The aftermath of a bushfire in southern St. Vincent. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
KINGSTOWN, May 14 2015 (IPS)

For 32 years, Joel Poyer, a forest technician, has been tending to the forest of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

His job allows him a unique view of what is taking place in the interior of this volcanic east Caribbean nation, where the landscape mostly alternates between deep gorges and high mountains."Sometimes we hardly see any fish along the coastline, because there are no trees to cool the water for the algae to get food.” -- Joel Poyer

Poyer, a 54-year-old social and political activist and trade unionist, is hoping that during the 18 months before he retires, he can get the government and people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines to focus on how human activities on the nation’s beaches and in its forests are exacerbating the impacts of climate change.

“Right now, it’s like a cancer eating [us] from the inside,” he tells IPS of the actions of persons, many of them illegal marijuana growers, who clear large swaths of land for farming – then abandon them after a few years and start the cycle again.

Over the past few years, extreme weather events have shown the people of St. Vincent and the Grenadines how activities happening out of sight in the forest can have a devastating impact on coastal and other residential areas.

Three extreme weather events since 2010 have left total losses and damages of 222 million dollars, about 60 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

In October 2010, Hurricane Tomas left 24 million dollars in damage, including damage to 1,200 homes that sent scores of persons into emergency shelters.

The hurricane also devastated many farms, including the destruction of 98 per cent almost all of the nation’s banana and plantain trees, cash crops for many families.

In April 2011, heavy rains resulted in landslides and caused rivers to overflow their banks and damage some 60 houses in Georgetown on St. Vincent’s northeastern coast.

In addition to the fact that the extreme weather event occurred during the traditional dry season and left 32 million dollars worth of damage, Vincentians were surprised by the number of logs that the raging waters deposited into the town.

Forest Technician Joel Poyer says residents of St. Vincent and the Grenadines must play closer attention to how their own actions are exacerbating the effects of climate change. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

On Dec. 24, 2013, unseasonal heavy rains triggered landslides and floods, resulting in 122 million dollars in damage and loss.

Again, residents were surprised by the number of logs that floodwaters had deposited into towns and villages and the ways in which these logs became battering rams, damaging or destroying houses and public infrastructure.

Not many of the trees, however, were freshly uprooted. They were either dry whole tree trunks or neatly cut logs.

“We have to pay attention to what is happening in the forest,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told the media after the extreme weather event of December 2013.

“If we are seeing these logs in the lower end, you can imagine the damage in the upper end,” he said, adding that the Christmas Eve floods had damaged about 10 per cent of the nation’s forest.

“And if those logs are not cleared, and if we don’t deal properly with the river defences in the upper areas of the river, we have a time bomb, a ticking time bomb, because when the rains come again heavily, they will simply wash down what is in the pipeline, so to speak, in addition to new material that is to come,” Gonsalves said.

Almost one and a half years after the Christmas disaster, Gonsalves tells IPS a lot of clearing has been taking place in the forest.

“And I’ll tell you, the job which is required to be done is immense,” he says, adding that there is also a challenge of persons dumping garbage into rivers and streams, although the government collects garbage in every community across the country.

The scope of deforestation in St. Vincent and the Grenadines is extensive. In some instances, persons clear up to 10 acres of forest for marijuana cultivation at elevations of over 3,000 feet above sea level, Poyer tells IPS.

“Some of them may cultivate using a method that is compatible, whereby they may leave trees in strategic areas to help to hold the soil together and attract rain. Other will just clear everything, as much as five to ten acres at one time for marijuana,” he explains.

But farmers growing legal produce, such as vegetables and root crops, also use practices that make the soils more susceptible to erosion at a time when the nation is witnessing longer, drier periods and shorter spells of more intense rainfall.

Many farmers use the slash and burn method, which purges the land of many of its nutrients and causes the soil to become loose. Farmers will then turn to fertilisers, which increases production costs.

“When they realise that it is costing them more for input, they will abandon those lands. In abandoning these lands, these lands being left bare, you have erosion taking place. You may have gully erosion, landslides,” Poyer tells IPS.

During the Christmas 2013 disaster, flood waters deposited large volumes of neatly cut logs into residential and commercial areas in St. Vincent. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

He says that sometime access to these lands is so difficult that reforestation is very costly.

“Sometimes we will have to put in check dams to try to reduce the erosion and allow it to come under vegetation naturally and hope and pray that in two years when it begins to come under vegetation that someone doesn’t do the very same thing that had happened two years prior,” he explains.

As climate change continues to affect the Caribbean, countries of the eastern Caribbean are seeing longer dry spells and more droughts, as is the case currently, which has led to a shortage of drinking water in some countries.

Emergency management officials in St. Vincent and the Grenadines have warned that the rainy season is expected to begin in July, at least four weeks later than is usually the case. Similar warnings have been issued across the region.

This makes conditions rife for bush fires in a country where the entire coastline is a fire zone because of the type of vegetation.

The nation’s fire chief, Superintendent of Police Isaiah Browne, tells IPS that this year fire-fighters have responded to 32 bush fires, compared to 91 in all of 2014.

In May alone, they have responded to 20 bush fires – many of them caused by persons clearing land for agriculture.

Poyer tells IPS that in addition to the type of vegetation along the coast, a lot of trees in those areas have been removed to make way for housing and other developments.

“And that also has an impact on the aquatic life,” he says. “That is why sometimes we hardly see any fish along the coastline, because there are no trees to cool the water for the algae to get food.”

Poyer’s comments echo a warning by Susan Singh-Renton, deputy executive director of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism, who says that as the temperature of the Caribbean Sea rises, species of fish found in the region, important proteins sources, may move further northward.

The effects of bush fires, combined with the severe weather resulting from climate change, have had catastrophic results in St. Vincent.

Rising sea levels haves resulted in the relocation of houses and erection of this sea defence in Layou, a town in southwestern St. Vincent. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

Among the 12 persons who died in the Christmas 2013 floods and landslides were five members of a household in Rose Bank, in north-western St. Vincent, who died when a landslide slammed into their home.

“The three specific areas in Rose Bank where landslides occurred in in the 2013 floods were three of the areas where fires were always being lit,” Community activist Kennard King tells IPS, adding that there were no farms on those hillsides.

“It did affect the soil because as the bush was being burnt out, the soil did get loose, so that when the flood came, those areas were the areas that had the landslide,” says King, who is president of the Rose Bank Development Association.

As temperatures soar and rainfall decreases, the actions of Vincentians along the banks of streams and rivers are resulting in less fresh water in the nation’s waterways.

“The drying out of streams in the dry season is also a result of what is taking place in the hills, in the middle basin and along the stream banks,” Poyer tells IPS.

“Once you remove the vegetation, then you open it up to the sun and the elements that will draw out a lot of the water, causing it to vaporise and some of the rivers become seasonal,” he explains.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines has had to spend millions of dollars to protect coastal areas and relocate persons affected by rising sea, as was the case in Layou, a town on the south-western coast, where boardwalk knows stands where house once stood for generations.

Stina Herberg, principal of Richmond Vale Academy in north-western St. Vincent has seen the impact of climate change on the land- and seascape since she arrived in St. Vincent in 2007.

“Since I came here in 2007, I have seen a very big part of our coastline disappear. … The road used to go along the beach, but at a point we had really bad weather and that whole road disappeared. So we got like five metres knocked off our beach. So that was a first warning sign,” she tells IPS.

Richmond Vale Academy runs a Climate Compliance Conference, where new students join for up to six months and take part in a 10-year project to help the people in St. Vincent adapt to the challenges of global warming and climate change.

“We had trough system on the 24th December 2013, and that a took a big bite out of our football field. Maybe 10 per cent, 15 per cent of that football field was just gone in the trough system. … We have been observing this, starting to plant tree, getting more climate conscious, living the disasters through,” she says.

The academy recently joined with the Police Cooperative Credit Union to plant 100 trees at Richmond Beach, which has been severely impacted by climate change.

“They will prevent erosion, they will look more beautiful, they will motivate and mobilise people that they can see yes we can do something,” Herberg tells IPS.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

In this St. Vincent community, many people build their houses on the banks of a river flowing through the area, leaving them vulnerable to storms and flooding. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Sep 22 2014 (IPS)

When it comes to climate change, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves doesn’t mince words: he will tell you that it is a matter of life and death for Small Island Developing States (SIDS).

“The threat is not abstract, it is not very distant, it is immediate and it is real. And if this matter is the premier existential issue which faces us it means that we have to take it more seriously and put it at the centre stage of all our developmental efforts,” Gonsalves told IPS."The world is a small place and we contribute very little to global warming, but yet we are in the frontlines of continuing disasters.” -- Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves

“The country which I have the honour to lead is a disaster-prone country. We need to adapt, strengthen our resilience, to mitigate, we need to reduce risks to human and natural assets resulting from climate change.

“This is an issue however, which we alone cannot address. The world is a small place and we contribute very little to global warming but yet we are in the frontlines of continuing disasters,” Gonsalves added.

Since 2001, St. Vincent and the Grenadines has had 14 major weather events, five of which have occurred since 2010. These five weather events have caused loss and damage amounting to more than 600 million dollars, or just about a third of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“Three rain-related events, and in the case of Hurricane Tomas, wind, occurred in 2010; in April 2011 there were landslides and flooding of almost biblical proportions in the northeast of our country; and in December we had on Christmas Eve, a calamitous event,” Gonsalves said.

“My Christmas Eve flood was 17.5 percent of GDP and I don’t have the base out of which I can climb easily. More than 10,000 people were directly affected, that is to say more than one tenth of our population.

“In the first half of 2010 and the first half of this year we had drought. Tomas caused loss and damage amounting to 150 million dollars; the April floods of 2011 caused damage and loss amounting to 100 million dollars; and the Christmas Eve weather event caused loss and damage amounting to just over 330 million. If you add those up you get 580 million, you throw in 20 million for the drought and you see a number 600 million dollars and climbing,” Gonsalves said.

St. Vincent’s Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Over the past several years, and in particular since the 2009 summit of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen, the United States and other large countries have made a commitment to help small island states deal with the adverse impacts of climate change, and pledged millions of dollars to support adaptation and disaster risk-reduction efforts.

On a recent visit to several Pacific islands, Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated the importance of deepening partnerships with small island nations and others to meet the immediate threats and long-term development challenges posed by climate change.

He stressed that through cooperative behaviour and fostering regional integration, the U.S. could help create sustainable economic growth, power a clean energy revolution, and empower people to deal with the negative impacts of climate change.

But Gonsalves noted that despite the generosity of the United States, there is a scarcity of funds for mitigation and adaptation promised by the global community, “not only the developed world but also other major emitters, China and India, for example,”  adding that these promises were made to SIDS and to less developed countries.

Twelve people lost their lives in the Christmas Eve floods.

Jock Conly, mission director of USAID/Eastern and Southern Caribbean, told IPS that through strategic partnerships with regional, national, and local government entities, USAID is actively working to reduce the region’s vulnerability and increase its resilience to the impacts of climate change.

“We are providing assistance to increase the capacity of technical and educational institutions in fields such as meteorology, hydrology, and coastal and marine science to improve forecasting and preparation for climate risks,” he said.

“This support includes work with the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies at the Cave Hill Campus of the University of the West Indies, and current partnerships with organisations like the World Meteorological Organisation and its affiliate, the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology, the government of Barbados, and the OECS Commission.

“Under an agreement with the World Meteorological Organisation and in partnership with CIMH, a Regional Climate Center will be established for the Caribbean that will be capable of providing tailored climate and weather services to support adaptation and enhanced disaster risk reduction region-wide.”

Conly said the centre will improve climate and weather data collection regionally to fill critical information, monitoring and forecasting gaps allowing the region to better understand and predict climate impacts.

At the same time, USAID is pursuing efforts under the OECS Commission’s programme to educate communities and local stakeholders about climate change impacts and the steps that can be taken to adapt to these impacts.

“A key feature of this programme is the development of demonstration models addressing different aspects of the adaptation process.  This includes the restoration of mangroves, coral reefs, and other coastal habitats, shoreline protection projects, and water conservation initiatives,” Conly said.

Opposition legislator Arnhim Eustace is concerned that people still “do not attach a lot of importance” to climate change.

“People are more concerned with the day-to-day issues, their bread and butter, and I am glad that more and more attention is being paid to that issue at this this present time to let our people have a better understanding of what this really means and how it can impact them,” he told IPS.

“When a fellow is struggling because he has no job and can’t get his children to school, don’t try to tell him about climate change, he is not interested in that. His interest is where is my next meal coming from, where my child’s next meal is coming from, and that is why you have to be so careful with how you deal with your fiscal operations.”

Eustace, who is the leader of the opposition New Democratic Party, said people must first be made able to meet their basic needs to that they can open their minds to serious issues like climate change.

“The whole environment in your country at a particular point in time makes persons conducive or less conducive to deal with issues like climate change and so on,” Eustace added.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at destinydlb@gmail.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From left, Jan Hartke of the Clinton Foundation, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, Peter Williams, managing director of Light & Power Holdings Ltd., Barbados, and Gunnar Gunnarsson of Reykjavik Geothermal. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, Nov 12 2013 (IPS)

Weary of sky-high electricity prices, St. Vincent is following in the footsteps of another, decidedly un-tropical island nearly 4,000 miles away in its quest to harness clean geothermal power.

A contingent of Icelandic scientists is here until December, investigating the mountainous nation’s geothermal potential, estimated at 890 megawatts."In North Windward where I grew up and still spend most of my time, I remember how much we yearned for electricity when most of the country was brightly lit."-- local resident Rochelle Baptiste

The source is the island’s La Soufrière volcano, which has erupted three times since 1902. There is a steaming resurgent dome in the crater and numerous hot springs in river valleys on the western side of the volcano. Of additional interest are three striking features near Wallibou Beach, in an area locally known as “Hot Waters,” and a circular feature near Morgans Wood near Trinity Falls.

“They will go into the Soufrière mountains, doing some surface exploration work. This is like hiking, just scientists walking around with some measuring devices and measuring resistivity of the earth, of the volcano, and by doing that, they will get an indication if there is a possible resource in the area,” Gunnar Orn Gunnarsson, chief operating officer of Reykjavik Geothermal, told IPS.

“We are confident that there is but first we have to do measurements to be able to confirm that,” said Gunnarsson, whose own nation relies on geothermal for about a quarter of all electricity generation.

Funding for the 50-million-dollar project is coming from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines government, Barbados Light & Power Holdings and Reykjavik Geothermal.

Scientists rank St. Vincent fourth on a list of countries in the Lesser Antilles with geothermal energy potential, behind Guadeloupe, St. Lucia and Dominica. Nevis, Saba, St. Kitts, Grenada, Martinique, Montserrat and Statia complete the list of the top 11 countries.

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

Geothermal “is a matter of great interest, not only to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but the Caribbean, to the neighbouring countries such as St. Lucia and Barbados,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves told IPS, adding that the project would be a “potentially game changing initiative.”

“The fuel cost savings to be had with geothermal, I’m told, will be in the region of 16 million to 20 million dollars. That’s a significant amount given the cost of the fuel.”

St. Vincent currently produces just over five megawatts of electricity from its three hydropower stations. The peak demand for electricity is between 20-21 megawatts. With the addition of a geothermal plant, the island is looking to produce an additional 10 megawatts to bring total production to 15 megawatts.

“When [former] President [Bill] Clinton first started this idea about reaching out to islands, he knew the price of electricity and specifically told me the electricity cost in almost every island in the Caribbean, so obviously he had put some time into looking at this and was concerned about it,” Jan Hartke, global director of the Clinton Climate Initiative Clean Energy Project, told IPS.

“How can families get along with the kinds of electricity costs that you have? How can businesses thrive? How can the islands take the kind of social and economic and environmental leadership roles that it wants and should do when you have these kinds of burdens on your electricity prices?”

Prime Minister Gonsalves also sees it as a major development opportunity. “As our energy costs come down, you can expect more hotels to come. You can expect factories which don’t want to set up here because of the high cost of electricity, and as you get more tourists there are other knock-on effects,” he said.

“More restaurants will be built and opened with a comfortable eating environment for clients, because running an air conditioning unit on an ongoing basis at 40 cents per kilowatt hour, it could eat up all of your profits,” he told IPS.

The Caribbean is one of the regions most prone to natural disasters resulting from climate change and officials are hoping that geothermal energy is the answer to their mounting climate change concerns.

Hartke said the climate issue and its effect on Caribbean countries was also of particular concern to the Clinton foundation.

“There is no set of countries that are more vulnerable than the small island developing states,” he told IPS. “Mrs. Clinton has been interested in the islands for a long time. She was at the Organisation of American States (OAS) four years ago specifically talking about the concerns and needs of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.”

Officials have already commenced public education exercises for residents of North Windward in the northeast of the island and Chateaubelair in the northwest, the two communities closest to the volcano which occupies most of the northern third of the country.

“It is very important to keep the people informed since those areas are going to be directly affected in terms of exploration and production,” Gonsalves said.

Local resident Rochelle Baptiste welcomed the government-led initiative to seek cheaper energy through geothermal exploration. Like most Vincentians, she is eagerly awaiting the end result.

“In this harsh economic climate it is important that action be taken to lessen the impact on citizens,” she told IPS.

“High energy cost is an issue that our citizens have been struggling with over the years which in some respect has been hampering social and economic development as persons are just not able to meet the cost on their monthly electricity bills compounded with other bills.

“In North Windward where I grew up and still spend most of my time, I remember how much we yearned for electricity when most of the country was brightly lit. When it came, we were elated but it came with a price which residents are still struggling to pay for. Each month you can hear the cry as neighbours complain to neighbours about the high cost of electricity, as they ponder how they are going to meet the payment,” Baptiste added.

Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Akinwumi Adesina holding the FAO award recognising outstanding progress in fighting hunger and attaining MDG One. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu
ROME, Jun 16 2013 (IPS)

Thirty-eight countries were recognised for the first time on Sunday by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation for cutting in half the prevalence of people suffering from undernourishment, one of three targets under the first Millennium Development Goal.

Of those countries, 18 also achieved the tougher World Food Summit Goal of halving the absolute numbers of hungry people: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cuba, Djibouti, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Nicaragua, Peru, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Thailand, Turkmenistan, Venezuela and Vietnam.

“You are the proof that when societies decide to put an end to hunger, when there is political will from governments, we can transform that will into action,” FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva told leaders of the awarded countries during the Rome ceremony. “Thank you for showing us that it is possible.”

Twenty other countries were recognised for cutting by half the prevalence of hunger (but not yet absolute numbers): Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chile, Dominican Republic, Fiji, Honduras, Indonesia, Jordan, Malawi, Maldives, Niger, Nigeria, Panama, Togo and Uruguay.

At the Rome World Food Summit in 1996, countries around the world committed to working towards food security for all. In 2000, the U.N. adopted the eight Millennium Development Goals, meant to guide global efforts towards offering all people a decent life.

MDG One, “eradicating extreme poverty and hunger”, is broken down into three targets: reducing by 50 percent the proportion of hungry people, achieving decent employment for all, and halving the number of people living on less than 1.25 dollars a day by 2015.

Received with broad acclaim by the FAO assembly during the award ceremony, the new Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, outlined in brief his country’s path to reducing hunger prevalence from 13.8 percent to 2.4 percent over the last decade, emphasising the core role played by former president Hugo Chavez in this battle.

“We are asking the FAO to assist us in creating a system to safeguard a permanent, stable food supply, which would permit us to confront the covert speculative attacks that Venezuela is currently enduring,” he told IPS TV.

Caribbean small island state Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is another of the countries acknowledged for meeting both goals. Since the early 1990s, it has reduced hunger rates from 20 percent to 4.9 percent, according to Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, who spoke to IPS on the sidelines of the Jun. 15-22 FAO biannual conference in Rome.

Gonsalves explained that climate change and pressures from international markets on domestic banana production posed significant challenges to his country in the attempt to defeat hunger. And yet the 120,000-person state seems to have found a working mix of solutions.

“We have a history of root vegetables and fruit crops and an accumulated two centuries worth of knowledge resident in the folk which should be mobilised and is being mobilised,” Gonsalves said.

“Secondly, important is the organisation of farmers to engage in cooperative work with the state. Finally, we are implementing targeted solutions such as feeding programmes for school children and the elderly and in general developing a strong safety net.

“We are addressing the production side but also the consumer side through targeted interventions,” the prime minister said.

Georgia, another country recognised in Rome, reduced the prevalence of malnourishment from 60 percent to 25 percent over the past decade, according to FAO figures.

“This was possible because of a number of different measures that we took to generally improve the economy and combat corruption and mismanagement, which allowed us to have double-digit growth for the past years,” Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told IPS in Rome.

“Growth was combined with implementing poverty reduction programmes helping families to reach subsistence levels.”

Current estimates put the number of people suffering from hunger today at 870 million.

According to the U.N.’s The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2012 report, significant progress has been made on combating hunger since 1990, yet in some areas around the world this was either slowed down or even reversed by the global economic crisis.

The U.N. says that meeting the MDG goal of halving hunger prevalence by 2015 is within reach but only if measures are taken to make up for the negative impact of the crisis.

A three-dimensional mapping exercise in St. Vincent aims to enhance local awareness of climate change. Participants apply paint to the model. Credit: Asher Andall/IPS

By Peter Richards
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Mar 5 2013 (IPS)

A new weapon in the arsenal against climate change is tapping local knowledge to bridge the policy gap and let communities make their own informed decisions about how to manage livelihoods, natural resources, culture and heritage.

“In the past, most climate change initiatives have been top-down, coming from the government level,” says Martin Barriteau, executive director of Sustainable Grenadines (Sus Gren), a trans-boundary non-governmental organisation committed to the conservation of the coastal and marine environment and sustainable livelihoods for the people between Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.Not only will climate change be costly, it could be the thing that cripples small island economies.

“[But] our communities, especially the ones on the coast, have been witnessing and adapting to the effects of climate changes over time,” he says.

Enter P3DM – participatory three-dimensional modelling, which merges conventional spatial information systems with local people’s own “mental maps” to produce scale relief models that can be used jointly with Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Participatory 3D models are manufactured at the village level using paper and layered cardboard. Based on their personal knowledge of the area, informants depict land use and cover and other features on the model by the use of pencils, pushpins (points), yarns (lines) and/or paint (polygons). Once the model is completed, a scaled grid is applied to transpose spatial and georeferenced data into GIS.

For example, the models can bring communities together around priority areas such as flood zones, drought concerns, fish populations and mangrove protection.

The maps are also an educational tool for youth and children. Abdon White, a geography teacher at Union Island Secondary School, told IPS, “One of the first tasks we had, we did the tracing of the contour lines and that enabled us to actually build the P3DM model of Union island.

“One part of the CX syllabus is the map reading section and that they work with contours and distances and it will help them to get a better understanding to working with maps, distances, scales because the whole part of the entire project had to deal with legend and building the key to mapping. The entire exercise will be good for them to improving their overall map skills,” he said, referring to his pupils’ involvement and how he sees it benefiting them in writing the Caribbean Examination Council (CXC) exam.

In general, Barriteau says P3DM brings that “sense of awareness of climate change to these communities with the hope that they will be empowered in making decisions about climate which would [then] inform policy decisions”.

Last week, SusGren, in collaboration with the Netherlands-based Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC), brought together members of local communities and regional and international organisations on Union Island, one of the Grenadine Islands, for a one-week participatory three-dimensional mapping exercise.

It’s no secret that Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and other Caribbean islands are especially susceptible to the impacts of climate change and extreme climatic events, such as hurricanes and floods.

“Impacts of climate change in the Caribbean are projected to include sea level rise, ocean warming, and changing rainfall patterns,” the organisers said in a document circulated at the workshop.

“These are expected to have a significant economic and social impact. Threats from climate change and extreme climatic events are exacerbated by the ongoing problems caused by human development, including inappropriate land use and poorly planned physical development, inappropriate agricultural practices on slopes, point and non-point source pollution including from improper disposal of solid wastes.”

TNC’s “At the Water’s Edge” project focuses on helping small island states enhance their resilience to climate change by restoring and effectively managing their marine and coastal ecosystems and strengthening local capacity for adaptation.

The new mapping technology will aid this project by building local, national and regional capacity to support eco-based adaptation, empowering communities within the pilot sites in Grenada and Union Island, and developing the communications capacity of community-based organisations and NGOs.

On completion of the workshop, participants are expected to be in a position to discuss the value of local spatial and traditional knowledge as well as describe how P3DM can be used to document, geo-reference and visualise local knowledge. The four- by eight-foot model will belong to the community.

“Anyone wanting to use it must first seek the permission from the community. Sustainable Grenadines, which is leading the initiative on Union Island, would be working with the local community to develop ecosystem based solutions to deal with the effects of climate changes,” Barriteau says.

He said a suite of concrete climate change adaptation strategies will emerge from the P3DM initiative, and hopes it will not be viewed as just another overly technical, jargon-laden “fix” that obscures more than it enlightens.

“We hope that P3DM will put communities in the forefront on climate change issues. Not only are they bombarded, most times they are not involved. According to a Caribsave Climate Change study, sea level rise scenario 2050 is estimated at 489 million dollars to the economy of Grenada. Not only will climate change be costly, it could be the thing that cripples small island economies,” he added.

Tyrone Hall, a communications consultant at the Belize-based Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Climate Change Center (CCCCC), told IPS that the three-dimensional mapping is being done across the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) region on a small-scale, “so sharing our experiences via new media tools such as social media allows us to make public in an accessible way our experience and the lessons learnt.

“We also see social media as a natural fit with this activity given its participatory nature. The CCCCC is in a position to use its broad online social media platforms to share this exercise with a wide audience, particularly given our strong relationship with the Small Island Developing States (SIDS DOCK) Secretariat that includes the Pacific islands,” he added.

Barriteau said that as part of the part of the Union Island P3DM process, a film will be developed that will be shown in other ACP countries while the CTA is “driving this methodology worldwide”.

Grenada will be the next Caribbean country in which the P3DM exercise will be held in April. Organisers says the core problem the project will tackle is that policies to address the impacts of climate change have been created largely without the effective engagement of local communities – from which useful traditional knowledge exists and among whom much of the adaptation action will need to be taken.

“The effect is that policy responses in the Caribbean have largely been at the general policy level, with few specific policies or plans developed to address priorities at the landscape or site level,” they say.

“Sectoral considerations or traditional knowledge have not been adequately considered, stakeholders are not effectively engaged and there has been little on the ground action to build resilience or to ‘climate proof’ key sectors such as tourism and agriculture.”