Source - Guyana Chronicle

THE Caribbean Community has to step up its public education outreach on the impact of climate change in countries in the region.

This was among the main findings from a project backed by the World Bank which also found that Guyana is amongst countries in the scheme that have strengthened national capacity to deal with climate change.

CARICOM Secretariat, consultant Carlos Santos said there was significant regional cooperation when negotiating on climate change issues at the international level and this has positive implications for policymaking. He further stated that although vast climate change related data was now available, there was a major challenge in disseminating this, but explained that the regional climate change centre has secured financing for a clearinghouse mechanism that would speed up dissemination.

Santos said national sectoral adaptation strategies were developed in highly participatory fashions such as Water for Belize and Jamaica, Tourism for Barbados, and Agriculture for Guyana.

The Secretariat said the Project Manager and the Consultant noted that the mainstreaming component of the project had not reaped significant success as it was not infused into the public psyche and fully integrated into the regional planning processes.

The report indicated that while climate change was a household phrase in the Caribbean - indicating that the awareness campaigns implemented might have worked - attitudinal and behaviour change had been less than encouraging.

The Secretariat said Mr. Walter Vergara, project leader for the executing agency – the World Bank – on the Caribbean Community Mainstreaming Adaptation to Climate Change project (MACC) is satisfied with the implementation of the scheme, adding that it has been “very successful, with major accomplishments.”

The MACC project is a World Bank/Global Environment Fund (GEF) activity implemented by CARICOM through the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC).

The Secretariat said it was designed to influence development-planning initiatives in CARICOM member states, especially in small island low-lying states.

“One of its primary objectives is to build capacity to identify climate change risks, reduce vulnerability and to effectively access and utilize resources to contain the costs of climate change impact”, it said.

The project expires on March 31 and the Climate Change Centre convened a two-day conference which ended yesterday in Castries, Saint Lucia with its stakeholders, development partners and key researchers in related disciplines. The meeting was to review the end-of-project assessment report and to “share experiences and visions for the future of the Caribbean under the influence of a changing climate regime in the 21st century.”

Vergara told the secretariat’s Public Information Unit on Monday at the conference that the methodology used for conducting the country assessments and the actual assessments done in participating countries had two impressive outcomes.

He cited the upgrading and networking of the climate and sea-level monitoring infrastructure and the training of meteorological and survey officers to maintain the upgraded stations and manage use of collected data; the strengthening of the Coral Reef Warning Systems (CREWS) monitoring network in participating countries and the capacity strengthening which had been done both nationally and regionally as some of the activities of the project of which the World Bank was most proud.

He noted that the Climate Change Centre was also a child of MACC and commended the CARICOM Secretariat for its sterling support in the establishment of the centre.

Vergara, who is also the lead engineer for Environmentally and Socially Sustainable Development in the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region, pointed to the challenge of mainstreaming climate change into the policy making machinery of Caribbean Governments and underscored the critical need for policy makers to have been integrally involved in the project from its inception.

“Nothing is perfect and we could have done a few things differently…but overall the project has been implemented successfully,” he reflected.

He felt more resources could have been ploughed into ensuring that the knowledge and information generated was linked to the policy formulation processes.

This, he said, would allow for policy makers to be engaged and involved from the inception of the MACC project and would have permitted them to consider seriously all the implications for climate change impact.

The World Bank and CARICOM Secretariat Representative Mr. Garfield Barnwell felt that on the basis of the outcome of the MACC project, the region needed to address climate change issues on a more programmatic basis and greater attention should be given to completing the draft regional strategy.

The secretariat said Barnwell also highlighted the need for an action plan which would focus on the requirements for mainstreaming climate change in the Caribbean.