(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) A number of International Development Partners attending the Second Caribbean Community Conference on Climate Change held in Castries, Saint Lucia on 23-24 March, have re-affirmed their commitment to strengthening ties with the Caribbean Community in developing resilience to the global challenge of Climate Change.
Representative from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Caribbean Ms Julie Kunen, assured the Conference that Climate Change was still a priority issue on the United States agenda and that the US Government would continue to support the Caribbean’s efforts in developing adaptation strategies and other initiatives to respond to climate change.
Outlining the USAID’s involvement with the Caribbean, she said USAID had been very active in activities ranging from forest management, coastal and marine conservation, disaster response, early warning system and development, and promoting the sustainability of productive activities such as tourism in the Caribbean particularly in Guyana and Haiti.
She added that their plans for the future include mainstreaming adaptation to climate change. “Our goals in adaptation are to enable project designers in the Region to plan more resilient, robust projects by understanding climate change and how it may affect projects. Assisting them as they incorporate this understanding into project design,” she stated.
Dr Reynold Murray, United Nations Development Program (UNDP) representative noted that contrary to recent criticisms of the Caribbean Community, it was still a powerful force in the region and it was the Intention of UNDP to forge greater ties with the Community in ensuring that effective responses to the global phenomenon of climate change were developed.
He explained that part of the UNDP’s strategy was to build country level capacity to address climate change by providing a set of integrated support services; diversify the funding sources that countries can access and enable them to effectively combine and sequence these different financing sources and Complement existing policy change and capacity development efforts at the national level by facilitating action at the local community, national and regional levels.
Dr Reynolds pointed out that one of the UNDP’s considerations was the establishment of the Climate Change Development and Advisory Committee to support the Task Force set up by the 29th Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) in 2008 to define and address the region’s Climate Change agenda for the negotiations leading up to the 2012 Post-Kyoto regime as well as to provide support and representation for the Community with respect to critical sectors affected by climate change.
He added that the UNDP was strengthening its link with CARICOM by facilitating the participation of regional policy makers to international fora and was also working with CARICOM to develop a Caribbean position in preparation for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change slated for December, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The two-day conference which was organized by the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) ended on Tuesday with several technical presentations on cross-cutting issues on the theme: Mainstreaming Climate Change for the Sustainable Development of the Caribbean. The Conference which had a dual aim, discussed on the first day, the outcomes of the Mainstreaming Adaptation to Climate Change (MACC) project implemented by the CCCCC and which will end on 31 March,2009. On the second day officials, researchers and other climate change professionals and organizations made key presentations in keeping with the theme of the conference.
