Caribbean tourism, fishing, farming bears brunt of climate change: CCCCC

Fish­ing and farm­ing com­munit­ies liv­ing in coastal areas as well the tour­ism industry, which is vital for Carib­bean eco­nom­ies, often bear the brunt of dam­age and loss of income from “extreme pre­cip­it­a­tion”, which “trans­lates into floods, land­slides, loss of life, loss of livelihoods”.

Carib­bean nations can now face as much rain­fall in the space of a few days as they would nor­mally get over a peri­od of months, with drain­age sys­tems unable to cope, Trotz said.

“You don’t even need to have a hur­ricane to get extens­ive dam­age … a trop­ic­al storm or depres­sion, it comes and sits over a par­tic­u­lar island or ter­rit­ory and it depos­its rain,” Trotz told the Thom­son Reu­ters Foundation.

“For us small island nations, basic­ally everything comes to a stop. As a region, we are very exposed to cli­mate risk and our pro­jec­tions show that this will be exacer­bated,” he said.

Trotz, whose organ­isa­tion coordin­ates the entire region’s response to cli­mate change, said: “We have some ser­i­ous con­cerns about the viab­il­ity of Carib­bean life as we know it.”

Man­groves are a nat­ur­al defense sys­tem against storm surges and flood­ing. Their high bio­mass both above and below the water can help dis­sip­ate wave energy. Source: Pub­lic Domain.

Healthier ecosystems

One key way to make coastal areas more resi­li­ent to storm surges and rising sea levels, linked to glob­al warm­ing, is to pro­tect mar­ine, cor­al and man­grove eco­sys­tems, Trotz said.

Reefs act like break­wa­ters redu­cing wave strength, while salt-tol­er­ant man­groves can buf­fer against hur­ricane winds and storm surges and cut wave height.

“As far as the human body is con­cerned, the health­i­er the body is, the more resi­li­ent it will be in terms of deal­ing with some of the threats, dis­eases,” Trotz said.

“So the same prin­ciple applies here, that the health­i­er our eco­sys­tems, the health­i­er our reefs, wet­lands and man­groves are, the more they will be able to res­ist some of the impacts of cli­mate change,” he said.

Across the Carib­bean, scores of pro­jects are under­way to restore battered cor­al reefs, estab­lish arti­fi­cial reefs, replant dam­aged man­groves and place mil­lions of acres of mar­ine areas under pro­tec­ted areas by 2020.

Some Carib­bean nations also face water short­ages exacer­bated by longer droughts linked to cli­mate change, Trotz said.

In sev­er­al islands of the Gren­ad­ines, a pilot sea­wa­ter desal­in­a­tion pro­ject using sol­ar power is underway.

In Guyana, to bet­ter cope with drought and chan­ging rainy sea­sons, rice farm­ers are using water har­vest­ing and drip irrig­a­tion sys­tems, and are receiv­ing short-term weath­er fore­casts allow­ing them to bet­ter decide when to plant crops.

Red tape means many small island nations are unable to access fund­ing from the Green Cli­mate Fund, accord­ing to the art­icle, which makes one won­der where the idea came from … Image snipped from the Green Cli­mate Fund web­site. Is it a clue?

Faster money

But more defens­ive action is hampered by a lack of funds.

Des­pite the United Nations Green Cli­mate Fund, set up in 2010 to help poor coun­tries tackle cli­mate change, red tape means many small island nations are unable to access funding.

“The bot­tom line is that we don’t have the resources,” Trotz said. “It’s not that we don’t have any idea about how we need to build resilience.”

It can take from nine months to up to eight years to get funds from donors, Trotz said.

“The longer you delay, a lot of the assump­tions you have made in the first instance are no longer val­id … we have to find some way of short­en­ing that whole process.”

Source: Thom­son Reu­ters Found­a­tion, the char­it­able arm of Thom­son Reuters.

What is the CCCCC?

The Carib­bean Com­munity Cli­mate Change Centre (CCCCC) coordin­ates the Carib­bean region’s response to cli­mate change. Offi­cially opened in August 2005, the Centre is “the key node for inform­a­tion on cli­mate change issues and on the region’s response to man­aging and adapt­ing to cli­mate change in the Carib­bean”, accord­ing to its web­site.

The CCCCC is the “repos­it­ory and clear­ing house for region­al cli­mate change inform­a­tion and data and provides cli­mate change-related policy advice and guidelines to the Carib­bean Com­munity (CARICOM) Mem­ber States through the CARICOM Secretariat”.

“In this role, the Centre is recog­nised by the United Nations Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change (UNFCCC), the United Nations Envir­on­ment Pro­gramme (UNEP), and oth­er inter­na­tion­al agen­cies as the focal point for cli­mate change issues in the Caribbean.”

Fea­tured image: By NASA. Hur­ricane Felix pho­to­graphed from the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion by an Exped­i­tion 15 crew mem­ber on Septem­ber 3, 2007 at 11:38:46 GMT. The ISS was loc­ated at the nadir point of 16.9 degrees north lat­it­ude and 83.3 degrees west lon­git­ude, over the waters south­w­est of Grand Cay­man Island. At approx­im­ately noon GMT, Hur­ricane Felix was near 14.2 degrees north lat­it­ude and 76.9 west lon­git­ude, about 260 miles (425 kilo­met­ers) south of King­ston, Jamaica, and 425 miles (685 kilo­met­ers) east of Cabo Gra­cias a Dios on the Nicaragua/Honduras bor­der, mov­ing west at 21 miles per hour (33 kilo­met­ers per hour). The sus­tained winds were 165 miles per hour with high­er gusts mak­ing it a cat­egory 5 on the Saf­fir-Simpson Hur­ricane Scale.