BY PETRE WILLIAMS Observer senior reporter williamsp@jamaicaobserver.com
Monday, July 28, 2008
JAMAICA is among the Caribbean islands to benefit from an International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) initiative geared at shoring up their ability to cope with climate change, while preserving their biodiversity and helping to meet their alternative energy needs.
Dr William Jackson, deputy director of the IUCN, was on the island last week to meet with stakeholders concerning areas of priority to form a part of the initiative, which is to be finalised at the World Conservation Congress in October.
"We see that there is an urgent need to work with island countries and with some of the bigger countries to solve some of the problems that in the end will become bigger problems," Jackson told the Observer. "We are also interested in the relationship between a healthy environment and healthy people, and a healthy environment and economic development."
He added that these were critical considerations for island countries, which stand to lose the most from climate change and the loss of biodiversity, for example.
Jackson's recent visit to Jamaica concludes a year and a half of analysis concerning the needs of the region, which is to form the focus of the regional initiative.
"It is a part of a bigger analysis. For a long time we have had an interest in islands and also, globally, we are developing an island programme," he said. "We are just about to take on the administration of a group called the Global Island Partnership (GLISPA), which until now has been managed by the Nature Conservancy based in the United States."
GLISPA helps islands to conserve and use natural resources that support their people and livelihoods.
"It brings together island nations and nations with islands - small and large, developing and developed - to mobilise leadership, increase resources and share skills, knowledge, technologies and innovations in a cost-effective and sustainable way that will catalyse action for conservation and sustainable livelihoods on islands," notes the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) website. "It is recognised by the CBD as a partnership to advance the implementation of the CBD 2010 biodiversity target, to reduce the rate of biodiversity loss, and the programmes of work on island biodiversity and protected areas."
GLISPA was first called for in Mauritius in January 2005 and launched at the eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD in Brazil in March 2006.
Jackson has, in the interim, gone on to Dominica where he will meet with the stakeholders on that island, as well as those from Haiti and Cuba. After that, he will journey to Brazil for similar meetings.
So far he said he had found Jamaica to be receptive to the region-wide initiative.
"We found that there is a lot of enthusiasm for us to come into the region more than we have been up until now," Jackson said, adding that they were looking to set up offices in the Caribbean to help facilitate the implementation of measures next year.
He was quick to note that their approach to implementation would be bottom up since they were not in the habit of dictating to partners what should happen in their respective countries.
"We will be focusing down through consultation process," said the deputy director general of the 60-year-old Lake Geneva- based organisation of which seven Caribbean countries are members.