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Race on to save Caribbean banana industry from impact of climate change
Gonsalves said that the issue would be discussed at the upcoming CARICOM Inter-sessional summit in Kingstown, Mar. 10-11. “There are several dimensions to climate change [and] clearly an immediate one for us is how do we better prepare ourselves for national disasters and how do we better recover from natural disasters, and we have to look at the strengthening of our institutional arrangements against the backdrop of increased vulnerabilities arising from the frequency and intensity of natural disasters,” Gonsalves told IPS.
He said this was a serious matter because “we do not contribute greatly to man-made climate change but we are on the frontline and there is lots of talk all the time about monies for adaptation and mitigation. “We haven’t seen those monies yet. There are some limited resources which come out of the World Bank but the kinds of monies which have been pledged…are yet to be delivered,” he told IPS.
Gonsalves said this is a matter where the region would have to do much more coordinated work, adding “we have a lot of good allies – the British are now talking in a very serious way because of what is happening there”.
Copyright Caribbean360 2014
