This cemetery in St. Lucia was among the sites which suffered damage when Hurricane Tomas hit the island in 2010. The Oct. 31 hurricane killed 14 people in St. Lucia. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
MOCHO, Jamaica, Dec 10 2013 (IPS)

The Mocho Mountains that run through the centre of Jamaica were once covered by lush tropical forests that helped control rainfall. Now, much of the forests and farmlands have been destroyed and the community is hard hit by the resultant extreme weather.

“[The area] is one of those that was severely mined for bauxite and so the trees were lost and so too was the arable land for farming,” Indi McLymont-Lafayette, the regional coordinator for Panos Caribbean, told IPS. Panos, a global network of institutes, works to give a voice to poor and marginalised communities.

McLymont-Lafayette, who grew up in Mocho, said the community was now very vulnerable to climate change.'People are seeing coastlines now being inundated and the sea encroaching further inland.” -- St. Lucia's Minister for Sustainable Development Dr. James Fletcher

“They were very hard hit by hurricanes Ivan and Dean [in 2004 and 2007 respectively]. There are longer droughts and the farmers are grappling with issues of trying to access water because the community is primarily rain-fed,” she said.

In the past, Mocho, which is about one and a half hour’s drive from the capital, Kingston, was well known as the breadbasket of the central parish of Clarendon.

“And if [there is] sporadic rainfall, which is also predicted under the climate change umbrella, it’s harder for the farmers on the ground to regularise their planting season so that means it has implications for the food security of Jamaica,” McLymont-Lafayette added.

She said she clearly remembered the first time she experienced a natural disaster. It was in 1988, when Hurricane Gilbert made landfall on the island. Before that, the last hurricane had occurred 37 years previously, in 1951.

“When I was growing up in my teens there was only one hurricane, which was Gilbert in 1988. It was an exciting thing for me then because it was the first hurricane we’d had since 1951 and I heard about that from my grandparents,” she said.

But when it came, the devastation it caused made her “never want to see a hurricane again”.

“But of course that has not been the case. And over the past 15 years, almost every year we’ve had tropical storms or some hurricanes.

“I think if you look at the statistics between 2002 and 2007, up to 70 million dollars [was] lost due to extreme weather events, and that is a lot of money for a developing country like Jamaica. So I know it’s a serious concern for us and many of the small islands in the Caribbean,” she said.

Indi McLymont-Lafayette, the regional coordinator for Panos Caribbean, said that Jamaica had put a lot of focus on preparing for climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Among the small island Caribbean states is St. Lucia, which was hit by major hurricanes in 2007, 2010 and 2011.

The country’s minister for sustainable development, Dr. James Fletcher, told IPS that climate change was affecting the island.

“That’s a point that we’ve been at pains to [explain] to the international community – that while for some of them climate change is an academic discussion or some sort of esoteric concept, for us in the Caribbean we are living climate change,” Fletcher said.

“Fishers are seeing their fish catches affected because the oceans are warmer, coral reefs are bleaching and fishery is not as productive as it used to be. People are seeing coastlines now being inundated and the sea encroaching further inland.”

He said that St. Lucia was still recovering from Hurricane Tomas, which hit the island on Oct. 31, 2010 and killed 14 people, and explained that the government was still repairing much of the damage it caused.

He also lamented that the bread and butter industries for most Caribbean countries, like agriculture and tourism, were already being affected and stood to be affected even further.

“Very soon I think we will start seeing differences in fertility for some of our agricultural lands, because for us in the Caribbean there isn’t any place that isn’t too far away from the sea,” Fletcher explained. “As salt water starts coming inland, then it starts having impacts on the fertility of your agricultural lands so we are experiencing climate change in so many different ways.”

For Antigua and Barbuda, McLymont-Lafayette pointed to the climate prediction in Germanwatch‘s 2008 climate risk index that Barbuda would probably sink in another 40 years.

“When I heard that, as a Caribbean person, I was devastated because I primarily thought of climate change as impacting the Pacific and those places,” she said.

But Caribbean countries are fighting back and have recognised the importance of adaptation to cope with the impact of climate change.

Just last week the Barbados House of Assembly gave the green light for government to utilise 13.3 million dollars from the consolidated fund for an on-going project to battle climate change and protect the country’s coastline.

Minister of Environment and Drainage Denis Lowe said Barbados needed to fight back, since climate change was already leading to dying and bleached coral.

“We believe that there is a direct correlation between the state of the corals around the island and the intensity of weather patterns and weather systems, including sea level rise and temperature of water,” he said.

The minister explained that there were 20 coral reef sites around the island that were in need of protection.

McLymont-Lafayette said that Jamaica had put a lot of focus on preparing for climate change. “Last month, we tabled a climate change policy in cabinet and Jamaica has established a Climate Change Ministry, which is one of the few in the world, so we are taking this very, very seriously,” she said.

Jamaica’s Ministry of Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change was created in January 2012. It has responsibility for the formulation and implementation of policy relating to its related subject areas.

Seventy percent of Jamaica’s infrastructure is along the coast.

“Our airports, our hotels are on the coast and in Negril where we advertise seven miles of beautiful beaches there has been significant beach erosion partly due to sea level rise and other factors,” McLymont-Lafayette said.

“So the bottom line is that we have to put measures in place to restore the coastline if we want tourism to continue to be sustainable.”

Cassia siamia trees (used for charcoal) planted on farm borders in Haiti. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
WARSAW, Nov 18 2013 (IPS)

Small farmers could play an important part in making Haiti – where just two percent of trees are still standing – green again.

With a population of 10 million and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 7.8 billion dollars, Haiti, the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, has been crippled by environmental degradation for several years. “There is already a firm foundation to build on in some areas where present and past forestry and agroforestry projects had been implemented." -- Tony Rinaudo

But there is a flicker of hope for the country and its neighbour, Dominican Republic (DR), with which it shares the island of Hispaniola.

Inspired by the success of its Humbo forestry project in Ethiopia, developed under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), World Vision Australia has just completed a scoping mission to both countries, to examine the potential for natural regeneration of forests through “Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration” (FMNR).

“Healthy lives for children and their families are underpinned by a healthy environment and so more and more we’ve been looking at how we can help communities to build sustainable environments, and particularly in the face of climate change this is becoming increasingly important,” Timothy Morris, World Vision’s business unit manager, food security and climate change, told IPS on the sidelines of the United Nations climate change conference underway here at the national stadium of Poland.

The CDM allows for reforestation projects to earn carbon credits (Certified Emission Reductions – CER’s) for each tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent “sequestered” or absorbed by the forest. In the case of World Vision’s Humbo project, revenue continues to be generated for the communities who manage the forest assets under seven cooperatives, representing almost 50,000 people.

“We understood that Haiti is an area that is being heavily degraded through deforestation, a high population and the need for fuels,” Morris said.

Devastating floods and landslides have also left bare many areas previously covered with forests, he noted.

World Vision’s point person on reforestation, Tony Rinaudo, recently visited Haiti and the Dominican Republic to examine the degraded landscape in the area.

“There is already a firm foundation to build on in some areas where present and past forestry and agroforestry projects had been implemented,” Rinaudo told IPS.
“I met individuals who valued and cared for trees – fruit, timber, charcoal – successfully.”

Rinaudo stressed that FMNR is certainly not a new concept since he “saw cases of it on some farm borders, in some cases within cropland”. But he said this understanding can be built on – to improve technique, scale up activities – and create greater awareness and practice.

“There is enormous potential for FMNR – for example, with prosopis which is a very aggressive thorny species. With systematic management a sustainable charcoal, pole, timber, honey, fodder industry could be established,” he told IPS.

Indi McLymont-Lafayette, regional coordinator for Panos Caribbean, which works to give voice to poor and marginalised communities, told IPS that some grassroots groups in Haiti were already actively involved in this issue.

“We have been working over the past two and a half years implementing a project looking at the rehabilitation after the earthquake,” she said.

“We include climate change and biodiversity issues with policy making. Part of that has entailed working with areas that have reforestation initiatives and one of the organisations in Haiti, Fondation Seguin, is very crucial, I think, for collaboration because they are already doing tremendous work in reforestation so I think World Vision could bring value to what is already being done.”

World Vision has had tremendous success with a community-managed forestry project in the Humbo region of Ethiopia, 342 kilometres south of the capital Addis Ababa. Over a 30-year crediting period, it is estimated that more than 880,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent will be removed from the atmosphere, making a significant contribution to mitigating climate change.

Prior to the project, Humbo’s mountainous terrain was highly degraded and chronically drought prone. Poverty, hunger and increasing demand for agricultural land had driven local communities to overexploit forest resources.

Hurricane-ravaged Haiti and the Dominican Republic are among the countries most affected by climate change. A study by the World Bank released this week states that if the sea continues to rise at the current rate, Santo Domingo, the capital of DR, will be one of the five cities most affected at a global level by climate change in 2050.

Another report released here shows that Haiti led the list of the three countries most affected by weather-related catastrophes in 2012.

A continuously growing urban population and an increasing demand for charcoal and fuel wood have all contributed to depleting Haiti’s natural environment. But Morris said the two Caribbean nations stand to reap many benefits from a forestry regeneration project.

“When we do this kind of work there are multiple benefits that can come from it, particularly in a coastal environment and environments that are exposed to storm activity,” Morris told IPS.

“The sorts of things that we would like to do by regenerating and planting trees are to enhance soil integrity; prevent erosion; build coastal land integrity for resilience to storm surge and coastal inundation; and to re-establish the natural asset base of the area for more sustainable usage over the long term.”

He said there could also be benefits in the form of increased food production, since “often we find that once we get into this technique – particularly around the water catchment areas and steep slopes – it can improve the soil integrity” for agricultural purposes.

Coastal erosion exposes columns for lights leading to the runway of Vance Amory International Airport in Nevis. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

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

The Caribbean does not have the luxury of time for decisive action on climate change and global warming. In fact, it is on the brink of calamity, according to a prominent scientist.

Conrad Douglas, a Jamaican scientist who has published over 350 reports on environmental management and related matters, has warned that “urgent action at all levels [is] required now”, cautioning the region against complacency in dealing with climate change.

Noting that earlier models forecast that an atmosphere of 350 parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide would place the planet at a catastrophic tipping point for climate change, Douglas cited new information which put the new tipping point at 450 PPM.

“There are 445 million PPM of carbon dioxide, which is a mere five PPM of carbon dioxide away from the…limit that was projected for catastrophic global tipping points,” he told IPS.

With the projected loading rate at 2.5 PPM per year, Douglas said that within two years, the earth would reach a point where even more catastrophic events would wreak havoc on the planet, its societies and its economies.

“We’ve gotten to a juncture at which the entire planet is facing a precarious situation,” Douglas said. “We are heading towards a dangerous place on planet Earth.”

“Potentially irreversible consequences”

Last year was the warmest in recent history, including the highest temperatures since temperatures began to be recorded in 1895."We are heading towards a dangerous place on planet Earth."
-- Dr. Conrad Douglas

“We know about Hurricane Sandy…and the destruction which it caused in our region and the eastern seaboard of the United States,” Douglas said, noting that parts of the United States and the Caribbean are still recovering from that storm.

Douglas’ colleague, John Crowley, said that the planet’s nitrogen cycle had been severely thrown out of balance because of the massive overuse of inorganic fertilisers.

“That, according to the specialists, is having catastrophic and potentially irreversible consequences that require a major rethink of agricultural systems, including but not limited to fertiliser use,” he told IPS.

Both scientists are among dozens who gathered here from May 15 to 16 for a UNESCO-sponsored sub-regional meeting on environmental policy formulation and planning in the Caribbean region.

“It was clear already in 2011 when we [first took stock of] these issues that the knowledge about climate change in the Caribbean is insufficient and insufficiently connected to the real dynamics of Caribbean societies,” said Crowley, a UNESCO representative.

In 2009, a group of Jamaican artists launched a national public education campaign on climate change. It was part of a project implemented by Panos Caribbean, a regional organisation that helps journalists cover sustainable development issues, and Jamaica’s National Environment Education Committee (NEEC).

The artists produced a package of information designed to educate the Jamaican public. It consisted of a theme song titled “Global Warning”, a series of public service announcements, a mini album of songs on climate change, and a music video for the theme song.

A global issue

Even as deliberations continue here today, the general assembly of the United Nations in New York is meeting on sustainable development and climate change.

“I think we have finally awakened to the urgency of the situation, that we have tested and exceeded the globe’s capacity for absorbing and assimilating the pollutants that we make and discharge,” Douglas said.

“What we need now is nothing less than a Manhattan type project to rescue the planet.”

Marcus Natta, senior project analyst in the Ministry of Sustainable Development in St. Kitts, told IPS the meeting was very timely.

“What is important about this particular conference is that we are focused on action. I think unlike many other meetings, if we could truly achieve the action part after the planning and get the implementation, then we would have really achieved success,” he said.

The tiny island of Nevis is described as one of the few remaining unspoiled touches of paradise and one of the little-known wonders of the Caribbean. Douglas hoped that actions taken at the meeting would help preserve it as such.

“We hope that in the context of what faces us today – the phenomenon of climate change – that its beauty and charm will be preserved long into the future as we take wise and timely action to protect the habitat of mankind and all living creatures,” he urged his colleagues.

“This we must strive to do as we protect ourselves from ourselves. It’s our attitudes and values, our failure to change our behaviour that has led us to this critical point,” he warned, adding that the current path mankind is treading “threatens at the very least to plunge us into a perpetual cycle of poverty and misery”.