St. Kitts residents welcome solar streetlights in areas they say have been too dark and prone to crime. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Feb 2 2013 (IPS)

The tiny federation of St. Kitts-Nevis and its larger neighbour to the north, Jamaica, are leading the Caribbean’s search for new ways to become more energy efficient by installing new solar streetlights, a green alternative to traditional ones.

In St. Kitts, the project is a collaborative effort between the government of Denzil Douglas and Taiwan, which have had diplomatic relations for the past 28 years. The Federation of St. Kitts-Nevis is one of a handful of Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan, as most of the others have diplomatic relations with mainland China.

“During the past year, we have successfully placed solar panels on the roof of government headquarters and set smart LED lights on the Kim Collins Highway and Frigate Bay Road,” the resident Taiwanese ambassador, Miguel Tsao, told IPS. “Both ventures are significant and important. Also these projects were initiated with our joint efforts to tap into the unlimited clean energy source.”

Instead of relying on fossil fuel, Tsao wants to see citizens doing their part to harness renewable energy to help make the vision of a green island a reality. The diplomat added that there are other important initiatives planned for the island, including the establishment of the first-ever solar farm and the second phase of an Agro-Tourism Demonstration Farm early in 2013.

Benefits of solar lights

The solar streetlights were installed by the Taiwanese company Speed Tech Energy. “It’s a unique Cobra design. The lamp pole is solid steel and type and it can resist wind speeds of up to 250 kilometres per hour,” Lucas Chiu, the company’s general manager, told IPS.

Solar panels convert the sunlight into electricity during the day, and the generated electricity is stored in a battery.

Chiu explained that in cloudy or rainy days the batteries will still charge at 15 to 30 percent. Streetlights will function for three nights (for 13 hours each night), even during periods of continuous rainy days.

Orville Liddie, a 29-year-old local resident, told IPS that there were no lights in those areas for several years and that the solar streetlights could not have come at a better time. “To me it’s a benefit to the communities where the lights have been installed because before the lights there were extremely dark spots,” he said.

“I am a driver and I have always been concerned that when you are driving through those areas at night people could jump out into the road and put road blocks or there could be very serious accidents. I was particularly concerned for the bus drivers because criminals could hold them up at those dark spots at knife point or even at gunpoint,” Liddie added.

Nevis, the smaller island in the twin-island federation, is also showing its neighbours in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) that it is a leader in the area of generating clean and efficient energy and reducing energy costs, in spite of its small geographic and population size.

In 2010, the 13-kilometre-long island with a mere 12,000 residents, launched the first wind farm ever to be commissioned in the OECS with a promise to provide jobs for islanders, a reliable supply of wind energy, cheaper electricity and reduction in surcharge and the use of imported oils.

The island has been lauded by officials of the Bill Clinton Climate Change Initiative for its efforts towards a “Green Nevis”. During a recent visit, a delegation from the Clinton Climate Change Initiative led by Councilor Jan Hartke and Ambassador Paoli Zampolli held discussions with island officials on work that has already been done to move from fossil to alternative energy on Nevis.

“We have been delighted to see how the government has taken the lead and has mobilised the endeavor to bring geothermal to Nevis, and we will help the government with consultation in an effort to make alternative energy a reality on the island,” said Hartke.

He noted that the Bill Clinton Climate Change Initiative aims to bring down the enormous electricity rates in small island states through alternative resources, with the assistance of wind, solar or waste energy.

Jamaica’s efforts

Jamaica is implementing its streetlight energy-saving initiative jointly with the United States-based technology and engineering solutions firm, Green Energy RG LLC.

A government statement said the aim is to significantly reduce the cost to the budget to maintain the country’s approximately 93,000 streetlights, which totals upwards of 2 billion Jamaican dollars per year (more than 2 million U.S. dollars).

On Jan. 8, the first set of solar-powered light emitting diode (LED) fixtures were installed at Osbourne Store, a community in the central parish of Clarendon.

“We hope to be able to proceed to install lights all over Clarendon and then into other parts of Jamaica. We hope that we will be able to complete the programme…by midyear, and then we can evaluate the results and determine where we go from there,” the country’s local government and community development minister, Noel Arscott said.

Arscott said the pilot phase will see some 5,000 LED panels being installed in Clarendon as well as sections of St. Catherine and Kingston and St. Andrew. Additionally, he said the ministry’s offices at Hagley Park Road in the capital Kingston would also be retrofitted with energy saving solutions.

Coastal erosion threatens a roadway on the south coast of Antigua. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas remembers how quiet – even uneventful – this tiny twin-island federation was for the first four decades of his life.

But over the past 10 years, St. Kitts and Nevis, as well as the rest of the Caribbean, have seen radical climatic shifts. There is no question in Douglas’s mind that these changes are the direct results of climate change.

“Growing up, I knew nothing of hurricanes, (but) in the last decade St. Kitts and Nevis has felt the wrath of hurricanes like never before,” said Douglas, who has been the head of government here for the last 17 years.

Yet the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis are “hardly unique” in experiencing these hurricanes, Douglas said. “We can remember only too well the brutality of  (hurricanes) Ivan and Emily” in Grenada in 2004 and 2005, despite the fact that at the time, Grenada was considered “very safely nestled in the more southerly reaches of our archipelago”, he told IPS.

In July 2005 Hurricane Emily left a trail of destruction in Grenada, which was still recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Ivan the previous year.

Those who live in the region face multifaceted and troubling ramifications as a result of climate change, Douglas, who has primary responsibility for the environment and climate change in the quasi-cabinet of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), told audience members from across the region during a climate change seminar earlier in September.

The OECS is a nine-member group comprised of 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.

Douglas stressed that policymakers need to jump into action, as climate change has a dimension to it that is both urgent and existential.

“More than ever we are confronted with the threat of frequent and severe droughts, hurricanes, dwindling fish stock and all of the other threats that so clearly reflect the nature of our own island existence,” Douglas said.

Engaging the community

Michael Taylor from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) agreed with Douglas on the need for urgent action, saying the conference at which Douglas spoke was quite timely. But he added that while government involvement is key in terms of sustainability, community participation is even more critical for continuity.

“The training of civil society organisations and non-governmental organisations is critical in building general awareness to secure effective resilience of communities and their adaptation to climate change,” Taylor said.

“Unless the local population fully understands the issues and are prepared to make a commitment to participate actively, success can be jeopardised,” he said.

Last year, USAID supported a similar workshop in St. Lucia that examined climate impacts related to managing water resources. As a result, national initiatives are now being implemented in several Caribbean countries.

These include Nevis, through the development of a master plan for the water sector; rainwater harvesting in St. Vincent; and the distribution of desalinated water procured through reverse osmosis to householders in Bequia.

OECS Commissioner of St. Kitts Astonia Browne told IPS that like most small-island developing states, the environments of OECS member states and the challenges they face are characterised by their small geographic area, small open economies, limited infrastructure and high vulnerability to natural disasters. These countries must find their own way in confronting these challenges, as external funding is hard to come by.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change identifies the Caribbean region as one of the most vulnerable regions to be threatened by climate change impacts over the next 30 to 50 years. The region will have to grapple with increased temperatures, more tropical storms, flooded wetlands and coastal lowlands, sea level rise, and more.

“We cannot wait for the developed world to determine whether or not we survive climate change. Each of us must do what is within our power to act towards reducing our vulnerabilities and building our resilience,” Browne said.

She expressed concern that natural resources are degraded by practises such as poorly planned development, population growth, pollution, exploitation of resources, and more. Unless they are brought under control, countries will not be able to withstand the impacts of climate change.

They will lose the ability to “provide services and functions vital to the sustainable development of our small island economies”, Browne warned.

Preserving the tourism industry

Participants in the two-day seminar, held under the theme “Climate Change and Our Coast – Exploring Possibilities, Finding Solutions”, examined the impact of climate change on the critical sector of tourism and the policies and processes used to address these challenges.

Douglas called the implications of climate change “obvious and catastrophic for tourism”. He said that adaptation integrated across a wide range of sectors, rather than in a piecemeal fashion, is the only way the region will be able to deal with the effects of climate change.

“Tourism will be particularly hard hit by climate change. As ocean temperatures rise, many coral reefs will experience bleaching”, which leads to “decreased interests in diving and snorkelling and a significant loss in associated revenues”, he said. “With more frequent and violent storms, beaches, coastal development and coastal infrastructure will be severely threatened.”

“It has been suggested that climate change is the greatest threat that small island nations face,” Douglas said. He agreed with the idea, he continued. “Climate change compounds all the other threats and hazards that we face.”

The nine-member Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) is pushing harder for regional integration with the launch of a new parliamentary forum that it says will play a major role in its efforts to establish an economic union.

“If the OECS Economic Union, and one of its principal organs – the OECS Assembly – are to guide us in overcoming the obstacles to growth and development, then it cannot be the ‘talk-shop’ that our people mock so derisively,” host Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer said at the launch over the weekend.

He said the value of the OECS Assembly as a forum for regional dialogue cannot be overstated, insisting that he expects “robust debate in this Chamber on the direction that regional integration should take.

“The OECS Assembly will perform a vital democratic function: it will monitor and debate the implementation of the OECS Economic Union, bringing to bear the views of representatives from constituencies all across the Union,” he told the inaugural session on Friday night.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines legislator Rene Baptiste, who was elected as the Assembly’s first speaker, reminded regional legislators that “we have serious work to do.

“This is our occasion to write our history with our own hands and in our own words,” she said of the work of the Assembly, which will comprise five legislators from each independent member state and three from the legislatures of each non-independent country, with representation from both the ruling administration and the political opposition.

It will meet at least twice annually and is one of five principal organs established by the Revised Treaty of Basseterre establishing the Economic Union. Its most important function is to be a consultative body to enhance regional dialogue on the critical issues of integration and development and to make proposals to the OECS authority for the enactment of regional legislation binding on all member states.

Spencer reminded the Assembly of the failure of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) initiative named the Assembly of Caribbean Community Parliamentarians (ACCP) which he said “fell into disuse even before it started”, adding its failure “should be a subject for early reflection by the OECS Assembly”.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who is also chairman of the sub-regional grouping, said the Assembly should not be regarded as “an intellectual or academic pursuit” and that hoped it would serve as a venue where all legislators would engage in a “profound consultative process in decision making hopefully that would evolve into actual law making and direct elections in the not too distant future”.

Gonsalves said that the configuration of the regional integration process was now changing and the sub-region, comprising Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands, must not be complacent.

“Do not for one moment think that we cannot suffer reversals in our subregional integration movement,” Gonsalves said.

“To be sure we have made immense progress since the original Treaty of Basseterre was signed in 1981. Our Revised Treaty of Basseterre of 2012 has made a quantum leap in regional governance and the creation of a single economic space, but challenges abound,” he said, noting that the global economic and financial crisis could have a serious effect on the socioeconomic development of the sub-region.

St. Kitts Nevis Opposition legislator Mark Brantley, who spoke on behalf of the sub-regional opposition grouping, used the occasion to plead for a more democratic process in the region.

He assured that while the cause of regional integration has the full support of the parliamentary opposition region, it was important to be accepted as “equal partners in the deepening and strengthening of our integration process”.

He warned against making the new Assembly a “forum for high sounding words and lengthy speeches when the harsh realities at home militate against good governance and democracy.

“Good governance at home has to be a prerequisite of good governance regionally. The parliamentary opposition cannot be included at the OECS Assembly in St. Johns but ignored or marginalised in Basseterre, Roseau, Road Town or The Valley,” Brantley said.

Brantley said that it is a matter of “tremendous regret” that some of the OECS countries still do not have Integrity in Public Life legislation or Freedom of Information legislation to give the populace a mechanism “to rein in the base impulse of governmental corruption.

“From Antigua to St. Kitts to Dominica to St. Lucia to St. Vincent… it seems that each round of elections is met by an equally acrimonious and expensive round of litigation,” said Brantley, noting that these election petitions prolong the electioneering well beyond the election cycle with its attendant debilitating effect on the psyche of the Eastern Caribbean people.

“In short, we must commit ourselves to strengthening our democratic traditions which makes us all strong at home and even stronger regionally,” he told the regional legislators.

School children plant mangrove seedlings on Dec. 2, 2011 to fortify coastal areas from the effects of climate change. Credit: Courtesy of the Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation

By Peter Richards
CASTRIES, St Lucia, Feb 28 2012 (IPS)

As developing countries urgently seek new sources of financing to cope with problems linked to climate change, delegates from the nine-nation Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) met here last week to evaluate potential funds and outline a more concrete vision of what is required for the subregion.

“The workshop sought to raise awareness and share experiences on instruments and best practices related to financing adaptation and sustainable energy, and to generate feedback on planned future action and partnerships,” Keith Nichols, head of the Sustainable Development Division at the St. Lucia-based OECS Secretariat, told IPS.

Supported by the World Bank, it explored carbon financing opportunities to enhance the ability of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) such as those of the OECS to respond to challenges like sea level rise and coastal erosion.

“The pursuit of a green growth agenda which promotes co-benefits in climate adaptation and mitigation, and which supports scaling-up of renewable energy and other economic resilience-building programmes, served as the vision on which this workshop was initiated,” Nichols added.

Delegates discussed case studies on sustainable land management for climate variability and climate change; adaptation challenges in the coastal and marine sectors; climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in the OECS; as well as an adaptation finance case study from the Pacific region.

The OECS comprises Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands.

Chrispin D’Auvergne, chief sustainable development officer for St. Lucia, believes that as a grouping, the OECS can better negotiate access to global climate funding – for which there is plenty of competition among developing nations.

“Recently there was an international fund launched, the Green Climate Fund, but I believe there will be a lot of demand on that fund. There is also an existing Adaptation Fund, but again I think the demand for that fund will outstrip the supply,” he said.

Approved at a U.N. conference in South Africa, the Green Climate Fund is supposed to raise 100 billion dollars a year from rich nations by 2020 for climate adaptation in poorer countries.

“There is also bilateral and multilateral sources available through the international development banks for countries interested,” D’Auvergne said.

“There is loan financing. But for many developing countries, the argument is that we are not the cause of this, so ideally we are not supposed to be borrowing money to finance climate change adaptation needs,” he added.

D’Auvergne argues that “one of the things we have to do as Small Island States is press these developed countries to live up to those pledges and some of them have started doing so.

“But also for our part we really have to try to crystallise exactly what we are seeking in relation to climate change funding, because it’s one thing to go out and say we need funding to adapt to climate change, but it’s another thing to say ‘I have put together a package of what we need’ and say to our bilateral and multilateral sources ‘this is it’, but if it is a generic request we are less likely to receive assistance,” he said.

There was a general consensus that the approach to climate resilience and low carbon development should be embedded into national/sectoral, regional and private sector development plans, and that there is need for additional investment in capacity and public education so that communities shift from “understanding” the key issues to “ownership”.

The main obstacles remain the lack of needed financing, the absence and inaccessibility of data, human resources and mapping capabilities, and a lack of political will and cooperation amongst stakeholders.

Nichols said that among the recommendations outlined to deal with financing climate change adaptation and sustainable energy were the need to link climate change adaptation with disaster risk management and to engage the private sector, particularly insurance companies.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), as envisioned under the now- expired Kyoto Protocol, in which richer countries pay poorer countries to reduce emissions on their behalf, is one possible solution.

But the workshop noted that while the CDM has established credibility as a market mechanism in terms of size, value and types of participants, “it has limitations for sustainable development and GHG (greenhouse gases) reductions in small island states”.

Serious doubts have also been raised about whether many of the CDM projects meet the requirement that they be “additional” – in other words, that the net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is greater than the cuts that would occur anyway without the initiative.

Other instruments, such as Green NAMA bonds (short for Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions) and the Green Climate Fund, which encourage upfront financing for low carbon development objectives, are also promising to encourage private sector participation.

The workshop was the second initiative by OECS this month on environmental issues.

The first dealt with efforts to strenthen the management framework for ocean resources so as “to ensure their maximum contribution to economic development goals of OECS member states”.

The St. Lucia-based grouping said that the sustainable development of ocean resources represents a key aspect of the economic development of the OECS region, in conformity with best international practices, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other related instruments.

“OECS states see a need to consider the possibilities for other resources within OECS waters such as the implications of the recently endorsed CARICOM Common Fisheries Policy, marine transportation tourism, and the exploration for petroleum products.

“The current OECS ocean governance programme is geared towards enabling the OECS Secretariat to create an institutional framework for regional cooperation in trans-boundary oceans management; strengthening national and regional capacities for the development and implementation of ocean law and policy within the framework of sub-regional cooperation,” the Secretariat added.

This article is one of a series supported by the Climate and Development Knowledge Network.

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