been on the rise throughout the Caribbean with outbreaks in Dominica, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, Puerto Rico and the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, among other places.

Professor of environmental health at the Trinidad campus of the University of the West Indies Dr. Dave Chadee told IPS there is ample “evidence that climate-sensitive diseases are being tweaked and are having a more significant impact on the region”.

He said he co-authored a book with Anthony Chen and Sam Rawlins in 2006 which showed “very clearly” the association between the changes in the seasonal patterns of the weather and the onset and distribution of dengue fever.

“There is enough evidence, not only from the Caribbean region but worldwide, that these extreme events are going to have and going to play a significant role in the introduction and distribution of these sorts of diseases in the region,” Chadee, who previously served as an entomologist at the Insect Vector Control Division of the Ministry of Health in Trinidad and Tobago, told IPS.

“If you look at the various factors that are associated with climate change, the first is heat waves. There has also been a reduction in air quality. You also see an increase in fires and the effects on people’s ability to breathe as well as the association between the Sahara dust and asthma which was demonstrated in Barbados and Trinidad recently.

“The Sahara dust which comes in from Africa brings in not only the sand but also other pathogenic agents within the sand, together with some insecticides which have been identified by people working at the University of the West Indies,” Chadee told IPS.

Dr. Lystra Fletcher-Paul, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) representative for Guyana, said she has no doubt that climate change has contributed significantly to some of the issues related to diseases in the region.

“If you look at some of the impacts of climate change, for example drought, with drought you are going to increase the amount of irrigation that you are going to be applying to the crops. And irrigation water is a source of pesticides or even chemicals, depending on where that source of water is and that could lead to problems in health,” she told IPS.

“Similarly with the extreme events, if you are talking about floods, there can be contamination of the fresh-water supply.”

The FAO representative is adamant that there is too much “talk” in the Caribbean and too little “implementation”.

“We have had the conversation, so what we need to do now is put the systems in place to mitigate and adapt to climate change,” she said. Using land-use planning as an example, Fletcher-Paul told IPS, “A lot of what we see happening in St. Vincent and St. Lucia may not necessarily have taken place if we had proper land-use planning.”

A slow-moving, low-level trough on Dec. 24 dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Dominica, killing at least 13 people. The islands are still trying to recover.

“So we need to take some hard decisions in terms of where we would allow development to take place or not,” Fletcher-Paul said.

Chadee said the poor would always be at a disadvantage in  climate change scenarios and they will suffer the most from sea level rise when you have salt water intrusion into fertile agricultural land, rendering them unsuitable for food production.

“A lot of diseases will essentially create havoc to people who are already poor. The adaptability of the poor versus the rich within the Caribbean region will be tested because if the poor are no longer able to produce some of their food, this would then lead to health problems.”

He explained that if the poor are no longer able to have a particular diet this would make them susceptible to a number of diseases.

“With the Caribbean region having developing states, and especially Small Island Developing States, we do have a unique situation where the resources have to be put in place, especially for adaptation,” Chadee told IPS.

“It’s almost like the wall of the reservoir has been breached and you know that the water is coming. You don’t know how high the water level is going to be but you know it’s coming, so what do you do? And that essentially is the scenario in which we have found ourselves in the Caribbean,” Chadee added.

Residents stand on a bridge destroyed by massive flooding in St. Vincent. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Jan 7 2014 (IPS)

Guyanese President Donald Ramotar says the death and destruction caused by intense rainfall in three Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries over the Christmas holidays is a sign that the region has no time to lose in fortifying its resiliance to climate change.

A slow-moving, low-level trough on Dec. 24 dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Dominica, killing at least 13 people. Following the deadly floods and landslides, the Guyanese government approved financial support of 100,000 dollars each for St. Lucia and St. Vincent and 75,000 to Dominica.“The damage unleashed by the trough [on]…that dreadful night has been extensive and severe." -- Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony

“The scientific evidence is showing that for our region, which is one of the most vulnerable, these weather events will become more frequent as the impacts of global climate change intensify,” Ramotar told IPS.

Guyana’s coastal plains are approximately six feet below sea level.

“Recognising our own vulnerabilities here in Guyana, efforts will intensify in 2014 to improve and expand infrastructure, in particular our sea and river defence and drainage and irrigation systems; enhance our forecasting capabilities and response mechanisms, and build climate resilience in the social and productive sectors of our economy,” he said.

The Guyanese president said these steps will be taken within the framework of the country’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).

The LCDS, a brainchild of former president Bharrat Jagdeo, sets out a vision to forge a new low-carbon economy in Guyana over the coming decade. It has received acclaim globally, and is now in the implementation stage.

Ramotar said the time for urgent action is now, citing “millions of dollars in damage and loss of life” resulting from extreme weather events.

In St. Lucia – one of three Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) countries that felt the most severe impact of the Dec. 24 floods – Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony said that while the full economic cost of the storm has not yet been determined, it is clear that reconstruction will run into several hundred million dollars.

“The damage unleashed by the trough [on]…that dreadful night has been extensive and severe,” he told IPS.

“We now know that some 10 homes were completely destroyed by the raging floods. Agriculture has suffered badly. According to initial estimates there was 30-40 percent damage to banana fields, 90 percent damage to vegetables and five percent damage to tree crops.”

Anthony told IPS that 90 percent of all ponds have suffered “varying degrees of siltation” and shrimp, fish and livestock have been lost.

“Our infrastructure, some of which was already compromised by Hurricane Thomas [in 2010] has taken a further battering,” he said.

St. Lucia’s minister of sustainable development, Dr. James Fletcher, told IPS that the catastrophic events brought about by climate change caused severe infrastructural and psychological damage.

“These extreme weather events are quite traumatic for us, both on our psyche and on our national purse…but this is what climate change is bringing to us and this is what we have to unfortunately look forward to,” he told IPS.

At the same time, Fletcher said citizens and commercial enterprises must do a better job of solid waste management, since the indiscriminate disposal of garbage clogs waterways and causes serious problems.

“Some people treat the rivers as garbage disposal sites. This is something that we have to pay close attention to,” he told IPS.

The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) said it continues to be in contact with the affected countries and is coordinating the response and recovery support. CDEMA is assisting the three impacted states in developing proposals to access the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Emergency Response Grant facility and the Emergency Recovery Loan facility.

The government of Barbados is making available a coast guard vessel to assist in transporting emergency supplies to St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The “Trident” is capable of transporting more than four tonnes of cargo at one time.

In Dominica, where 65 households were affected by flooding, disaster officials estimate that 1.13 million dollars is required for immediate clean-up.

Prime Minister Anthony said the government of St. Kitts and Nevis has dispatched via the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank 1.36 million dollars as a donation to assist St. Lucia with its recovery efforts.

Britain is also providing 1.36 million dollars for vital emergency humanitarian support to St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia.

British Minister of State for International Development Alan Duncan is visiting the region, and is meeting with the prime ministers of the two affected countries to discuss the humanitarian situation and reconstruction needs.

The newest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the ability of tourism-dependent Caribbean destinations like Barbados, Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas, among others, to provide not only for their residents, but for the many thousands of visitors demanding water, energy, and other natural resources, is in jeopardy.

“As severe storms, drought, hurricanes, and other climate challenges rise to the forefront of issues being addressed by CARICOM countries, emerging data sheds new light on the future challenges in store for the islands and coastal nations throughout the region,” the report noted.

St. Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves (centre) chairs a meeting to discuss reconstruction following deadly floods on Dec. 24. At left is his Antiguan counterpart, Baldwin Spencer. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Dec 30 2013 (IPS)

Ralph Gonsalves fought to hold back tears as he shared how his cousin was killed the night before Christmas.

Raymond Gonsalves was buried alive when a slow-moving, low-level trough dumped more than 400 mm of rain on this island in a less than 24 hours and triggered massive flooding and huge landslides.

“People have lost their lives; families are suffering. I was with a family which lost five in one household,” Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, told IPS.

His cousin Raymond, he recounted, “was in his house, in the bedroom, and a landslide came down and buried him on his bed.”

“I have it in my family too,” he said. “I feel the pain, I feel the anguish of people.”"Climate change...has to be given the prominence and the priority that it deserves."
--Baldwin Spencer, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda

Gonsalves told IPS that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is “on the frontline of climate change”, explaining that his cousin had been among several the government moved from their homes beside the sea following Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

New houses were built for them but even then “the ravages of wave action were too severe, so we moved them to [another] place.” They had been moved, he said, “from one disaster point to another.”

The prime minister said that while the country is not a disaster area as a whole, several areas have been declared disaster areas.

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer of Antigua and Barbuda, who serves as chairman of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), a sub-regional grouping, arrived here on Saturday to see the destruction first-hand. He will also visit St. Lucia on Sunday.

A deadly event

The trough on Dec. 24 brought torrential rains, death and destruction not only to St. Vincent and the Grenadines but to St. Lucia and Dominica as well. Disaster officials in St. Vincent have so far recovered nine bodies, and the search continues for three more people reported missing and feared dead.

In St. Lucia, five people were killed, including Calvin Stanley Louis, a police officer, who died after a wall fell on him as he tried to help people stranded by floods.

Spencer told IPS he is convinced that there is a link between climate change, global warming and the erratic weather being experienced in the region.

“What has happened in these three member states of the OECS clearly demonstrates that the issue of climate change and associated weather issues can no longer be treated as a backburner issue,” he told IPS. “It…has to be a front burner issue and has to be addressed collectively.”

“I would say that this has to jolt all of us into the recognition that climate change is not something that we can continue to take lightly. It has to be given the prominence and the priority that it deserves.”

He hastened to point out that climate change has not skipped the attention of governments of the OECS.

“Policies and programmes have been developed in conjunction with regional and international bodies involved with this process to introduce…practicable measures,” he said. “But these devastating situations would urge us…to move more expeditiously in putting into place whatever is required to assist in combating the effects of climate change.”

Ronald Jackson, the executive director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), said he could not give a scientific answer connecting climate change and the Christmas Eve storm, but he strongly believed climate variability issues and climate change issues were involved.

“There is going to be a change in the culture of how we deal with these things, how we monitor the meteorological information that is being presented because we are living in very uncertain times,” he said.

A boy clears debris from his home in St. Vincent following flooding Dec. 24. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Serious damage

Gonsalves said that during a helicopter overview of the country’s forests, the minister of works and chief engineer observed massive landslides, rivers that had spread, and land that had been denuded.

“The extent of landslides suggests the figure of about 10 percent, which is a huge number,” he told IPS, adding that the practical implications of the landsides are huge as well. “If we are seeing these logs in the lower end of the river, you could imagine the damage which is caused in the upper end. If the logs are not cleared and if we don’t deal properly with river defences, we have a time bomb” where the next heavy rains will simply add to the buildup.

The capacity of the state to respond to a disaster of this magnitude it is not at the level it ought to be, Gonsalves added.

“There are profound limitations. In the ministry of social development, we just don’t have enough persons in that area to deal with the extent of the social problems which have arisen,” he told IPS.

Two decisions regarding immediate reconstruction were reached during a six-hour meeting at the prime minister’s office Saturday. They involved financial institutions, contractors, local and regional disaster management agencies, representatives of CARICOM, and the governments of Antigua, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.

The prime minister said all financial institutions have indicated that they will try to help provide the financing for the work to be done.

The island’s water authority has said that by Tuesday, the country should be up from what is now 50 percent of the population with access to water to 85 percent.

“The issue of the water is the most critical, immediate human need,” Gonsalves said. Even the country’s 42 water trucks “are still not enough to deal with the problem.”

“We will work to make our country better than it is and to use this challenging period to lift ourselves and to carry ourselves to higher heights,” Gonsalves concluded.

A cleric prays with Colleen James in Cane Grove, St. Vincent hours before it was confirmed that James' sister had died in the floodwaters. Her two-year-old daughter is still missing. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Dec 26 2013 (IPS)

Colleen James arrived in St. Vincent and the Grenadines from Canada two days before Christmas hoping to enjoy the holiday season with her family. Now she’s getting ready to bury her two-year-old daughter and 18-year-old sister.

“I never do nothing wrong. I always do good,” a dazed James told IPS as she looked out across the flood damage occasioned by a slow-moving low-level trough that brought torrential rains, death and destruction not only to St. Vincent and the Grenadines but St. Lucia and Dominica."We looked across and saw people floating down a river." -- Curt Clifton

Disaster officials have so far recovered nine bodies and the search continues for three more people reported missing and feared dead.

In St. Lucia, five people were killed, including Calvin Stanley Louis, a police officer who died after a wall fell on him as he tried to assist people who had become stranded by the floods.

The trough system resulted in 171.1 mm of rainfall within a 24-hour period ending at 8.50 a.m. on Dec. 25.

Trinidad’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar has requested that the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) mobilise food and emergency supplies to be sent to St Lucia.

The CEO of ODPM, Dr. Stephen Ramroop, has contacted the Deputy Prime Minister of Saint Lucia Philip J. Pierre and received a list of items that were urgently required, including canned goods, biscuits, infant formula, water, mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits, disaster kits and first aid kits.

The ODPM expects tp ship two 40-foot containers to Saint Lucia by 1.00 p.m. local time Thursday.

No requests have come from the other affected islands as yet.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who has cut short his holiday in London, is due here on Thursday.

The body of 18-year-old Kesla James was recovered midmorning Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Curt Clifton told IPS he was visiting a friend in the Cane Grove community on the outskirts of the capital, Kingstown, when they “looked across by the neighbour and saw people floating down a river” and rushed to their aid. They managed to rescue James and one of her daughters.

The floods have caused widespread damage in all three islands. Roads, bridges and in some cases, houses, have been swept away and the telecommunications companies, as well as public utilities, are urging patience as they assess the situation.

“We have seen quite an extent of damage, particularly from the gutters coming down, bringing a lot of debris on the road,” Montgomery Daniel, minister of housing, informal human settlements, lands and surveys, told IPS.

“It is going to take some time for us to clean it up. We are going to need the assistance of heavy-duty equipment,” he said.

Sixty-two people were left homeless in the wake of the flooding.

Health officials have also urged residents to be wary of diseases associated with the floods as in many cases pipeborne water has been disrupted.

Dominica’s Environment Minister Kenneth Darroux, a surgeon by profession, is hoping that the island’s plea to the World Bank for financial assistance will help the island better prepare in the long-term for the devastating effects of climate change.

Darroux is spearheading efforts by the Dominica government to secure 100 million euro from the World Bank to fund the country’s Strategic Programme for Climate Resilience (SPCR).

“Discussions are at an advanced stage,” Darroux, who now serves as minister of environment, natural resources, physical planning and fisheries, told IPS. The funds will be part loan and part grant.

Darroux noted that “the traditional climate change and environmental issues were not really producing the results that the government wanted,” adding that climate change should be viewed as a development issue rather than just isolated changes in the climate.

The World Bank-assisted programme is scheduled to begin in 2014 and will address key issues in various parts of the country. These include capacity-building for adaptation to climate change at a cost of 3.7 million euro; construction of storm drains at a cost of 5.2 million euro; agroforestry, food security and soil stabilisation at a cost of 6.0 million euro; and road works totaling 56 million euro.

Dominica has so far received 21 million dollars from the climate investment fund, 12 million of which is grant financing and nine million is “highly concessionary financing”, Darroux said.

The country also expects a further 17 million dollars from the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP), which is a regional project being undertaken by the World Bank which is running simultaneously with the PPCR.

“This investment package will seek to begin addressing the deficiency that was identified in the SPCR,” Darroux told IPS.

“I am confident that the implementation of this project will show the world that the people of Dominica stand ready to play out part in the climate change fight.”

The PPCR is a collaborative effort between Dominica, Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Each island has a national programme and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (5Cs) serves as a focal point for the regional tracking of activities.

The issue of climate finance is a major one for Caribbean countries and several decisions taken at the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 19) in Warsaw, Poland, this past November are of particular relevance to the region.

The Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) reached its target of mobilising 100 million dollars to fund six projects. These include a project in Belize, which had been submitted by PACT, one of only two National Implementing Entities (NIE) in the Caribbean accredited to the Adaptation Fund.

The other NIE is in Jamaica, which has also received funding for its project.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was also operationalized at COP 19. Developed countries have been asked to channel a significant portion of their 100-billion-dollars-per-annum pledge for climate change through the GCF.

The Board of the GCF has been tasked with ensuring that there is an equitable balance of funding for both adaptation and mitigation. All developing countries are eligible for funding from the GCF.

Mount Nevis sits at the centre of the volcanic island of Nevis, which has reserves of geothermal energy. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CHARLESTOWN, Nevis, Dec 19 2013 (IPS)

The tiny island of Nevis in the northern region of the Lesser Antilles is one of the few remaining unspoiled places in the Caribbean. It is now seeking to become the greenest, joining a growing list of Caribbean countries pursuing clean geothermal power.

Last month, legislators on the volcanic island selected Nevis Renewable Energy International (NREI) to develop a geothermal energy project, which they said would eventually eliminate the need for existing diesel-fired electrical generation by replacing it with renewable energy.

In January 2014, NREI will begin to construct a geothermal power plant and injection and production wells on Crown Land leased from the Nevis Island Administration.

Acting Premier Mark Brantley said the island, with a population of 9,000, plans to remain “how the Caribbean used to be” while striving to earn the title of “greenest place on earth”.

“Nevis is committed to beginning this journey on the path to greener living,” Brantley told IPS. “The use of renewable energy will result in a reduction of emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases, thus advancing Nevis’ commitments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty negotiated in June 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro. The treaty’s objective is to “stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

The treaty itself, which set no binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms, is legally non-binding. Instead, the treaty provides a framework for negotiating specific international treaties (called “protocols”) that may set binding limits on greenhouse gases.

The parties to the convention have met annually from 1995 in Conferences of the Parties (COP) to assess progress in dealing with climate change. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was concluded, establishing legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The 2010 Cancún agreements state that future global warming should be limited to a two-degree Celsius increase from pre-industrial levels. The twentieth COP will take place in Peru in 2014.

Utilities Minister Alexis Jeffers said Nevis currently imports 4.2 million gallons of diesel fuel annually, at a cost of 12 million dollars, a bill the island hopes to cut down significantly. Nevis consumes a maximum of 10 mw of energy annually.

“The use of geothermal energy will not only make Nevis a greener place in the future, but also make it less vulnerable to volatile oil prices, as the cost of geothermal energy is stabilised under a long-term contract,” Jeffers told IPS.

“In addition to providing lower cost, cleaner electricity for Nevis, this can potentially be expanded to include St. Kitts and other islands in the future,” Premier Brantley said. St. Kitts, which lies two miles northwest if Nevis, uses a maximum of 46 mw of energy each year.

Nevis is the smaller island of the pair, known as the Federation of St. Kitts and Nevis. It is home to active hot springs and a large geothermal reservoir. Seven volcanic centres have been identified on Nevis and drilling at three sites has indicated that the geothermal reservoir is capable of producing up to 500 mw of constant baseload power year round.

Dominica recently launched its own geothermal project with the construction of a small power plant for domestic consumption and a bigger plant of up to 100 mw of electricity for export to the neighbouring French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

The nearby island of St. Vincent subsequently announced the launch of a 50-million-dollar project, funded by the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines government, Barbados Light and Power Holdings and Reykjavik Geothermal.

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said a contingent of Icelandic scientists had arrived on the island and would remain until the end of the year investigating the mountainous nation’s geothermal potential, estimated at 890 mw.

Barbados is also making a major shift away from fossil fuels, aiming for 29 percent of its power generation from renewable sources by 2029. An electric light and power bill was passed with bipartisan support in parliament on Dec. 17.

Opposition leader Mia Mottley said the most significant thing the government can do for residents is to reduce the cost of electricity to 29-30 cents a kilowatt-hour as soon as possible.

“We have said consistently that the most important thing the government can do is to reduce the cost of electricity next month. Not two years from now; not five years from now; not 10 years from now,” Mottley said.

“If we understand how the costs are incurred, we then understand it can only be unacceptable for the government to preside over the Barbados National Oil Company profiteering to the tune of 53 million dollars last year, and ordinary people in this country in households and business are struggling to pay electricity bills.”

Barbadians currently pay 41-42 cents per kilowatt-hours.

Prime Minister Freundel Stuart said that as part of the drive to make Barbados more sustainable, the government had entered a partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which would help develop a framework to diversify the country’s energy mix and reduce its heavy dependence on fossil fuels.

A vendor selling produce at a market in Dominica, which has been alternately hit by flooding and severe drought. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Oct 7 2013 (IPS)

Malcolm Wallace always knew on which side his bread would be buttered.

At the age of 19, he built and operated his own greenhouse on his father’s farm in Dominica, planting lettuce, sweet peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers."Every step that we make forward we are probably making two backward." -- Samuel Carrette

“It was very lucrative and I actually made money,” said Wallace, now a graduate researcher at the Trinidad-based Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI).

“The push was financial. You do stuff and you see it’s actually making money, you are actually able to take care of your family and lime [party] a little bit. Which young person does not want that?” he told IPS.

Caribbean governments have long sought to attract more young people to their agriculture sectors, and the nine-member Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) has declared agriculture and tourism the “key pillars for development in the region”.

Samuel Carrette, permanent secretary for ministry of environment, physical planning, natural resources and fisheries for Dominica, says the OECS is focusing on these two sectors in order to build a sound economic base, improve the quality of life of residents, provide employment and to reduce poverty.

But he laments that both sectors are seriously challenged by climate variability and climate change.

“For agriculture we have many situations of greenhouses being affected, being blown away by hurricanes or strong winds. We have flooding of fields, we have the issue of access roads being blocked or carried away,” he told IPS.

“The weather variability provides a very serious challenge for us in terms of scheduling activities,” he said, referring to the challenges for the tourism industry.

In 2011, Dominica experienced its worst flooding on record. That followed almost a year of drought from 2009-2010 that severely affected the agriculture sector. In 2008, the island’s fishing industry was destroyed by hurricane Omar.

“Government had to find monies to rebuild the fisheries industry by providing the fisher folk with all the required fishing gear to rebuild,” Carrette said.

The OECS is a nine-member grouping comprising Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands are associate members.

OECS countries have very limited resources – natural, physical and financial – as well as small markets and economies.

Ignatius Jean, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) representative in Jamaica and a former minister of agriculture for St. Lucia, told IPS that “food security is national security.”

Jean said that part of the IICA’s mandate is to support the member states in the management of natural resources, and coping with climate change in particular. They also work to show the linkages between the agriculture and tourism sectors.

He pointed to “the need for a multi-disciplinary approach towards managing the situation”, noting that this entails assessing the impacts of climate change and creating mitigation and adaptation strategies.

“We cannot run away from our territory. We have to learn to live with it. That is what adaptation is,” he said.

IICA has ongoing programmes to climate-proof the agricultural development strategies in Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica and the Dominican Republic.

Keith Nicholls, climate change expert with the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), believes the impacts of climate change will cripple tourism niche markets in the region.

He told IPS that increased storm surges brought on by climate change is impacting the dive sector, in particular coral reefs.

“Ultimately, if corals are going to suffer, then the loss of the biodiversity will represent a loss of a competitive advantage in tourism,” he said.

The increase in the severity of storms and hurricanes will also drive visitors away, Nicholls said. He argued that visitors will not come to a region deemed unsafe, especially given the vulnerability of beach resorts to storm surges.

“Tourists come here for sun and sea. Properties are losing their appeal because of beach erosion,” Nicholls said.

“Extreme drought conditions mean we have no water and the tourism industry is highly based on water resources. If tourists cannot get water in your country, they will go elsewhere to get water,” he said.

However, it is not just the absence of water that concerns Nicholls but the abundance of it.

“If it rains in the dry season and it rains all the time we are not going to want to come to such a place,” he said.

Carrette said his country, Dominica, has “been exposed to very erratic weather conditions and for us it is a bit too frequent. This is so because Dominica is exactly directly in the path of the hurricanes given its location so that predisposes us to the unfavourable conditions of the tropical winds systems.”

He noted that most of the countries in the Windward Islands are moving away from a reliance on the banana industry and trying to diversify their economies, so severe weather conditions are major setbacks.

“As small developing island states, basically every step that we make forward we are probably making two backward because we have to keep rebuilding major roads, seawalls and rehabilitating feeder roads in the context of agriculture and rescheduling of tourism activities,” he told IPS.

“We have to understand that the monies required for rehabilitation and restoration of human livelihoods are not available locally within your own budget and you do not have adequate reserves to mobilise resources to do restoration work and so you have to borrow. So for us it’s a major challenge as it increases our debt burden.”

Senior director of economic affairs at the OECS Secretariat, Randolph Cato, said recently that the total cost of climate change to the OECS tourism industry could be as high as 12 billion dollars over the next 40 years.

“We must do something about it,” he said. “Adapting to climate change will cost less than the potential damage.”

Residents make their way through the flooded streets of Port of Spain, Trinidad. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTON, Jun 25 2013 (IPS)

It has taken just eight inches of water for Jamaica to be affected by rising sea levels, with parts of the island nation have disappeared completely, threatening people’s livelihoods and much more.

“People speak about the likelihood of Barbuda disappearing in 40 years, but this is a reality in Jamaica at the present time,” Conrad Douglas, a Jamaican scientist who has published more than 350 reports on environmental management and related topics, told IPS.

He pointed to the example of a set of cays called Pedro Cays, of which one “has completely disappeared”.

Pedro Cays are four small, flat (two to five metres high), low-lying and mostly uninhabited cays. The sparse land vegetation consists of six species of plants, none of which are endemic. The cays are regionally important seabird nesting and roosting areas, and they also provide several endangered turtle species, such as hawksbills and loggerheads, with nesting grounds.

More than 400 Jamaicans live for months at a time on the island’s Pedro Cays, which are the primary harvesting area for the largest export of Queen Conch from the Caribbean region.

Douglas said the disappearance of the cays is affecting people’s livelihoods, incomes and lifestyles, “exposing us to all sort of other problems that could threaten the security of the country and of the region”.

Should the phenomenon continue, and “if we don’t adapt”, the entire planet will physically change, he warned.

Scientists have warned that as the seas continue to swell, they will swallow entire island nations from the Maldives to the Marshall Islands, inundate vast areas of countries from Bangladesh to Egypt, and submerge parts of scores of coastal cities."Time is certainly not on our hands...The time for action is now.”
-- Kenneth Darroux

“We’ve heard the horror stories of some islands in the Pacific already disappearing, so time is certainly not on our hands,” Kenneth Darroux, Dominica’s minister of the environment, told IPS. “The time for action is now.”

Even though Caribbean countries contribute minimally to the causes of climate change that lead to issues such as sea level rise, these countries are the ones who stand to lose the most, Darroux said.

The United Nations has estimated that by the year 2100 the Marshall Islands could be swamped by encroaching waves.

While climate change has the potential to make islands disappear, it also affects people and places globally and can severely damage quality of life.

The World Health Organisation blames 150,000 deaths per year on the effects of climate change, including extreme weather, drought, heat waves, decreased food production and the increased spread of diseases like malaria.

Scientists also warn that if current carbon dioxide emission trends continue, the world’s coral reefs could be virtually destroyed by 2050.

Finding resources

Darroux said one of the biggest challenges faced by small island developing states like Dominica in dealing climate change has to do resources, financial and otherwise.

Last year, authorities there unveiled a Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient Development Strategy, and Darroux said they intended to take advantage of some of the millions of dollars available to help countries deal with climate change and its effects.

Dominica also wants to show its Caribbean neighbours how they could benefit from the same funding, Darroux said.

“We have this PPCR [Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience] project,” he pointed out, noting that almost 200 million dollars have been committed to Dominica over the next five years to help it build climate resilient projects.

He called for “collaboration and unity” among Caribbean countries, noting they each had success stories they could share.

Still, Darroux admitted, “It’s all very nice to say, ‘We are going to do this or that,’ but at the end of the day we have to face the reality of the financial environment in which we work.”

“We can propose certain initiatives, but one hurricane could hit us and then monies that were proposed to implement new initiatives, 99.9 per cent or 100 percent of the time, have to be diverted to recovery efforts after these erratic storms that [hit] us every year from the Atlantic.”

Considering a social approach

John Crowley, a senior manager of social dimensions of global environmental change at the Paris-headquartered UNESCO, has also urged regional countries to share their knowledge of matters that currently have been insufficiently studied with respect to the social and human dimensions of climate change adaptation.

He noted that it is by creating that web of knowledge, societies could find new ways to sustain themselves and prosper.

Addressing dozens of scientists and other delegates at a recent UNESCO-sponsored meeting on environmental policy formulation and planning in the Caribbean region, Crowley suggested that the prevailing approach to climate change adaptation as framed by the international community in the past 10 years is probably not the right one.

“The prevailing view is basically as follows: there will be a comprehensive global agreement on emissions reduction someday, and it will make the problem go away,” he explained. “In the meantime, we have to protect ourselves against transitory impacts, and the best way of doing that is [with]…hard infrastructures, protective infrastructures.”

“I think there is a growing feeling that that might be wrong and perhaps even dangerous,” Crowley said, adding that adaptation problems are likely to be permanent, not transitory. He said he was “not sure that hard infrastructure solutions” were the best option, as they themselves were vulnerable.

“Sea walls, for instance, depend on assumptions about sea level rise that are inevitably uncertain,” he pointed out. “Those options are irreversible and have very high opportunity costs. Once you’ve committed scarce resources, those scarce resources are not available for anything else.”

Crowley called for greater emphasis on softer solutions to climate change adaptation, solutions based on social change rather than on infrastructure.

“They are more flexible and have lower opportunity costs,” he said, even as he noted that “we lack knowledge on how to implement socially based solutions, and when we try, we often fail.”

Pat Jones, 65, stops to drink water at a community standpipe in Grenada. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ST. GEORGE'S, Grenada, May 11 2013 (IPS)

One daunting scientific forecast states that almost half of the world’s population will live in areas of water scarcity by 2030. Yet Christopher Husbands, the head of Grenada’s National Water and Sewerage Authority (NAWASA), is unfazed.

“Nationally, we have adequate resources, certainly taking us way past 2030,” he told IPS, adding that for the coming decades Grenada did not need to be overly concerned about the coming water scarcity.

Yet he allowed that two villages in Grenada do not have pipe-borne water. As part of its overall plan to promote best practises in water management, the state-owned utility company will this year construct Grenada’s first community rainwater system in one of them, the hamlet of Blaize village.

Husbands, who is the general manager at NAWASA, estimated that the entire community of 3,000 to 5,000 residents would be supplied with rainwater. “The system will be designed to ensure 60 days’ supply at all times,” he described. “We will have a central system and pipe the water to the houses, so we will control the treatment.”

Residents currently must go to a local spring for water, which is treated by NAWASA. In the dry season, when the spring runs low, the company sends water trucks.

Pat Jones, 65, recalls that when he was growing up, a community standpipe could be found every eighth of a mile. Today, he noted, most people have pipes in their homes. “But there are still a few community standpipes around,” he told IPS.

He called the idea of community standpipes “a very good idea because not all of us can afford the luxury of pipes in our homes. It is a necessity in certain communities so that residents can get water to drink and even take a bath.”

In spite of Grenada’s abundance of surface water, the country has always struggled with distribution. Husbands said that the solution – pumping – is easy, technically, but expensive.

“We have to try our best to stay away from pumping because operating costs would be going up,” he told IPS. Grenada residents pay EC8.10 (3 U.S. dollars) per 1,000 gallons for up to 2,800 gallons per month. The cost increases to EC13.20 for up to 5,500 gallons.

A community rainwater system is not entirely new to Grenada, the largest of three in this three-island state. The smallest, Pitite Martinique, is supplied completely by rainwater, while the other, Carriacou, is 95 percent supplied by rainwater.

Feeling the effects of climate change

The direct link between climate change and water availability continues to become more convincing, Husbands told IPS.

For Grenada, the dry season is traditionally from January to June, with different parts of the island feeling varying levels of intensity and over different periods.

“Drier dry seasons and more intense rain events during the rainy season…are extremely problematic for us,” Husbands said. “When the dry season persists, because we are so dependent on surface water, our supplies drop sometimes 40 percent.”

Ironically, more intense periods of rain sometimes result in less water. “You have the dams getting silted up; you have the river muddy and you can’t treat it…because it’s going to end up as mud in people’s homes.”

Climate change funding is also an issue, Husbands told IPS. Despite bigger pledges at climate change conferences, “the rate at which those funds are getting down to the ground needs improving”.

“Storage is key for climate change, because it’s what’s going to allow us to balance these effects,” Husbands described. “But when you are not even getting the funds yet you are easily 12, 24 or 36 months away from implementation.”

But he also noted that Grenada was taking steps to reduce water waste such as by reducing leaks. It even set up a Leak Detection Unit. “They go around the country daily looking for leaks, all in a bid to get that efficiency up and non-revenue water down,” Husbands told IPS.

NAWASA is also on a public education and awareness campaign to teach children about good usage practices and conservation. It is partnering with the ministry of agriculture to ensure catchment areas are protected.

Similarly, the neighbouring island of Dominica, known for its rivers and abundance of fresh water, has been urging residents to review water resource management, as the number of rivers it has may be decreasing, according to Reginald Austrie, minister of housing, lands, settlement and water resources management.

Dominica recently launched a 7.4-million-dollar water upgrade project that authorities said would benefit thousands of residents and consumers in the north, east and south of the country.

The Mero to Castle Comfort project, dubbed “The Third Water Supply Project Water Area-1 (WA-1) Network Upgrade”, includes constructing new intakes, upgrading old intakes and distribution systems, and building two distribution storage tanks.

Dominica hopes geothermal will take a bite out of its 220-million-dollar a year fuel bill. Credit: Courtesy of Government Information Service (Dominica)

By Peter Richards
ROSEAU, Jan 22 2013 (IPS)

What a difference a trip makes. Before visiting the French island of Guadeloupe, Alfred Rolle had vocally expressed fears about the possible health effects of a decision to drill geothermal wells in the village of Laduat on the outskirts of Dominica’s capital.

Now he is singing a different tune after Dominica’s government, which is putting all its proverbial eggs in the geothermal basket, led a delegation over the weekend to the French island to observe the operations of the Bouillant Geothermal Plant there.

”We have spoken to the residents around the immediate area of the plant and they are less than four or five feet away and there is no ill effect about the project here,” Rolle told IPS.

“All the gases are properly contained and even the waste water is properly disposed of,” he said.

Geothermal wells release greenhouse gases trapped deep within the earth, but these emissions are much lower per energy unit than those of fossil fuels.

Dominica is currently leading 52 small island developing states in an ambitious bid to cut their carbon emissions a whopping 45 percent over the next two decades – far beyond anything pledged by the world’s richest nations.

Local resident Harris Hodge, who was also on the trip to Guadeloupe, said, “I can say what I have seen here puts to rest any doubt I had about the project back home.”

The endorsements are significant for the Roosevelt Skerrit government, which has spent millions of dollars developing the geothermal project here in the belief that it holds the key for a better socio-economic future for the island’s 100,000 people.

Energy Minister Rayburn Blackmoore, who led the delegation, told IPS that the government intends to implement more safety controls than exist at the 35-year-old plant in Guadeloupe.

“We are in 2013 and there are a number of measures we have taken to deal with the protection of the environment and prevent certain risks and that is why we have engaged the best experts,” he said.

In 2009, the government in collaboration with the Regional Councils of Guadeloupe and Martinique and energy and environmental agencies of the neighbouring French territories, banded together under the Caribbean Geothermal Initiative to undertake a surface investigation study to determine the island’s geothermal potential.

Following the comprehensive geological, geochemical, geophysical and related environmental and feasibility studies, the government said the island had the largest geothermal potential in the Caribbean.

With support from the European Union and the Agence Française de Dévelopement, three test wells will be drilled in the Laudat and Wotten Waven, part of the Roseau Valley area, to determine the potential of geothermal resources.

Prime Minister Skerrit told Parliament recently that his administration planned to construct a 10 to 15 megawatt geothermal plant in keeping with its policy of developing a carbon negative economy by the year 2020.

He said one study has shown that “such a geothermal plant could result in a reduction of electricity bills by 45 to 50 percent”.

“There is a strong likelihood that the plant could be operational by 2014,” he said, as the government announced it had signed an agreement with the Iceland Drilling Company to drill two full-sized geothermal wells in the Roseau Valley area at a cost of 6.7 million dollars. The drilling work is expected to commence by June this year.

But in recent weeks, residents of the villages in the Roseau Valley have been voicing concerns about the project at various community and town hall meetings.

One resident, Adenauer Douglas, himself an electrical engineer, said that while he has always been in support of the geothermal initiative, it “cannot be done in the absence of the people living in the area or an independent Environment Impact Assessment (EIA).

“The lack of inclusion and transparency to date has resulted in the present anxieties. For instance, some of the negative information circulating is the result of indifferent developers elsewhere not working in the best interest of residents and cutting corners on the best practices on health and the environment,” he said in a statement.

However, Douglas added that compared to fossil fuels, geothermal extraction releases far fewer greenhouse gases, about one-sixth less per unit of electricity generated.

“Binary plants, which are closed cycle operations, release minimal emissions. Like hydro and unlike wind or solar, geothermal has 90+ percent availability, with down time assigned to maintenance. Geothermal power is home grown, thus reducing our dependence on foreign oil and saving our country millions.

“As we continue to suffer from sea level rise, coral bleaching, and more ferocious hurricanes triggered by global warming, we in Dominica must be leading world advocates for the reduction of greenhouse gases and a green alternative to development,” he wrote.

Trade and Industry Minister Dr. Colin McIntyre, who is also the parliamentary representative for the area, said “the health concerns of the people of the Roseau Valley are extremely important to us and…we are hearing concerns being raised by the people with reference to poisonous gases, volcanoes, earthquakes and of course the land issue.”

Operations Manager of U.S.-based Geothermal Resource Group, Sam Abraham, one of the many experts brought in by the government to deal with the concerns raised by the residents, said that geothermal plants can exist within populated areas under strict environmental controls.

“We are very confident in terms of the technology that we have, the expertise that we have and the monitoring system that we have that this can be done effectively, safely, and for the betterment of the country,” he told a news conference.

He said that Kenya, for example, is in the process of building a geothermal plant within a national park and it has had no effect on the flora and fauna there.

About 80 percent of Guyana’s forests, some 15 million hectares, have remained untouched over time. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Dec 26 2012 (IPS)

Imagine Guyana and Dominica without forests and rivers, or Antigua, Barbados and St. Lucia without beaches.

Atherton Martin, a conservationist and former minister of agriculture in Dominica, says climate change should be forcing Caribbean countries to take a hard look at how they are managing their natural resources, lest they eventually disappear.

“What the climate change principles tell us is that basically when your natural resource systems are debilitated, weakened or destroyed by climate change, your economy is thereby destroyed,” he told IPS.

But all is not bleak. Martin believes climate change could potentially benefit the Caribbean in two ways – firstly, by forcing a change in mindset where countries take the lead instead of simply reacting; and secondly, by allowing governments to build stronger economies by accessing millions of dollars in climate change funding.

He pointed to Guyana’s push to become a low carbon economy, noting that it has already drawn down more than 70 million dollars from carbon credits on just 10 percent of its forest systems.

“They expect to draw down a total of over 250 million dollars over the next year and this is a deal made on carbon credits and sequestration valuation with just one country, Norway,” Martin said.

In July 2009, Guyana launched a low carbon strategy aimed at promoting economic development, while at the same time combating climate change.

At the launch, then President Bharrat Jagdeo called for a platform on which developing countries like Guyana are not seen as mere recipients of aid, but as equal partners in the search for climate solutions.

A low carbon economy is one where economic activities are geared to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that would otherwise go into the atmosphere, and where other activities and lifestyles seek to minimise the effects of climate change.

About 80 percent of Guyana’s forests, or some 15 million hectares, has remained untouched over time. An expert study commissioned by Guyana estimates that the country would earn some 580 million dollars annually if it were to engage in economic activities that could lead to the destruction of the forests, but the economic value to the world, if these same forests were left standing, would be equivalent to 40 billion dollars.

Jagdeo has described Guyana’s forests as a global asset, home to at least 8,000 plant and animal species that make it one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. The forests also act as a sink to absorb carbon dioxide, one of the greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

With the right low-deforestation economic incentives, Guyana would avoid emissions of 1.5 gigatonnes of CO2 a year.

Earlier this year, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved an institutional strengthening project for Guyana’s Low-Carbon Development Strategy. The approval means that nearly six million dollars will flow to Guyana for implementation, following an initial sum of 1.06 million dollars released to the country from Norway for preparatory work.

Guyana’s REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) Investment Fund, dubbed GRIF, was established in October 2010 in order to fund projects of the country’s low-carbon strategy.

The project will strengthen the technical and administrative capacity of those institutions responsible for implanting the strategy, and develop an MRV (Monitoring, Reporting and Verification) system on a national level.

The partnership between Norway and Guyana is the second-biggest REDD+ partnership in the world, according to the Guyanese government.

Martin pointed out that there are arrangements with the World Bank, the Organisation of American States (OAS), other financial institutions and the United Nations that could allow Caribbean countries to earn financing as a result of their climate change resilience activities.

“They could value their natural resources on the basis of their sequestration of CO2 and then convert that sequestration property into hard cash, as Guyana is doing, or convert it into expanded negotiating room on debt reduction and expanded negotiating room on getting more concessionary loans,” he said.

President and founder of the Dominica-based Waitkbuli Ecological Foundation, Bernard Wiltshire, an attorney, agrees that a new way of thinking is necessary.

He told IPS that Caribbean countries now need to build “appropriate industries” and get involved in “the right kind of tourism”, for example.

“Dominica could have a tourism industry that could far outstrip Antigua. Antigua has the sun, sand and sea and so on, but Dominica has the sea and in addition to that it has a lot more than Antigua,” Wiltshire said.

“Everybody is saying sun, sand and sea are what you need for tourism and are ignoring nature tourism, adventure tourism, heritage tourism and wellness tourism,” he said.

“These things are growing. Just slouching, drinking rum under a palm tree – that is going out of fashion. The tourism industry in the Caribbean is going downhill because we are competing with the larger countries. Tourists are going farther afield, they want more adventurous things,” Wilshire added.

He pointed to Southeast Asia and the jungles of Burma as new hotspots, adding that “Dominica has its own Caribbean jungle right here” and could attract thousands of people who are looking for a jungle adventure.

Martin lamented that a region like the Caribbean, with so many extraordinary opportunities, has such financially strapped economies.

“You have countries with national annual budgets of 600 million dollars. If you can draw down in a year or two years half of that or even more from converting the silent work of your natural systems into hard dollars from the international financial community, you are home free,” he told IPS.

He said that the Caribbean could very rapidly turn itself around purely on the basis of taking that climate-resilient look at its natural systems by understanding how vulnerable it is and hence how vital it is to reorganise the way in which it manages its natural resources.

“The expertise is available to you to do the calculations that would get the rest of the world to finally begin to reward you for conserving your forests, conserving your reefs, conserving your water systems and so on,” Martin said.

“That’s a no-brainer and climate change is just begging the question. It’s saying to us, ‘hey guys, you have an option, and guess what, for once this option is to the advantage of small islands like ours’,” he added.

The Roseau River runs through the centre of Roseau. Once a favourite diving spot it has been reduced to a mere spring no longer suitable for swimming. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ROSEAU, Dominica, Dec 17 2012 (IPS)

Eighty-year-old Rupert Lawrence has been living in the Dominica capital, Roseau, for nearly 60 years. Like visitors to the island, he too is fascinated by the fact that the town square has a river running right through its centre.

Sitting on his veranda on River Street overlooking the Roseau River, Lawrence recalled the words of many visitors who would remark that until then, they had never seen a river in the centre of town. But over the years, Lawrence has witnessed the transformation of the Roseau River from a deep diving spot attracting people from all over the island to a mere spring no longer suitable for swimming.

To put it bluntly, in the words of Bernard Wiltshire, an attorney who is president and founder of Waitkbuli Ecological Foundation (WEF), the Roseau River is drying up, like all the others on the island.

“They’ve been drying up because people have been using land without concern for the rivers,” he said. “That Roseau River, you could jump from the bridge into the river; head dive into the river. I remember in 1980 we could sit on the wall and dangle our feet in the water.”

Thirty years later, “the river has lost far more than two-thirds of its volume of water, and this pattern is repeated throughout the island,” Wiltshire added. He lamented that the Layou River, about seven miles north of the capital, which used to be the largest river in the country, is now “only a sand bank”.

Former national disaster coordinator Cecil Shillingford told IPS that local environmentalists have long expressed concern that the island’s rivers are drying up. He believed that development had allowed river banks to become heavily habitable.

“A lot of people pay no regard to maintaining a sort of a buffer zone along the banks of the river so they just cut everything down or even sometime rear animals on the river banks that would certainly destroy all the foliage and they would cut the trees for agricultural pursuits,” said Shillingford, who is also a disaster risk management consultant.

He said that unless there is “a radical shift in our approach to these things…the next generation might not have a Roseau River or a Grand Bay River.” He added, “A lot of policies in terms of land use planning and buffer zones and things of that nature need to be put in almost immediately. We are already late.”

Other danger zones

“In terms of coastal residences we need to start building a little further away, so there should be another buffer zone in terms of coastal communities,” Shillingford told IPS.

Wiltshire said such developmental and agricultural activities have a big part to play in climate change, and Dominica is seeing its effects. “It’s largely from the big industrial countries which seem to put their greed before the need of everyone else,” he said.

Shillingford agrees that the effects of climate change on Dominica are clear. “In recent times we have seen lots more rain…[and] more intense rain. Before, you could have a day of rainfall and you would not see any major flash flooding or even flooding in general, but now if you have a day of rain it is so intense that you could have flooding.”

“We have seen an increase in storms as well; the intensity has increased and we are certainly seeing some effects in terms of sea level rise,” Shillingford added. He noted that “before, the sea would be further away from the community”. Now, however, “It’s coming up to the community”.

In Dominica, he explained, “most of the habitation is on the coastal areas, and the western side…is much lower at sea level than the eastern side,” he added.

Combating potential consequences

One of Dominica’s efforts to combat these issues is the recently formulated Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient Development Strategy, which identifies areas that climate change is most likely to affect – namely agriculture, fisheries and ecotourism.

Shillingford noted that coastal infrastructure always takes a heavy beating during a storm. The government has to spend millions of dollars reconstructing roads after every storm. He said although massive walls are being built with government funding along the coast in many villages to combat the effects of climate change, they do not provide complete protection.

Even with a massive wall along the Dame Eugenia Charles Boulevard in the capital, the whole road was torn apart as a result of Hurricane Lenny in 1999. Nevertheless, without the wall, Shillingford said, an entire section of the capital would have been devastated.

“We had at least four or five feet of water on the road…so not even the sea walls are foolproof for the kind of effects we can have from major storm surges,” Shillingford said. He is even more concerned about tsunamis, which he said “would be the end of everybody on the west coast” of the island. “You would have half of Dominica gone.”

Lionfish specimen in Jamaican waters. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Desmond Brown
ST. JOHN'S, Antigua, Jul 25 2012 (IPS)

In a case of “if you can’t beat them, eat them,” Caribbean countries have embarked on a new strategy to deal with the invasive lionfish, whose voracious appetite is wiping out fish stocks from Bermuda to Barbados in what scientists believe to be the worst marine invasion in history.

Regional authorities are promoting a rather unusual solution – incorporate this “beautiful menace” into their diet.

Matt Strong, who heads the Bermuda-based environmental charity, Groundswell believes that a solution to the problem would be to incorporate lionfish into local menus and have it targeted by commercial and recreational fishermen.

“We can essentially eat them to reduce their numbers. It’s worked before — we ate the Nassau grouper in such large numbers that they no longer exist in Bermuda’s waters,” Strong said.

“Every time you are at a restaurant, grocery store or buying fish from your roadside fisherman, ask for lionfish. If we build up enough demand, the fishermen will target them,” he urged islanders.

The environment official noted that every day, authorities are getting more and more reports of lionfish on the country’s reefs.

“They are in great numbers on our deeper reef and now they are showing up inshore in the fish nursery grounds and relentlessly eating our juvenile fish,” Strong said.

“Lionfish are eating important commercial species but even more importantly, they could potentially decimate the herbivorous fish populations such as parrotfish. This is a huge problem as the herbivores keep the algae in check. Without them, the algae outcompetes the corals and the reef, as we know it, dies.”

The lionfish explosion occurred in Bahamian waters in 2010 and was described then as “a plague of biblical proportions stalking the Bahamian economy”.

Today, 97 percent of the reef fish endemic to the Bahamas have been eaten.

In 2011, the country created an annual bash to raise awareness about the lionfish. The family event, which was held Jul. 13-15 this year, saw a total of 345 lionfish being caught.

A similar event held in Dominica in July each year – the annual Dive Festival – organised by the Dominica Watersports Association, was used to appeal to citizens to assist in controlling the lionfish.

The theme for the 2012 festival was “Save the reef; eat a lionfish.”

The association’s president Simon Walsh said the festival this year “reflected that although this is a species that needs to be controlled in order to protect the dive sector and coastal fisheries, it is looked at as a sustainable food source”.

British Marine Biologist Arun Madisetti is on a mission to encourage the people of the Caribbean to put the lionfish to their diet.

“These things have no natural predator in our region,” he told IPS.

“We are never ever going to win this war, we can take on certain battles and control certain reefs but it’s a problem that is not going to go away.”

Madisetti, who now resides in Dominica (which saw its first lionfish in December 2010), was on a visit to Antigua at the invitation of the local Environmental Awareness Group to give a lecture on the lionfish.

Already, at least one player in the dive industry in Antigua has begun promoting the idea of eating the troublesome lionfish in a bid to control its fast growing population.

“We should encourage the community to eat them because they taste really good,” said Shawn Clarke, who runs a recreation dive business here.

Clarke and others who make their living from marine resources say the lionfish population has drastically increased since being first spotted here early last year.

In recent times there has been concern about the fish’s venomous nature and Clarke believe this is what has kept it from most dinner plates.

But he said “they are free of fish poisoning when prepared. Once you have people hunting and wanting to eat them we don’t have to worry about it so much because we want to get rid of them.

“If fishermen go out there and they know people are buying them they will catch them. If you don’t catch them in the next 20 years, all there will be is lionfish.”

The lionfish, which is native to the Pacific Ocean, is believed to have entered Atlantic and Caribbean waters during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 when a Florida aquarium broke. They rapidly consume small fishes on coral reefs and can produce up to 30,000 eggs every four days.

The lionfish’s arrival has sent shock waves of fear among members of the marine community in Barbados.

To date, six of the voracious feeders have been killed by divers or caught by fishermen.

“As part of our public awareness campaign, we have roped in the divers and the dive association and all the dive shops because, frankly, they are the ones that are out there the most,” said marine biologist Caroline Bissada-Gooding, whose company East Coast Conservation Organization Inc. runs the Lionfish Barbados Hotline.

“It’s in their own interest to get involved because as the lionfish population grows, the reef fish communities will shrink and that’s their livelihood at stake, so it’s really up to the divers, dive shops and fishermen to get involved.”

She said the island’s lionfish population is still small and those caught are being collected by members of the Lionfish hotline and taken to the Fisheries Division to be examined.

She too has assured the public that the lionfish are quite tasty, especially when prepared in a fillet.

“It’s very nice, like white meat, like a snapper. It’s not raw at all,” she said.

Madisetti said the lionfish invasion will impact the region’s fisheries and tourism industries and “something has to be done.”

Workers build a sea defence wall in the Scott's Head Community on Dominica's south coast. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
Jun 7 2012 (IPS)

It has been dubbed the “Nature Isle” of the Caribbean, its craggy and dense rain forests, usually covered with fog, bearing testament to how cool temperatures can be here.

But in recent times, Dominica, an island located between French the dependencies of Martinique and Guadeloupe in the Lesser Antilles, and more so its capital, Roseau, have been experiencing sweltering heat of 31 degrees Celsius or higher. Officials blame the temperatures on climate change and global warming.

“This is…probably one of the most obvious effects of climate change that we experience on a daily basis,” Kenneth Darroux, environment minister, told IPS.

“Gone are the days when people thought that climate change was just a figment of the imagination of a few mad scientists,” he said. “We are actually starting to feel the effects now, and the science is proving correct.”

The island has seen a marked change in seasonal temperatures and rain cycles. Darroux said climate change is already costing Dominica millions of dollars annually in lost crops and disaster response. 

The findings of a new report, to be released at the Rio+20 summit later in June, said Latin America and the Caribbean face annual damages in the order of 100 billion U.S. dollars by 2050 from diminishing agricultural yields, disappearing glaciers, flooding, droughts and other events triggered by a warming planet.

On the positive side, the cost of investments in adaptation to address these impacts is much smaller, in the order of one-tenth the physical damages, according to the study, jointly produced by the Inter- American Development Bank (IDB), the Economic Commission of Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).

However, the study also notes that forceful reductions in global emissions of greenhouse gases are needed to avert some of the potentially catastrophic longer term consequences of climate change.

Harnessing funds

Countries would need to invest an additional 110 billion U.S. dollars per year over the next four decades to decrease per capita carbon emissions to levels consistent with global climate stabilisation goals, the report estimates.

Darroux said Dominica intends to cash in on some of the millions of dollars available to help countries deal with the climate change and its effects.

He noted that once local officials became aware of the potentially devastating impact climate change could have on the environment and the large volume of funds potentially available to mitigate such devastation, the government moved swiftly to set up an Environment Ministry following general elections in 2009.

In December 2011, Darroux announced that Dominica was in the process of formulating a Low-Carbon Climate-Resilient Development Strategy that he later explained took a two-pronged approach.

“While we work towards combating the impacts of climate change, it also looks at incorporating climate change projects in the whole scope of national development,” Darroux said. “It also serves as a means of attracting financing. We have heard about the much elusive billions of dollars out there so right now this strategy is actually a way of harnessing these funds.”

He explained that the strategy incorporates multiple national government policy papers, identifying a number of priority areas that climate change and the effects of climate change are most likely to affect, including agriculture, fisheries, eco-tourism and green energy.

This particular strategy may be new, but the government has actually been combating the effects of climate change for years by building sea defense walls and river defense walls to protect coastal villages, roads and properties against storm surges and other potentially damaging phenomena such as rising sea levels and erratic tropical storms.

“Our terrain makes us very vulnerable,” Darroux said, noting that a lot of the country’s infrastructure is located along the coast. The country is also highly prone to landslides.

More victim than perpetrator

While Latin America and the Caribbean contribute only 11 percent of the emissions that cause global warming, the region is particularly vulnerable to global warming’s effects, given its dependence on natural resources and the presence of bio-climate hotspots such as the Amazon basin, the Caribbean coral biome, coastal wetlands and fragile mountain ecosystems, says the new report to be released Rio+20.

These effects can be felt in agriculture, exposure to tropical diseases and changing rainfall patterns, among other areas. The value of the loss of net agricultural exports is estimated to fall between 30 billion and 52 billion U.S. dollars in 2050.

The study notes that the cost of adaptation is a mere fraction of the cost of the actual physical impacts, conservatively estimated at .2 percent of GDP for the region. Adaptation efforts would also offer significant development benefits, from enhanced water and food security to improved air quality and less vehicle congestion, ultimately reducing their net costs.

The Environmental Coordinating Unit has been doing its best to spread the climate change message to the general population, the unit’s director, Lloyd Pascal, told IPS.

“We’ve produced calendars that we distribute throughout the schools across the island; we make sure that every government department receives a calendar,” he said, adding that they also engaged in media outreach and public awareness work.

While Pascal is not satisfied that every corner of Dominica has received the message, he said that nevertheless, based on three severe events that occurred last year, “we are sure that more people are aware of the effects of climate change now than when we started in 1995”.