By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, Mar 14 2019 (IPS)

From an influx of sargassum in near-shore waters, to fish venturing further out to sea to find cooler, more oxygenated water, fishers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines are battling the vagaries of climate change. The country is doing what it can to respond.

Extreme weather associated to climate change has resulted in million of dollars in loss and damage in St. Vincent and the Grenadines over the past few years. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

In the tiny eastern Caribbean nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, proverbs relating to the weather are very common.

Everyone knows that “Who has cocoa outside must look out for rain”, has nothing to do with the drying of the bean from which chocolate is made or the sudden downpours common in this tropical nation.

So when the government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines announced in 2018 that there was a need to put aside some money for “a rainy day” because of climate change, citizens knew that the expression was both figurative and literal.

In this country, highly dependent on tourism, visitors stay in hotel and other rented accommodation have to contribute 3 dollars per night to the climate change fund.

They join residents who had been contributing to the Climate Resilience Levy, for over one year, paying a one percent consumption charge. The funds go into the Contingency Fund.

As with many other small island developing states, St. Vincent and the Grenadines has had to struggle to finance mitigation and adaptation for climate change.

In the year since the Climate Resilience levy was established, 4.7 million dollars has been saved for the next “rainy day”.

The savings represents a minuscule portion of the scores of million of dollars in damage and loss wrought by climate change in this archipelagic nation over the last few years.

In just under six hours in 2013, a trough system left damage and loss amounting to 20 percent of the GDP and extreme rainfall has left millions of dollars in damage and loss almost annually since then.

The 4.7 million dollars in the climate fund is mere 18 percent of the 25 million dollars that lawmakers have budgeted for “environmental protection” in 2019, including climate change adaptation and mitigation.

However, it is a start and shows what poorer nations can do, locally, amidst the struggle to get developed nations to stand by their commitments to help finance climate change adaptation and mitigation.

“Never before in the history of independent St. Vincent and the Grenadines have we managed to explicitly set aside such resources for a rainy day,” Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves told lawmakers this month as he reported on the performance of the fund in its first year.

He said that in 2019, the contingency fund is expected to receive an additional 4.7 million dollars.

“While this number remains small in the face of the multi-billion potential of a major natural disaster, it is nonetheless significant. If we are blessed with continued good fortune, in the near term, the Contingency Fund will be a reliable, home-grown cushion against natural disasters,” Gonsalves told legislators.

He said the fund will also stand as an important signal to the international community that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is committed to playing a leading role in its own disaster preparation and recovery.

Dr. Reynold Murray, a Vincentian environmentalist, welcomes the initiative, but has some reservations.

“I am worried about levies because very often, the monies generally get collected and go into sources that don’t reach where it is supposed to go,” he told IPS.

“That’s why I am more for the idea of the funding being in the project itself, whatever the initiative is, that that initiative addresses the climate issues.

“For example, if you are building a road, there should be the climate adaption monies in that project so that people build proper drains, that they look at the slope stabilisation, that they look at run off and all that; not just pave the road surface. That’s a waste of time, because the water is going to come the next storm and wash it away.”

Murray told IPS he believes climate change adaptation and mitigation would be best addressed if the international community stands by its expressed commitments to the developing world.

“My honest opinion is that a lot of that financing has to come from the developed countries that are the real contributors to the greenhouse problem,” he told IPS.

“That is not to say that the countries themselves have no obligation. We have to protect ourselves. So there must be a programme at the national level, where funds are somehow channelled into addressing adaptation and mitigation. The mitigation is more with the large, industrialised countries, but small countries like us, especially the Windward Islands, mitigation is our big issues…”

St. Vincent and the Grenadines is making small strides as a time when the finance minister said the 437 million dollar budget that lawmakers approved for 2019 and the nation’s long-term developmental plans, must squarely confront the reality of climate change.

“This involves recovery and rehabilitation of damaged infrastructure, investing in resilience and adaptation, setting aside resources to prepare for natural disasters, adopting renewable energy and clean energy technologies, and strengthening our laws and practices related to environmental protection,” the finance minister said.

On the other side of Windward Carenage Bay is Salt Whistle Bay on the Caribbean Sea coast. The world famous beach attracts visitors to the Mayreau, where tourism is a main stay of the economy. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

As a child growing up in Mayreau four decades ago, Filius “Philman” Ollivierre remembers a 70-foot-wide span of land, with the sea on either side that made the rest of the 1.5-square mile island one with Mount Carbuit. 

But now, after years of erosion by the waves, he, and the other 300 or so persons living on Mayreau, are confronted with the real possibility that the sea will split their island in two, and destroy its world famous Salt Whistle Bay.

At its widest part, the sliver of land that separates the placid waters of the Caribbean Sea at Salt Whistle Bay from the choppy Atlantic Ocean, on Windward Carenage Bay, is now just about 20 feet.

“There is a rise in the sea level with climate change. You can see that happening, and not just in that area alone,” Ollivierre told IPS of the situation in Mayreau, an island in the southern Grenadines.

The sliver of land near Salt Whistle Bay once had a grove of lush sea grape trees.

“As the sea eroded the land, it washed out the roots and as it washed out the roots, the plant could no longer survive, so they dried up,” Ollivierre said.

Beneath the waves, the destruction is as evident.

“On the ocean bed in that area, it doesn’t have any coral. It is just a mossy bottom. It doesn’t have anything there,” Ollivierre told IPS.

If the land separating both bays were to be totally eroded, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, an archipelagic nation, would see its number of islands, islets and cays increase from 32 to 33.

But this could be potentially devastating for Salt Whistle Bay, which Flight Network, Canada’s largest travel agency, ranked 16 out of 1,800 beaches worldwide last November.

A major part of the economy on Mayreau is the sale of t-shirts and beachwear to the tourists that Salt Whistle Bay attracts. If the beach is compromised, the islands might not be as attractive to visitors and its economy would suffer.

“My fear is that if the windward side breaks through onto the other side, it can actually erode that whole area… All of that area is sand and it not so much sand separating both sides so we really have to be careful and take the necessary measures to prevent that from happening,” Ollivierre said.

Ollivierre’s fear is shared by tour operator Captain Wayne Halbich, who has been conducting sea tours among the islands of St. Vincent and the Grenadines for almost three decades.

Halbich has witnessed the impact of rising sea level on Mayreau and he often tells his guests, light-heartedly, that Mayreau has the shortest distance between the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

“That was actually a lot wider, and it was covered almost entirely by the sea island grape trees. It is going slowly,” he told IPS.

“This is a serious problem. This is what I always say to people. We are seeing really concrete signs in relation to global warming. It is also from the fact that the reef is dying. The reef cannot produce sand and any sand you lose is not coming back. That is the other story,” he says.

And, unless something is done quickly, one cyclone — which is now more frequent and intense in the Caribbean — could cause the worst to happen in Mayreau.

“If we have a storm this year, it would break away,” Halbick told IPS, as he reiterated his fears that Mayreau could lose its famous Salt Whistle Bay.

The situation in Mayreau has captured the attention the national assembly in the nation’s capital, with Terrance Ollivierre, Member of Parliament, for the Southern Grenadines asking Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves what can be done quickly to remedy the situation.

Gonsalves said that his government has been working with a private sector operator who has the resources and equipment nearby to be able to do some remedial work.

He said there have been a number of suggestions by technical experts, including a quick fix of putting some boulders at the beach at Windward Carenage as a kind of mitigation.

“But much more is required than that and it is going to be a larger project. So, the long and short of it, the fight which we are having on climate change, is a fight which relates to what is happening at Salt Whistle Bay. Rising sea levels, wave action, and then, of course, people moving away a lot of natural barriers, which have been there.

“When we talk about climate change and some people deny it and many of our own people scoff at it and when our people are not sufficiently alert and have not been in respect of the sea grapes and the manchineel, the mangrove, the coconut trees, even sand, we are paying for it.”

The prime minister told lawmakers that some persons have suggested that nothing be done at Mayreau and that the sea would return the land in the natural course of things.

“That’s not a scientific approach. We have a difficulty and we are trying to help.”

The lawmaker who called the situation to the attention of the parliament also agreed that doing nothing is not an option.

He pointed out that some persons had suggested that approach at Big Sand Beach in Union Island, another southern Grenadine island.

Residents are still waiting for the sea to return the sand to the once-famous beach, which has been reduced from 50 feet to less than 10 feet wide.

Among those who are taking action are Orisha Joseph and her team at Sustainable Grenadines Inc., a non-governmental organisation, which over the last year has been restoring the largest mangrove forest and lagoon in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, located in Ashton, Union island.

The work will create breaches in strategic areas of an abandoned marina to create water circulation in the area, which has been almost stagnant for the last 20 years.

As part of the project, the group has planted 500 mangroves trees in Union Island.

“Wherever you have those types of mangroves, you would not have erosion as the roots help to filter silt and it also breaks the energy of the wave, like around 70 percent.

“So you have your first line of defence, which is your seagrass, then your coral reef, then your mangrove. So, by the time you have really strong impact then you have a lot of buffer zones to break down that,” Joseph told IPS.

“All in all, as we go into the blue economy, what we need to do is to see how NGO and climate change organisations could really work with government and let everybody know that we shouldn’t be on opposite side,” she said, adding that government must insist that no construction takes place less than 40 metres away from the coastline.

“Everything in the environment is there for a particular reason and we have to be careful,” Joseph said, adding that coast vegetation prevents soil erosion.

To illustrate, she said there is a vine that grows on the sand on some beaches and people remove them to expose more of the beach.

“But when you remove that which is causing the sand to stay in place, then you are creating a bigger problem. We have this problem where people just go cutting down mangroves because they just want beachfront land and not really understanding that this vegetation is there for a reason,” she told IPS.

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.”

Director of Richmond Vale Academy in St. Vincent Stina Herberg explains how compost is produced using vegetation, cardboard, and animal droppings. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Mar 30 2017 (IPS)

In the 1980s, an institution for troubled Danish youth and a vocational school for Vincentians was built in Richmond Vale, an agricultural district on the northwestern tip of St. Vincent.

It was hoped that spending time at Richmond Vale Academy would help the Danish youth to see the world from a different perspective. However, for a number of reasons, the concept didn’t pan out, the school closed and a farm was developed in its place.“It was both emotional and scary to hear these huge trees drop...That was a very big eye-opener for me.” --Stina Herberg, director of Richmond Vale Academy

In 2000, the first attempts were made to re-start the academy, which has been in full operation since 2007. Today, Richmond Vale Academy attracts young people from around the world who are troubled by poverty and what is going on with the Earth’s climate and want to do something about it.

The not-for-profit institution had previously focused mainly on poverty alleviation, with an emphasis on service in Africa. However, in 2010, Hurricane Tomas — the latest recorded tropical cyclone on a calendar year to strike the Windward Islands — passed to the north of St. Vincent, where the academy is located, and St. Lucia.

“That was a very big eye-opener for me,” Stina Herberg, director of Richmond Vale Academy, told IPS. “We were, of course, very worried but that was my very first meeting with climate change, I would say.”

The storm, which impacted St. Vincent on Oct. 30, left hundreds of homes without roofs, and, in addition to significant damage to homes and public infrastructure, destroyed about 90 per cent of banana cultivation, then an important crop for the local economy.

At Richmond Vale Academy, Herberg, her staff and their students listened as the tropical cyclone destroyed huge, decades-old trees. “It was both emotional and scary to hear these huge trees drop: you would hear it, like you put matches up and they just came down.”

The academy’s banana cultivation, which had taken three years to get to the point where it met the standards necessary for exportation to England, was also ruined.

“Three years of work was destroyed in seven hours,” Herberg said of the impact on the academy, adding, “but for other farmers, it was their lifetime’s work.

“So that caused us to ask a lot of questions. Yes, there were always hurricanes, but why are they more frequent? So it set us off to do a lot more research about climate change, about pollution, and we got a lot of eye-opening experiences.”

The research led to the St. Vincent Climate Compliance Conference 2012-2021, which aims to make St. Vincent and the Grenadines one of the first nations to become “climate compliant”.

The programme brings together local students as well as students from Europe, North America, South America, other parts of the Caribbean and Asia for programmes of one, three or six months duration, in which they learn about global warming, its causes and consequences.

The programme offers firsthand knowledge, as students can go directly into the nearby communities such as the village of Fitz Hughes or the town of Chateaubelair to see the impact on housing, public infrastructure, and the physical environment of severe weather events resulting from climate change.

However, the major focus of the programme is on “climate compliance”, which might be more frequently referred to as adaptation measures.

“Because if you going to talk about getting ready for climate change, if you are not doing it yourself, if you are going to tell people ‘I think it is a good idea to go organic. It is good for the soil, to plant trees’ — if you are not doing it for yourself, when you are speaking to other people it will be less effective,” Herberg said.

The academy has developed models and used its own farm to demonstrate ways in which the population can move away from carbon-based fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming.

For example, the academy set up a bio-gas facility that shows that mixing 1.5 kilogrammes of kitchen waste with 50 litres of water can produce fuel for five hours a day in a country where liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) is the main fuel used for cooking.

“It is suitable as a model that can be used by families in villages,” Herberg said of the academy’s biogas facility.

“We cannot make hydropower plants, we cannot build geothermal power plants. Governments have a variety of plans for that, so we have to see what can we do. We are promoting solar, and also the biogas,” she said, adding that Richmond Vale Academy has secured funding to set up five biogas facilities in western St. Vincent.

“So, it mitigates because it is a renewable gas and you can produce it yourself. You don’t need transport from China or Venezuela or from the United States or wherever.”

The biogas production process results in slurry that can be used as fertilizer. “The important thing is that people know there are alternatives. I don’t think we can get everybody on biogas. I doubt that. But what is important is that we open up and say these are the options,” Herberg explains.

While potable water is almost always available on St. Vincent Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a water-stressed country as there are no rivers and no municipal supply of water in the Grenadines, an archipelago.

However, even on St. Vincent Island, with its rivers, streams, and springs, the dry season, which runs from December to May, can be especially punishing for farmers, only 7 per cent of whom have irrigation.

Richmond Vale Academy has developed a system for collecting rainwater for washing, showers, and toilets. The excess water from this system collects in a reservoir and is used for irrigation. Small fish are placed in the catchment to prevent mosquitos from breeding in it.

Further, the academy has, over the years, phased out chemical fertilizers from its farm. In explaining the link between organic farming and mitigating against climate change, Herberg tells IPS that as the climate changes, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is expected to have more periods without rain, and when the rains come, they are expected to be heavier over shorter periods.

Most of the nation’s farmers are still engaged in mono-cropping and use chemical fertilizer in their production. “The chemicals break down the soil structure, so it gets sandy, it gets dry, so then when you get some rain and the rain is heavier, it just washes away the soil,” Herberg said, adding that this leads to flooding and landslides.

“So, the way that we are farming, it is very dangerous for the future. If you look at the big picture of biodiversity, the planet’s biodiversity is what’s keeping the temperature [stable]. If you take away the biodiversity by making cities, chopping down the rainforest, whatever we decide to do to change the balance of nature, we cannot maintain a stable temperature,” she said.

She also spoke about deforestation to convert lands to agricultural and houses use. “We need to have trees that will give us shade, we need to have trees to shelter us from the heavy rains, so the farming has to change for us to get ready to live with climate change. We have to change the way we farm. Monocropping has no future.”

An important part of any discussion about adapting to climate change is the extent to which actions that have proven successful can be multiplied and scaled up.

“I’m quite optimistic and I think that St. Vincent, as it is a small country, it is easy to get around. There is consensus that we need to be more sustainable and go organic and focus on renewable energy. And I actually think that it is going to happen: that we are going to get geothermal energy, improve our hydro stations and then more people will get on to solar. So we will be one of the first countries in the Caribbean that will be nearly everything on renewable energy within a very reasonable time – maybe 10 years,” Herberg predicted.

She added that while Costa Rica is ahead of the region, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is a good example in the 15-member Caribbean Community of what can be done to adapt to and mitigate against climate change. “We are not ahead in organic agriculture yet,” she said, but added that there are “some outstanding examples”.

Torrential rains from trough systems in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in November 2016 resulted in landslides like this one, which swept one structure away and threatened nearby houses. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Mar 5 2017 (IPS)

Caribbean leaders worry that with climate change sceptic Donald Trump in the White House, it will be more difficult for small island developing states facing the brunt of climate change to secure the financing necessary to adapt to and mitigate against it.

Mere days after Trump’s inauguration, the White House ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to delete a page about climate change from its website. It has also also signalled its intention to slash the budget of the NOAA, the U.S.’s leading climate science agency, by 17 percent.“I have listened to President Trump after the election and he had said that he is keeping an open mind on the question of man-made climate change.” --PM of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves

If Trump follows through on his campaign promise to roll back his predecessor, Barack Obama’s, green legacy, it seems inevitable that Caribbean and other small island developing states will feel the effects. Trump had also explicitly vowed to stop all US payments to UN climate change programmes.

In this archipelagic nation, the Ralph Gonsalves administration spent some 3.7 million dollars in November 2016 – about 1 per cent of that year’s budget – cleaning up after a series of trough systems.

The sum did not take into account the monies needed to respond to the damage to public infrastructure and private homes, as well as losses in agriculture resulting from the severe weather, which the government has blamed on climate change.

“The United States is one of the major emitters of greenhouse gases and, for us, the science is clear and we accept the conclusion of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change,” Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves told IPS.

He said his nation’s commitment is reflected not only in the fact that St. Vincent and the Grenadines was one of the early signatories to the Paris Agreement at the end of COP 21, but was also one of the early ratifiers of the agreement.

The Paris Agreement sets out a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius. During the election campaign, Trump vowed that he would pull the U.S. out of the deal if elected, although there appears to be some dissent within the administration on the issue.

It was reported this week that Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which oversaw the Paris deal, is visiting the US and had requested a meeting with Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, and other officials over the commitment of the new administration to global climate goals.

So far, Espinosa says she has been snubbed, and a state department official told the Guardian there were no scheduled meetings to announce.

The official added: “As with many policies, this administration is conducting a broad review of international climate issues.”

Small island developing states have adopted the mantra “1.5 to stay alive”, saying that ideally global climate change should be contained to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrialisation levels if their islands are to survive.

Gonsalves is hopeful that Trump would modify the policies outlined during the election campaign.

“I have listened to President Trump after the election and he had said that he is keeping an open mind on the question of man-made climate change,” he told IPS.

Gonsalves noted, however, the developments regarding the removal of climate change references from the White House website, adding, “But I would actually wait to see what would actually happen beyond what takes place on the website.”

The prime minister noted to IPS that the United States is an extremely powerful country, but suggested that even if Washington follows through on Trump’s campaign pledges, all is not lost.

“The United States of American has a population of 330 million people. Currently, in the world, there are seven and a half billion people … There is a lot of the world out there other than 330 million [people] and the world is not just one country — though a hugely important country.”

But Kingstown is not just waiting to see where Trump goes with his policy on climate change.

Come May 1, consumers in St. Vincent and the Grenadines will begin paying a 1 per cent “Disaster Levy” on consumption within the country. The monies generated will be used to capitalise the Contingences Fund, which will be set up to help offset the cost of responding to natural disasters.

In presenting his case to lawmakers, Gonsalves, who is also Minister of Finance, said that there have been frequent severe natural disasters in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, particularly since 2010, resulting in extensive loss and damage to houses, physical infrastructure and economic enterprises.

“The central government has incurred significant costs in providing relief and assistance to affected households and businesses and for rehabilitation and replacement of damaged infrastructure. Indeed, we have calculated that no less than 10 per cent of the public debt has been incurred for disaster-related projects and initiatives, narrowly-defined,” he told Parliament during his Budget Address in February.

As part of the Paris Agreement, developed countries said they intend to continue their existing collective goal to mobilise 100 billion dollars per year by 2020 and extend this until 2025. A new and higher goal will be set for after this period.

Gonsalves said it was not anticipated that the Paris Agreement would have been signed and ratified by November 2016. “But it was done. The anticipation was that it was going to take several years longer, so they put the commitments from 2020.

“Now, what are we going to do between 2017 and 2020?” he told IPS, adding that one practical response is to push for the pledges to come forward.

As Caribbean nations do what they can, locally, to respond to the impact of climate change, they are hoping that global funding initiatives for adaptation and mitigation do not take on the usual sluggish disbursement practices of other global initiatives.

Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit told leaders of the 15-member Caribbean Community at their 28th Inter-Sessional Meeting in Guyana in mid-February that it was critical the Green Climate Fund be more readily accessible for countries trying to recover from the aftermaths of climate-driven natural disasters.

Allan Providence, a senior officer at Union Island Airport, says he has seen the sea rise significantly over the past 22 years. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Jul 1 2015 (IPS)

Fifteen years ago, Stephanie Browne, a former Member of Parliament in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, needed only to look at the beach outside her house to know why her community in Union Island was called “Big Sand”.

So expansive were the beach and dunes that people played cricket games there without getting wet.“The water is too deep to show you where our fence was because a part of our fence is now way out in the sea." -- Stephanie Browne

Today, just a few feet of sand remain, saved only by the large boulders that have been placed more than 20 feet into the sea, where the fence for Browne’s property once stood.

“There could have been other reasons but I think climate change is the main reason for losing that beach down there,” Browne, who retired from politics 15 years ago, tells IPS.

“The water is too deep to show you where our fence was because a part of our fence is now way out in the sea and we have lost land for a number of years,” she says.

“What we’ve had to do is to use the boulders to try to keep our land and that’s why we are able to still have a little beach there. If not, there would absolutely be no beach,” she explains.

Browne tells IPS that she estimates the amount of land lost is enough to build a two-bedroom house of the type common in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, complete with a yard and fencing.

“There was a lot of sand and a lot of beach. Now, we have a lot of rocks, trying to save what we can,” she says.

Union Island is one of the southern-most islands in the archipelagic nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a country of 32 islands, islets and cays.

Unlike St. Vincent, the “main island”, the Grenadines has the white sand beaches commonly associated with tourism, the main revenue earner on the island and the country.

But rising seas, blamed on climate change, are beginning to imperil the beaches on the five-kilometre by three-kilometre island of 3,000 people.

Allan Providence, a senior officer at Union Island Airport, was born in St. Vincent but has been living in Union Island for 22 years.

“I know exactly what the island was like before it came to this point,” he tells IPS while standing on the sliver of sand that remains at Big Sand.

“What you are seeing here, this location, this is a structure that they used to have beach-o-rama and picnics and so on, and even out in the water where you are seeing the water is breaking now was where people would congregate, partying,” Providence says, pointing to an area 30 to 40 feet away.

The structure to which he referred is a concrete building with a zinc roof that has begun to collapse as the rising water undermines its foundation.

“But now, we have the sea is here. So, over the years, it has really degraded and brought it to this point,” Providence tells IPS.

“The water is rising and the sea is coming in, and that would definitely be as a result of climate change. Definitely. It was never like this,” Providence tells IPS.

Residents of Union Island are doing what they can to highlight the impact of climate change.

One way that this is being done is through Radio Grenadines, an Internet radio station that was officially launched on June 12, two years after it was founded in the bedrooms of two residents.

The launch of the not-for-profit radio station coincided with the graduation of 21 its contributors from a media training course endorsed by the Association of Caribbean Media Workers.

The training programme focused on using media to spread awareness about climate change and what can be done at the level of the citizen. It was funded by the Global Environment Facility Small Grants Programme (GEF SGP).

Speaking at the graduation ceremony, Haydn Billingy, national co-ordinator of the GEF, noted that the National Anthem of St. Vincent and the Grenadines celebrates the seas and “golden sands” of the Grenadines.

“These are the very things we use, that we call our natural resources, to attract our tourists and being that we are so depended on these natural resources, we have to show respect for them,” he said.

He noted that the Radio Grenadines project looks at using electronic media to raise awareness “about the important issue of climate change that is affecting us not only locally but globally”.

“In this harsh economic climate, there are still NGOs who are locally bred who care enough about the environment to dedicate tremendous voluntary work to ensure that it is protected for future generations,” Billingy said in reference to Radio Grenadines and other NGOs that focus on climate change.

“It shows that some people still appreciate and understand the indelible, fragile connection between the environment and human health and also livelihoods,” Billingy told the graduates.

In addition to the 21 persons trained in radio broadcasting, 62 members of NGOs that focus on the environment and climate change were trained in public relations and media use.

Billingy tells IPS that this is what is meant by “community empowerment”.

“These persons are now in a position to understand the environmental issues that are affecting St. Vincent and the Grenadines and they are possibly in a position to now be employed in the area of media and even the environment. This is what we mean when we talk about sustainable livelihoods.

“Indeed, I am seeing the Grenadines being the forerunner of environmental protection in St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Billingy tells IPS.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has installed 750 kilowatt hours of photovoltaic panels, which it says reduced its carbon emissions by 800 tonnes annually. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, Jan 12 2015 (IPS)

For decades, the fertile slopes of La Soufriere volcano, which occupies the northern third of this 344-kilometre-square island, has produced illegally grown marijuana that fuels the local underground economy, and the trade in that illicit drug across the eastern Caribbean.

But now the 1,234-metre-high mountain, which last erupted in 1979, is now being explored for something very different — its geothermal energy potential."Even if you have a lot of solar, you are still going to need the hydro and the geothermal and the diesel to carry the base." -- Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves

The Ralph Gonsalves government believes that geothermal energy will be a “game changer” for the local economy.

In this country, where tourism is the mainstay, the cost of electricity ranges from 40 to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour — several times what consumers pay in the United States.

Householders and manufacturers are hoping that the geothermal energy exploration, which has been underway for more than a year, will in fact produce the 10 to 15 megawatts of electricity that the country desperately needs to relieve its dependence on high-cost fossil fuels and give new life to the manufacturing and agro-processing sectors.

The geothermal energy exploration is a partnership between the Unity Labour Party government, the Icelandic Firm Reykjavik Geothermal Ltd., and Emera Inc., an international energy company with roots in Nova Scotia, Canada that also owns power stations in the Caribbean.

One year after the geothermal project was launched, Prime Minister Gonsalves, who will run for a fourth consecutive five-year term in elections this year, told Parliament in December that the geothermal power plant is on track for a 2017-2018 completion.

By June 2015, a technical report will be completed and well and plant site selection will be done, Gonsalves, who also holds the energy portfolio, told lawmakers.

“We are still on target. I have been advised by the Energy Unit. … Barring some extraordinary challenge which may arise, we should be having a production of 10 megawatts by the end of 2017,” Gonsalves told lawmakers.

The slopes of St. Vincent’s La Soufriere volcano, long the home of illegally grown marijuana, are being explored for geothermal potential. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

The “very low interest monies” that the prime minister says his government will receive shortly may have been a reference to his government’s application for a 15-million-dollar loan through the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

The successful applicants will be announced at the Fifth Session of the IRENA Assembly, slated for Jan. 17-18 in Abu Dhabi, which Gonsalves will attend.

Putting the loan application of St. Vincent and the Grenadines into context, Gonsalves told IPS, “There are about 80 applications from which they are choosing eight, and the total sum would be 60 million [dollars] overall … which they will lend in this particular year.”

Notwithstanding falling oil prices recently, Gonsalves is still convinced that renewable energy is the way to go for St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

“In days gone by, when diesel was 15 dollars or less per barrel, there was no real urgency to address the other forms of energy,” he tells IPS.

One-quarter of the 20 megawatts of electricity generated during peak demand in this multi-island nation comes from the country’s three hydropower plants. The remaining 15 megawatts is generated by diesel, 70 million dollars worth of which was imported in 2013 for electricity generation.

“We want to make the hydro plants more efficient … and we want to do solar, and we are doing solar, and we want to do geothermal,” Gonsalves tells IPS, adding that geothermal energy can carry a base load of 98 per cent of the country’s energy needs, whereas solar could possibly generate 20 per cent — or higher with improved technology.

“So, even if you have a lot of solar, you are still going to need the hydro and the geothermal and the diesel to carry the base,” he tells IPS, adding that the country has a good geothermal source.

Among those who are hoping that the geothermal power plant becomes a reality sooner than later is 52-year-old furniture manufacturer Montgomery Dyer, who lives in Spring Village, a community in North Leeward, the district in northwestern St. Vincent, where the volcano is partly located.

Dyer tells IPS that he is excited about the prospects of lower electricity bills, as the cost of energy represents some 10 per cent of the production cost at his business, which employs 28 persons.

“The cost of energy in St. Vincent is very high. In any way we can reduce the cost of energy, the production cost will go down,” he tells IPS, adding that a spinoff effect would be increased competitiveness.

“We will be in a better position to compete, simple as that,” he says, even as he notes that the relatively high labour cost is also a challenge.

Dyer pays some 1,100 dollars for electricity each month, a substantial amount that would be even higher had he not taken steps to reduce electricity consumption at the factory.

“The factory is a mechanised factory, so everything [runs on] power. We try to use machines with smaller motors, and machines that rely on pneumatics. In any case, the compressor has to generate the air to power the machines where pneumatics are required,” he explained.

Outside of geothermal and hydropower, St. Vincent and the Grenadines is already taking steps to cash in on the warm tropical sunshine that bathes the nation almost year-round.

The country has some 750 kilowatt hours of photovoltaic installations, including a 10 kilowatt-hour installation on the Financial Complex — which houses the Office of the Prime Minister — that has seen the cooling cost at that building slashed by some 20 per cent.

Most of the solar installations are owned by the state electricity company, St. Vincent Electricity Services Ltd. (VINLEC), which has a legal monopoly on the commercial generation and distribution of electricity.

VINLEC has 557 kilowatt-hours of solar photovoltaic panels at its Cane Hall Power Plants, east of Kingstown, and another in Lowmans Bay, west of the capital, where another diesel power plant is also located.

The state-owned company has invested one million dollars in the panels, but the impact on the size of consumer’s electricity bill is expected to be negligible — a few cents annually.

All of the solar panels installed across the country, however, are expected to reduce by 800 tonnes annually the amount of greenhouse gases that St. Vincent and the Grenadines emits into the atmosphere.

“Now, 800 tonnes is not a significant number in global terms, but what it points to is that we are making our contribution as a small island developing state, and it is in that context of the geothermal that this visit arises,” Prime Minister Gonsalves says.

Greenhouse gases are a primary driver of climate change, which has resulted in several — sometimes unseasonal — severe weather events in St. Vincent and the Grenadines over the past few years.

These include a trough system on Christmas Eve 2013 that claimed 12 lives, and left loss and damages of 122 million dollars, or 17 per cent of the gross domestic product, according to government estimates.

Furniture manufacturer Dyer lost 445,000 dollars as a result of that trough system and had to borrow “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from commercial banks to restart his business some months later.

“It destroyed the factory,” he told IPS. “The water came through the factory — created a river in on section of the factory. It washed out everything on one side and deposited about 50 truckloads of stone, sand, and debris in the factory.

“It left the machines under about two feet of mud and silt,” he said. “It was crippling.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at Kentonxtchance@gmail.com

St. Vincent has been hit hard by flooding and landslides in recent years, blamed on climate change and deforestation. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PASTURES, St. Vincent, Oct 29 2014 (IPS)

Glenda Williams has lived in the Pastures community in eastern St. Vincent all her life. She’s seen the area flooded by storms on multiple occasions.

But the last two times, it was more “severe and frightening” than anything she had witnessed before.

“The last time the river came down it reached on the ball ground [playing field] and you had people catching fish on the ball ground. So this time now (Dec. 24, 2013), it did more damage,” Williams, 48, told IPS.

Williams was giving a firsthand account of the landslides and flooding in April 2011 and the December 2013 floods which resulted from a slow-moving, low-level trough.

The latter of the two weather systems, which also affected Dominica and St. Lucia, dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on the island, destroying farms and other infrastructure, and left 13 people dead.

Gleanda Williams of St. Vincent recounts the storms of April 2011 and December 2013 that killed 13 people. Credit: Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told IPS that in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, there is a major problem with degradation of the forests and this has contributed to the recent floods.

The debris left behind by the cutting of timber, Dr. Gonsalves argued, “helps to cause the blockages by the rivers and when the rivers overflow their banks, we have these kinds of flooding and disasters.

“The trees are cut down by two sets of people: one set who cut timber for sale and another set who cut timber to clear land to plant marijuana,” he explained. “And when they cut them they would not chop them up so logs remain, and when the rains come again and there are landslides they come down into the river.”

The country’s ambassador to CARICOM and the OECS, Ellsworth John, said the clearing of the forests is a serious issue which must be dealt with swiftly.

“It’s something that the government is looking at very closely… the clearing of vegetation in our rainforests maybe is not done in a timely fashion and it is something that has to be part of the planning as we look at the issue of climate change,” he told IPS.“With warmer temperatures, warmer seas, there is more moisture in the atmosphere so when you get rainfall now it’s a deluge." -- Dr. Ulric Trotz

Gonsalves admitted that policing of the forests is a difficult task but added, “If we don’t deal with the forest, we are going to have a lot of problems.”

St. Vincent was the venue for a recent climate change conference. Gonsalves said the island forms the perfect backdrop for the two-day conference having experienced first-hand the impacts of climate change.

The seminar was held as part of the OECS/USAID RRACC Project – a five-year developmental project launched in 2011 to assist the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) governments with building resilience through the implementation of climate change adaptation measures.

Specifically, RRACC will build an enabling environment in support of policies and laws to reduce vulnerability; address information gaps that constrain issues related to climate vulnerabilities; make interventions in freshwater and coastal management to build resilience; increase awareness on issues related to climate change and improve capacities for climate change adaptation.

Speaking with IPS on the sidelines of the conference, Deputy Director and Science Advisor at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) Dr. Ulric Trotz said with the advent of climate change, St. Vincent and the Grenadines could expect similar extreme weather events in the future.

“What happened there is that you had an unusual extreme event, and we are saying with climate change that is to be expected,” Trotz told IPS.

“With warmer temperatures, warmer seas, there is more moisture in the atmosphere so when you get rainfall now it’s a deluge. It’s heavy and you’re getting more rainfall in a short time than you ever experienced.

“Your drainage systems aren’t designed to deal with that flow of water. Your homes, for instance, on slopes that under normal conditions would be stable but with heavy rainfall these slopes now become unstable, you get landslides with loss of property and life, raging rivers with the heavy flow of water removing homes that are in vulnerable situations,” he added.

Gonsalves said that between 2011 and 2014, St. Vincent and the Grenadines has spent more than 600 million dollars to rebuild from the storms.

In September, the European Union said it would allocate approximately 45.5 million dollars in grants for St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia after both countries were affected by the devastating weather system in December 2013.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines, which suffered the heaviest damage, is earmarked to receive EC 23.5 million and St. Lucia EC 22.4 million.

This long-term reconstruction support will be in addition to the EC 1.4 million of emergency humanitarian assistance provided by the European Union to the affected populations in the two countries immediately after the storm.

The funds will be dedicated to the reconstruction of key infrastructure damaged by the floods and to build resilience by improving river protection and slope stabilisation in major areas of the countries.

The Chateaubelair Jetty in St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the Piaye Bridge in St. Lucia which were extensively damaged during the storm are infrastructure that could potentially benefit from the EU intervention.

“This support demonstrates the EU’s commitment to the reconstruction of both countries and further highlights Europe’s solidarity with the Caribbean, which we recognise as one of the most vulnerable regions in the world,” said Head of the European Union Delegation to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean Ambassador Mikael Barfod.

The European Union is also providing 20 million euro to support the regional disaster management programme of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency as it undertakes disaster risk reduction measures in the region.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at destinydlb@gmail.com

By Desmond Brown
PASTURES, St. Vincent, Oct 29 2014 (IPS)

In the last three years, St. Vincent and the Grenadines has been forced to spend more than 600 million dollars to rebuild its battered infrastructure. Landslides in April 2011, followed by December 2013 floods that also affected Dominica and St. Lucia and left 13 people dead, may be just the beginning, as climate change brings more extreme weather events to the Caribbean.

The name of the game now is disaster risk reduction, as officials work with regional bodies and the European Union to build resiliance and adaptation measures against future storms.

A seawall in Dominica. A recent report has called for specific measures to protect small islands from sea level rise. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
PHILIPSBURG, St. Maarten, Jul 2 2014 (IPS)

As the costs of climate change continue to mount, officials with the Commonwealth grouping say it is vital that Small Island Developing States (SIDS) stick together on issues such as per capita income classification.

Deputy Commonwealth Secretary General (Economic and Social Development) Deodat Maharaj told IPS the classification affects the ability of countries like Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and others to access financing from the international financial institutions.

“To my mind, the international system has to take special consideration of countries such as Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and others,” he said.

“The example I like to use is the example of Grenada. You would recall Hurricane Ivan about 10 years ago. It damaged about 70 percent of the housing stock in Grenada. It cost a billion U.S. dollars in damages, equivalent to two years GDP.

“So the countries in the Caribbean can move from high income or middle income to almost zero income with an economic shock or natural disaster,” Maharaj added.

Maharaj, whose appointment took effect earlier this year, said the Commonwealth is preparing “an analytical framework based on research, a case, so that countries such as Grenada when there is a natural disaster their international debt obligation for a particular period of time will be suspended so that they don’t have to continue to pay their debt when it is that they have suffered a natural disaster.”

On the issue of collaboration, one of only three female prime ministers in the Caribbean has reaffirmed her country’s commitment to dealing with climate change and all the issues associated with the global phenomena.

“I would like to reaffirm my strong belief in collaboration with other nations,” Sarah Wescot-Williams, the prime minister of St. Maarten, told IPS.

“Economic issues have forced us to look at ways and means of getting together and we are working collaboratively with other Caribbean nations to mitigate the effects of climate change as well as social issues of unemployment, crime and health.”

Prime Minister of St. Maarten Sarah Wescot-Williams (left) and Chair of the Caribbean Tourism Organisation Beverly Nicholson-Doty. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

St. Maarten recently developed and approved its National Energy Policy “and as such we have very specific goals and objectives to reach by 2020 in terms of reduction and promoting alternative, new green ideas, new green products,” Wescot-Williams explained.

She reiterated a point made while addressing regional leaders recently. “I told them we should not only look out for the bigger impacts of climate change or look at those developments as something that is far from us, far from our homes, but look at small things like beach erosion, something that St. Maarten is seeing.

“A report has been issued not very long ago indicating that unless specific measures are taken, a great part of what is now land will no longer be as far as the smaller islands, including St. Maarten, are concerned.”

How they are ranked by financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank is a major issue for Caribbean countries.

Camillo Gonsalves, a former ambassador to the United Nations, says it affects these countries’ ability to secure the required funding to effectively deal with climate change.

He noted that most Caribbean countries are ranked as middle-income countries, and using that metric alone makes his country, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with its one-billion-dollar Gross Domestic Product (GDP), “richer than China”.

“If that is the metric by which we determine economic health and access to concessionary financing, and our ability to borrow ourselves out of a crisis or to spend ourselves out of a crisis, it is clearly a flawed measure,” he said.

He noted that within three hours last Christmas Eve, a trough system left damage and loss in St. Vincent equal to 17 percent of GDP, while the country also suffered natural disasters in 2010, and 2011 – the loss and damage from each of which was in double digits.

This, however, is the measure by which the World Bank, the IMF determine the economic strength of Caribbean countries, Gonsalves said, adding that these international institutions do not consider the region’s vulnerabilities.

“The Caribbean small island developing states are among the most heavily indebted states in the world,” Gonsalves said, noting that the debt-to-GDP ratio in the region ranges from 20 percent in Haiti – which received significant debt forgiveness after the 2010 earthquake – to 139 percent in Jamaica, with St. Kitts and Nevis and Grenada at 105 and 115 per cent, respectively, even as the European Union has set itself a debt-to-GDP ratio of 65 per cent.

“If your debt-to-GDP ratio is 139 percent and you are struck by a natural disaster… how do you borrow yourself out of that crisis? Where do you find money immediately to build your roads, your houses, your bridges, your hospitals that have been damaged? How can you set money aside in preparation for the next climate event if you have a debt to GDP ratio of over 100 per cent or approaching 100 per cent, and your debt servicing charges are that high?” Gonsalves said.

Agreeing with Wescot-Williams and Maharaj that there is strength in unity, Gonsalves, who serves as foreign affairs minister for St. Vincent and the Grenadines, said the upcoming Third United Nations Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in Samoa is an ideal opportunity for regional countries to do more than just talk about collaboration.

“The issue of how we are ranked and classified has to be rectified – not addressed, not flagged, not considered. It has to be rectified in Samoa. That has to be one of our prime objectives going into this conference,” he said.

The Samoa conference will be held from Sep. 1-4 under the theme “The Sustainable Development of Small Island States Through Genuine and Durable Partnerships”.

It will seek to assess progress and remaining gaps; renew political commitment by focusing on practical and pragmatic actions for further implementation; identify new and emerging challenges and opportunities for the sustainable development of SIDS and means of addressing them; and identify priorities for the sustainable development of SIDS to be considered in the elaboration of the post-2015 U.N. development agenda.

Maharaj said “one big challenge” for his organisation is the advancement of the interest of small states.

“When I think about the Caribbean and I think about development…we need to think about development not only in terms of five years, 10 years or 15 years,” he said.

“I would like to think about and imagine what will the Caribbean be in the year 2050 at the time when our grand- and great-grandchildren will be around and many of us won’t be here,” Maharaj added.

St. Vincent officials are assisting residents who live close to rivers to move to safer locations. Credit Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Jun 15 2014 (IPS)

A freak storm, followed by heavy floods in December 2013, will go down in history as the most destructive natural disaster to have hit the Caribbean island nation of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, with reported total damages and losses of at least 103 million dollars.

Six months later, the country, which is a member of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), is still in the recovery phase of this crisis, but Tourism Minister Cecil McKee said several lessons have been learned, making the country better prepared for future catastrophic weather events.

“Although Caribbean nations have contributed little to the release of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change, they will pay a heavy price for global inaction in reducing emissions." -- Hela Cheikhrouhou, executive director of the Green Climate Fund
“We have been dealing with our river defences and our coastal defences,” McKee told IPS, adding that the government is not only repairing damaged homes but also “relocating a number of persons whose homes are situated on river banks in areas that are obviously going to put them at risk should we have a reoccurrence of such events.”

A slow-moving, low-level trough on Dec. 24 dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on the Caribbean island states of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Dominica, killing at least 13 people.

Scientists have called the floods the worst disaster in living memory for the small countries, caused by higher-than-average rainfall of 15 inches, which overwhelmed the water systems’ ability to facilitate smooth run-off.

For Mckee, the Christmas disaster was a reminder that “climate change is going to be here with us for some time.”

“If we look at the events of Christmas Eve 2013, I think we can all agree that climate change is affecting not only St. Vincent and the Grenadines but the entire Caribbean in a significant way,” he asserted.

But simply understanding the problem is not enough – many of the island nations in the Caribbean are in dire need of financial resources to assist with mitigation and adaptation.

Caribbean looks to climate finance

Flooding is commonplace in the Caribbean, with Guyana, one of the most flood-prone countries in the region, recently benefitting from a multi-million-dollar credit scheme to guard against flooding.

St. Vincent has been strengthening river defences and coastal defences following deadly floods in December 2013. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

A statement from the World Bank said more than 300,000 people from the flood prone region of East Demerara will benefit from reduced flooding and climate risks as a result of an 11-million-dollar loan from the International Development Association (IDA).

Nearly 90 percent of Guyana’s population lives in this narrow coastal plain, largely below sea level and, therefore, highly vulnerable to climate change.

Extreme rainfall in 2005 resulted in flooding and damages estimated at nearly 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), or 465 million dollars at the time.

The impact on poverty was evident and many subsistence farmers, small business operators and vendors were affected.

Sophie Sirtaine, the World Bank’s country director for the Caribbean, said the funds would assist in providing opportunities for all Guyanese by reducing vulnerability to climate change.

“To boost competitiveness, it is essential to address the vulnerability to climate risks and ensure that the skills learnt in the classroom lay the foundation for future work-place success,” she told IPS.

Specifically, the project will upgrade critical sections of the East Demerara Water Conservancy dams and channels; improve drainage capacity in priority areas along the East Demerara coast; and increase flood preparedness by installing instruments to monitor hydro-meteorological data.

The IDA credit to the Government of Guyana has a final maturity of 25 years, with a five-year grace period.

During its annual board of governors meeting held in Guyana last month, Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) President Dr. Warren Smith said the Caribbean was becoming more aware of the severe threat posed by climate change on a daily basis.

“Seven Caribbean countries…are among the top 10 countries, which, relative to their GDP, suffered the highest average economic losses from climate-related disasters during the period 1993-2012.

“It is estimated that annual losses could be between five and 30 percent of GDP within the next few decades,” he added.

According to Smith, despite the region’s high vulnerability and exposure to climate change, Caribbean countries have failed to access or mobilise international climate finance at levels commensurate with their needs.

Caribbean countries are hoping that the South Korea-based Green Climate Fund (GCF) would prove to be much more beneficial than other global initiatives established to deal with the impact of climate change.

GCF Executive Director Hela Cheikhrouhou, who delivered the 15^th annual William Demas Memorial lecture during the CDB meeting, said that the concern expressed by Small Island Developing States all over the world finds a strong echo in the Caribbean, where the devastating effects of hurricanes have been witnessed by many.

“Although Caribbean nations have contributed little to the release of the greenhouse gases that drive climate change, they will pay a heavy price for global inaction in reducing emissions,” Cheikhrouhou warned.

The GCF came into being at the 16^th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UFCCC) held in Cancun, Mexico.

Its purpose is to make a significant contribution to global efforts to limit warming to two degrees Celsius by providing financial support to developing countries to help limit or reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, and to adapt to the unavoidable impacts of climate change.

There are hopes that the fund could top 100 billion dollars per annum by 2020.

“Our vision is to devise new paradigms for climate finance, maximise the impact of public finance in a creative way, and attract new sources of public and private finance to catalyse investment in adaptation and mitigation projects in the developing world,” Cheikhrouhou said.

Selwin Hart, climate change finance advisor with the CDB, said the GCF provides an important opportunity for regional countries to not only adapt to climate change but also to mitigate its effects.

McKee said the region is also putting measures in place to mobilise financial support in events similar to what affected the three OECS countries in December 2013.

“Countries are being asked to place monies in regional holding systems that would allow the region to respond more [efficiently] and I think that we are looking more and more to the international bodies and the more developed countries”, which are largely responsible for climate change, for assistance, he told IPS.

(END)

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”.

Vincentian Allan Williams has been a beekeeper for the past seven years. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
DUMBARTON, St. Vincent, Mar 12 2014 (IPS)

Allan Williams, 32, is an agriculture extension officer in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. But as a trained apiculturist, he has also been involved in beekeeping as a hobby for the past seven years.

He has seen beekeeping grow significantly since 2006, as stakeholders became increasingly aware of its importance to the agricultural sector, and thus an important contributor to economic growth and development.What’s happening in the Caribbean should not be confused with colony collapse disorder (CCD).

But today, Williams is worried. Honey production has declined tremendously over the past few years and he blames the changing climate as one of the main causes.

He said unfavourable climatic conditions, such as continued heavy rainfall, reduce the honeybees’ access to nectar and pollen, weakening the colonies, which do not have enough food.

“This threat was very evident over the past decade, occurring exceptionally so in 2009, 2010 and 2013. The weather as you know is very unpredictable and it has definitely affected the production of honey for the last two years, but last year was the most destructive in terms of harvesting,” Williams told IPS.

“Climate change is evident as we see with the unpredictability of the rainfall and the flash flooding in very unusual times of the year.”

Last December, St. Vincent and the Grenadines was among three Eastern Caribbean countries (the other two being Dominica and St Lucia) affected by a slow-moving, low-level trough which dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain, killing at least 13 people, destroying agricultural farms and other infrastructure.

“Most farmers, from what I understand, did not suffer destruction of their hives but they suffered from the torrential rain,” Williams told IPS.

Beehives on a farm in Antigua increase pollination and crop yields. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

He explained that when there is continuous rainfall “the bees are not able to go out and forage on trees where they could get food, so that really reduced our production and I was really affected by it. For two years we suffered a very unusual rainfall pattern.

“In April, the middle of the dry season, we had continuous rainfall for about three or four days and that impacted out production and we are seeing drier spells in the rainy season so there is a shift in the honey flow season when farmers can harvest,” Williams told IPS.

He said it used to be from February to May and even April, but “we are not able to harvest anything. That kind of change of our weather pattern is due to climate change.”

With just a dozen hives, Williams said that he harvests an average of 30 gallons of honey per year. This figure increases to 40 gallons in a “good year”.

Local honey retails for an average price of 100 dollars a gallon, slightly less than the imported product.

The apiculture industry here, which primarily deals with the production and sale of honey, is now valued at 76,600 dollars. The sector is recovering from an all-time low in 2006, when the honeybee population was almost wiped out by the ferocious Varroa Mite.

Over the last three years, the sector produced more than 1,000 gallons of honey from 477 colonies across the country.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines currently has 54 beekeepers recorded in its database, including nine women.

Rupert Lay, a water resources specialist with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), says climate change has begun to cause difficulties for bee farmers not only in St. Vincent but throughout the Caribbean.

“An interesting indicator occurring currently is the little to no production of honey in the region,” said Lay, who is participating in the USAID-funded Reducing the Risks to Human and Natural Assets Resulting from Climate Change (RRACC) project that is being implemented by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).

“This can be linked to the unpredictable weather patterns affecting farmer’s beehive colonies and thus honey production,” he told IPS.

“These events are disrupting farmers’ livelihoods which in turn affect adversely the fabric of society and livelihoods, including education. A farmer’s stress can be recognised by his or her children, thus creating worry which leads to decreased attention spans in the classroom manifesting in poor performance,” Lay added.

Williams pointed out that what’s happening in the Caribbean should not be confused with colony collapse disorder (CCD), a phenomenon in which worker bees from a beehive or European honeybee colony abruptly disappear.

While such disappearances have occurred throughout the history of apiculture, and were known by various names, the syndrome was renamed CCD in late 2006 in conjunction with a drastic rise in the number of disappearances of Western honeybee colonies in North America.

Colony collapse is significant economically because many agricultural crops worldwide are pollinated by honeybees.

According to the Agriculture and Consumption Protection Department of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, the value of global crops with honeybees’ pollination was estimated to be close to 200 billion dollars in 2005.

Williams listed other constraints to the development of the apiculture industry as the lack of appropriate sites for apiary establishment; exotic pests and invasive species; lack of equipment; aerial spraying and lack of staff in the apiculture unit.

For Ricky Narine, a beekeeper in Barbados, the toughest challenge right now is saving the bees.

“We are trying to save the bees. A lot of people out there are using a lot of chemicals that are killing them and they don’t realise that without bees the environment is going to suffer. As much as you tell them they still do it,” he said.

“They can call us or use something safer. There are a lot of different insecticides that you can use that are bee friendly. They might be a dollar or two more but they are bee friendly and will not kill the bees.”

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.