Caribbean Beat — 25th Anniversary Edition — March/April 2017 (#144)

Mangrove-lined seashore in Bonaire
accounting, we are seeing the private
sector make an effort to incorporate
practices such as reusing waste water
and cutting down on packaging. It’s
simply not in their interest to have a dirty
beach, polluted waters, or dead reefs.
But “the industrial land-based private
sector still needs a lot more work,”
Corbin says. Governments have a very
important role to play — by offering
certain incentives to undertake pollution
prevention measures, such as retrofitting
factories and implementing disincentives
to waste production.
While it’s imperative to find
economic opportunities for
our people, in the face of
limited resources, high debt ratios, and
vulnerabilility to natural disasters, much
can be done by focusing on the type of
development agenda Caribbean countries
subscribe to, Corbin believes. And, he
says, our governments are beginning
to articulate their interest in a “blue
economy” and a “green economy.” “We
are seeing a new kind of thinking,” he
says. “What we need now are land use
development plans that maximise what
developed countries have already started
to do — urban farms, clean energy, etc. We
need to be more open and imaginative, but
we also need to have better enforcement
of laws that protect the environment.” If
policies aren’t enforced, Corbin says, it’s
not going to work.
For most countries in the region except
oil- and gas-rich Trinidad and Tobago, the
costs of continued use of fossil fuels are
a major issue, Corbin says. “We have
thermal, solar, and wind energy in use
already in the Caribbean. There is a real
opportunity for us to embrace alternative
energy and move forward.”
Considering the big-picture question of
climate change, Donna Blake, the Nature
Conservancy’s Jamaica programme
director, is hopeful. “Governments
and communities are taking action to
proactively address the challenges of
climate change,” she says. She points out
that at the regional level the establishment
of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM)
Climate Change Centre, which focuses
solely on climate change education and
adaptation projects, is a noteworthy
advance.
The Nature Conservancy itself has
designed programmes to work with coastal
communities facing climate-related risks.
“At the Water’s Edge,” a collaborative
project with the International Federation
of the Red Cross, builds resilience in
communities in Grenada and St Vincent
and the Grenadines by empowering
people to assess the social, ecological,
and economic risks of climate change,
and make informed decisions about how
to use their resources sustainably. The
initiative provides decision-making tools
and training for nature-based climate
resilience strategies, such as coastal
mangrove restoration.
“It’s easy to take nature for granted, and
all that it provides us in the Caribbean,”
Blake says. “But when threats become
apparent and natural disasters grow
more prevalent, we quickly and sharply
feel the loss of security in our natural
environment that we may have once felt.”
Her experience suggests that as
people learn more they find their voice
Across the Caribbean, more of our people are
beginning to comprehend the true extent of the
vulnerability of our coastlines
and are able to be involved in solutions.
They have the information to support,
or question if needs be, decisions made
by governments and the private sector,
because they understand the long-term
implications of changes to policy or
business practices. “Moving forward, I
believe people will have the knowledge
to drive sufficient demand for cleaner
energy, more efficient use of resources,
and climate-adaptive policies regarding
coastal development, tourism, and
fishing. So in another twenty-five years,
the human footprint across the Caribbean
will take a far more sustainable shape.” n
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