Caribbean Climate Wire

CARIBBEANCLIMATE WIRE

Fishing Communities Will Face Warmer, Acid Oceans................................................6 Desmond Brown

Storms, Flooding Can Unleash a Toxic Soup.................................................................8Desmond Brown

Today’s Forecast Is for Climate-Proof Farming...............................................................10Jewel Fraser

Christmas Deluge Brings Disaster to Eastern Caribbean............................................12Desmond Brown

Taste Test Stymies Caribbean’s Climate-Resistant Crops..............................................14Jewel Fraser

Indoor Mini-Farms to Beat Climate Change......................................................................16Jewel Fraser

Mangroves Could Be Saviour of Guyana’s Shrinking Coastline....................................18Desmond Brown

Permaculture Poised to Conquer the Caribbean.......................................................20Mark Olalde

Shifting Rainy Season Wreaks Havoc on Barbuda’s Crops............................................22Desmond Brown

“Blessed” Rains Become a Curse in Antigua..............................................................24Desmond Brown

Nevis Embarks on Geothermal Energy Journey............................................................26Desmond Brown

Belize Fights to Save a Crucial Barrier Reef......................................................................28Aaron Humes

Lessons from Jamaica’s Billion-Dollar Drought...........................................................30Desmond Brown

CONTENTS

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Left: Many areas in Cuba still rely on tanker trucks for water. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPSBelow: School children in Jamaica plant mangrove seedlings on Dec. 2, 2011 to fortify coastal areas from the effects of climate change. Credit: Courtesy of the Caribbean Coastal Area Management FoundationNext Page: Residents of Port of Spain make their way down flooded streets. Credit: Desmond Brown

From geothermal energy projects in Nevis and St. Vincent to climate-smart agriculture in Trinidad, the Caribbean is rolling out innovative measures to both mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

As a region of small-island developing states, it’s no stranger to risk and vulnerability. But cli-mate change has brought new pressures, including sea level rise, flooded wetlands, heatwaves, changes in precipitation and more intense storms.

Coral reefs and fisheries, a vital source of food and income for nations like Antigua, are threat-ened by ocean acidification.

In collaboration with the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ) and the Ca-ribbean Public Health Agency (CARPHA), IPS looks at the wide variety of local, national and regional initiatives in the Caribbean that offer creative solutions to these problems.

Examples range from indoor hydroponic “mini-farms” to planting mangroves as a barrier against coastal erosion and embracing the ecologically sound principles of permaculture.

But while new, green technologies have a role to play, also critical will be better natural resource management, and giving small farmers and rural communities the tools to climb out of poverty and feed a growing population even as climate change disrupts their environment.

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Eating fish has been an integral part of the Caribbean’s cultural tradi-tions for centuries. Fish is also a major source of food and essential nutrients, especially in rural areas where there are scores of small

coastal communities.“That is the protein that they have to put in their pot, and sometimes it has to

stretch for very many mouths,” Dr. Susan Singh-Renton, deputy executive direc-tor of the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM), told IPS.

For people who rely on the ocean’s ecosystem services – often in developing countries like those of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) – a major new international report on the world’s oceans is particularly worrying.

Experts warn that the acidity of the world’s oceans may increase by 170 percent by the end of the century, bringing significant economic losses. People who rely on the ocean’s ecosystem services – often in developing countries – are especially vulnerable.

FISHING COMMUNITIES WILL FACE WARMER, ACID OCEANSBy Desmond Brown

The group of experts has agreed on “levels of confidence” in relation to ocean acidification statements sum-marising the state of knowledge.

The summary was led by the Inter-national Geosphere-Biosphere Pro-gramme and results from the world’s largest gathering of experts on ocean acidification ever convened. The Third Symposium on the Ocean in a High CO2 World was held in Monterey, Cali-fornia in September 2012, and attended by 540 experts from 37 countries. For the benefit of policymakers, the sum-mary will be launched on Nov. 18, at

A vendor selling fish at a market in Grenada. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

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IPS TERRAVIVACarribean Climate Wire

“Globally we have to be prepared for significant economic and ecosys-tem service losses.” -- Ulf Riebesell

the U.N. climate negotiations known as COP19 under way here at the national stadium of Poland.

Scientists say that marine ecosystems and biodiversity are likely to change as a result of ocean acidification, with far-reaching consequences for humans. Eco-nomic losses from declines in shellfish aquaculture and the degradation of trop-ical coral reefs may be substantial owing to the sensitivity of molluscs and corals to ocean acidification.

“What we can now say with high levels of confidence about ocean acidifi-cation sends a clear message. Globally we have to be prepared for significant economic and ecosystem service losses,” said one of the lead authors of the summary and chair of the symposium, Ulf Riebesell of GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research.

“But we also know that reducing the rate of carbon dioxide emissions will slow acidification. That has to be the major message for the COP19 meeting,” he said.

Singh-Renton told IPS that the socioeconomic impacts for the Caribbean region from this and other climate-related activities would be on two fronts – revenues and costs.

“In terms of revenues, this is linked of course to provision of incomes and liveli-hoods. It’s linked to food security at the consumer end,” she explained. “If you are normally taking 1,000 tonnes a year as a fisherman, you could be taking much less than that and that will decrease your catch rates and also your food supply to the local population and the revenues associated with that.”

Antiguans, for example, annually consume more fish per capita (46 kg) per year than any other nation or territory in the Caribbean.

Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Trade for Antigua and Barbuda, Am-bassador Colin Murdoch, said a decrease in fish stocks could also see small island states missing out on significant amounts of potential foreign exchange from the fisheries sector.

“We are geographically close to some very large markets for fisheries products,” he said of his home country.

“If we look at, let’s say, Martinique and Guadeloupe, they are very large consum-ers of fisheries products and are the gateway into Europe, they are actually Eu-ropean territories, being part of France. And so that is the gateway into a market of 400 million people and once you meet the required standards you can export fisheries products into these markets.

“We are close to Puerto Rico. That’s a large market that consumes fisheries prod-ucts and it’s also a gateway into the United States and they also consume large amounts of fisheries products and that’s a market of 300 million people,” Mur-doch said.

The main fishing waters are near shore or between Antigua and Barbuda. The government has encouraged modern fishing methods and supported mechanisa-tion and the building of new boats. Exports of fish commodities is valued at 1.5 million million dollars per year.

One outcome emphasised by experts in the report is that if society continues on the current high emissions trajectory, cold water coral reefs, located in the deep sea, may be unsustainable and tropical coral reef erosion is likely to outpace reef building this century. However, significant emissions reductions to meet the two-degree target by 2100 could ensure that half of surface waters presently occupied by tropical coral reefs remain favourable for their growth.

“Emissions reductions may protect some reefs and marine organisms but we know that the ocean is subject to many other stresses such as warming, deoxy-

genation, pollution and overfish-ing,” said author Wendy Broadgate, deputy director at the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme.

“Warming and deoxygenation are also caused by rising carbon dioxide emissions, underlining the importance of reducing fossil fuel emissions. Reducing other stress-ors such as pollution and overfish-ing, and the introduction of large scale marine protected areas, may help build some resilience to ocean acidification.”

The CFRM deputy executive director said storms and windy conditions have also been taking a toll on the vital fishing sector in the Caribbean and climate change impacts in other sectors have in the past caused increased dependence on the fishing sector.

“We have been seeing less fishing days so instead of being able to fish 200 days a year you might be able to fish for only 150 days in a year,” she told IPS.

“In terms of the impacts, Ca-ribbean fishing boats and coastal infrastructure are vulnerable to storm damage hence it can disrupt industry operations. The rural poor are going to be directly affected by this [because] artisanal, small-scale fishing employ and feed much of the world’s rural poor.

“If we really care about poverty eradication and lifting the quality of livelihoods, we have to take care of what is accessible to the poor man in terms of food supply and quality, not just what he gets but the quality of it,” Singh-Renton added.

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It’s a dirty, smelly business, but wastewater is gaining prominence across the Caribbean as countries from Jamaica in the west to Guyana in the south increasingly recognise its effects on the environment and

the importance of improving its management.Coordinator of the Guyana Wastewater Revolving Fund Marlon Daniels told

IPS that with the advent of climate change, protecting the environment has be-come more of a challenge for countries of the region.

He explained that climate change has resulted in unusual weather patterns, including more rainfall and flash flooding, and these have caused an increase in sewerage entering the sea.

“One of the effects of improving access to water, as required under Goal 7 of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, is that more people instead of using a pit latrine now use a flush toilet, so they have an on-site treatment in the

STORMS, FLOODING CAN UNLEASH A TOXIC SOUPBy Desmond Brown

“The impact of sea-level rise on [urban] waste-water systems may be particularly severe.” -- Dr. Adrian Cashman

A boy walks with his bicycle on a flooded street in Georgetown, Guyana. About 80 percent of wastewater that enters the Caribbean Sea is only partially treated or untreated. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

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form of a septic tank,” Daniels said.“When you have a huge storm or heavy rain, you have a toxic soup. There is

refuse from septic tanks, which is not as dirty as raw sewerage but it’s still rich in nutrients and pathogens. All of that wastewater ends up in the environment as floodwater and you have populations being exposed to that.”

Dr. Donna-May Sakura-Lemessy, deputy director at the Trinidad-based Insti-tute of Marine Affairs (IMA), says while the Caribbean benefits tremendously from the tourism industry – last year visitors spent an estimated 26 billion dol-lars – tourism-dependent economies of small island Caribbean states suffer the most from untreated wastewater with the destruction of reefs and the pollution of beaches.

“Poor wastewater management leads to degradation of both your potable water sources and your environmental resources. So what will happen is that your swimming waters will be contaminated and this could lead to gastro-intestinal diseases and things like ear infections,” Sakura-Lemessy told IPS.

“When people have to come into a country, they pay to go where they can enjoy themselves. They don’t want to come into a country and hear that no bathing or swimming is allowed or knowing that there is a risk that they could get ill if they bathe in the water.

“So if the resources are degraded then the chances of you maintaining a healthy tourism sector are minimised and you would lose out on whatever revenue tour-ism would bring to you.”

In some Caribbean countries, tourism employs eight out of 10 people, she stressed.

Daniels noted that fishing industries are also affected where pollution has destroyed fish breeding areas and food supply, and the interaction of untreated wastewater with stressed environmental systems makes future adaptation to climate change more difficult.

Persistent rainfall in Guyana on Nov. 26 left many areas of the capital flooded, prompting the country’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. Shamdeo Persaud to advise residents to pay special attention to water safety and personal hygiene.

“Stay out of the water as much as possible, as it can greatly reduce your chances of contracting diseases such as skin infections, leptospirosis, diarrhoeal diseases and other water-borne diseases,” Persaud said in an advisory.

She also urged residents to keep food separate, protected from the flood water; to throw away all food that has been in contact with the flood waters; and to wash all fruits and vegetables with treated water.

University of the West Indies (UWI) lecturer Dr. Adrian Cashman said the im-pacts of climate change on wastewater management will be through changes in temperature, precipitation patterns, sea level rise, and storm related damages.

“Many of the urban areas in the Caribbean are located in low-lying coastal areas with some 40 percent of the population living within two kilometres of the coast,” Cashman said.

“Given that the majority of urban areas are not serviced by centralised sewerage systems and therefore rely on other means of disposal, the impact of sea-level rise on these wastewater systems may be particularly severe.

“The potential effects are higher groundwater levels which will restrict the abili-ty to soak away effluent and back-up systems as well as restrict biological activity that provides the assimilative capacity. This in turn will lead to elevated levels of beach and marine pollution, contribute to eutrophication of bathing waters and the creation of marine dead zones,” Cashman added.

In 2011, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) began funding a four-year project – the Caribbean Regional Fund for Wastewater Management (CReW) – that seeks to provide sustainable financing for the wastewater sector, sup-port policy and legislative reform, and foster regional dialogue and knowledge exchange among key stakeholders in the Wider Caribbe-an Region.

The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) are the co-implementing agencies for the project. The Project Coor-dination Group based in Jamaica carries out the day-to-day manage-ment of the CReW project, sup-ported by Pilot Executing Agencies (PEA) in Jamaica, Belize, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago.

Project Coordinator of the GEF CReW Denise Forrest said that about 80 percent of domestic wastewater that enters the Carib-bean Sea is only partially treated or untreated.

“We have to recognise that waste-water management and its effective treatment is not something that we can say is a low priority or something that we can ignore. It is in fact a significant development requirement, particularly in the context of a region whose devel-opment and quality of life for its people rests on its natural resource base,” she told IPS.

“If we fail to treat with the issue of managing wastewater effec-tively, we are perhaps dooming our region to a future that is not prosperous both in terms of our economic development, in terms of the health of our people, in terms of the quality of life, and in terms of hedging our bets in terms of how we adapt to climate change.

“It is absolutely essential that we deal with this issue,” Forest added.

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Even as weather extremes bedevil Caribbean farmers, Ramgopaul Roop has turned his three-acre fruit farm into a showcase for how to beat climate change.

His conservation farming methods include water harvesting and growing lemon grass as mulch. Since the grass is also a weed, it discourages the growth of other harmful weeds without the use of herbicides.

“Because of the system using lemon grass and pommecythere trees growing lower than the lime trees, my land is covered with vegetation, so that we can adapt to climate changes,” Roop told IPS.

“If it is hot, we have this natural mulch under the crop. If it is raining, it helps to reduce the soil erosion,” he explained.

Roop is now the regional administrator for the Caribbean Agribusiness Associa-tion (CABA), an organisation mandated by the 15-member regional grouping Car-icom to work with regional farmers’ groups to find agroprocessing opportunities.

TODAY’S FORECAST IS FOR CLIMATE-PROOF FARMINGBy Jewel Fraser

CABA serves as a collective voice for farmers in the region through advocacy and assistance with trade negotiations.

Roop, who has farmed in Trinidad for 25 years, said that compliance with a country’s environmental regulations is key to success. This has proven true in the case of his own property, Rocrops Agrotech, which is used as a model farm by Trinidad and Tobago’s Envi-ronmental Management Authority.

His strategies have enabled Rocrops to supply agroprocessors with 10,000–12,000 limes weekly, 52 weeks a year, over the past five years.

Ramgopaul Roop explains how sustain-able farming, including conservation farming and a water harvesting system, has allowed him to run a successful business despite unpredictable climate conditions. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

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“Farmers always asked, ‘When do we plant? When is the rain going to start?’” -- Dr. Leslie Simpson

“If farmers adopted the methods that I have implemented, they would be able to develop small holder farms to produce year-round to increase their level of pro-duction so that they could fulfil commitments to processing facilities,” he said.

“Small-holding farms can be developed into a sustainable unit that can be passed on to the next generation,” Roop added.

Across the region, Caribbean farmers are seeking reliable climate data to help them make better decisions when planning their crops. To meet this demand, the European Union and African, Caribbean and Pacific group (ACP) are training meteorologists to interact directly with farmers to provide accurate, timely infor-mation on weather patterns.

Monthly or trimonthly agricultural bulletins also discuss the possible effects on agriculture of the weather forecasted by the agro-metereologists.

Jamaica has also launched a website dedicated to providing twice-daily weather forecasts for farmers. Farmers can plug in the name of their location for detailed information on temperature, humidity, windspeed and other relevant data.

The training of the agrometereologists and the publishing of the bulletins are part of a larger EU-ACP project known as the Caribbean Agrometereological Initiative (CAMI), whose aim is to improve agricultural productivity in the region through the “improved dissemination and application of weather and climate information using an integrated and coordinated approach.”

CAMI’s partners include the Caribbean Institute for Metereology and Hydrol-ogy and the Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CAR-DI), among others.

Dr. Leslie Simpson said that Caribbean farmers have been in dire need of “access to information about what is happening and what is expected to happen with regard to climate change, and then information on how they can deal with these changes and risks.”

Farmers at workshops co-sponsored by CARDI “always asked, ‘When do we plant? When is the rain going to start?’” said Dr. Simpson, who is the natural re-sources management specialist with responsibility for climate change at CARDI.

The region’s increasing climate variability and the effects of climate change are making it difficult for farmers to determine when best to plant their crops, since the type of crop planted at a given time of year depends on the amount of rain expected then.

Region-wide discussions with farmers revealed that the foremost needs were for seasonal and inter-annual climate forecasts, forecasting for crop disease and pest incidence, and user-friendly weather and climate information.

Dr. Simpson said that “dealing with the variability of the present weather situa-tion is the first step [for farmers] in dealing with any future climate change.”

CAMI notes that, “Short-range forecasts are normally available one day in ad-vance, but modern agricultural practices …require weather forecasts with higher lead time which enable the farmers to take ameliorative measures.

“Thus, for the agricultural sector, location-specific weather forecast in the me-dium range (three to 10 days in advance) is very important. These forecasts and advisories should be made available in a language that farmers can understand.”

A second CARDI project now underway to help Caribbean farmers deal with climate change is being sponsored by the European Development Fund and ad-ministered by the ACP. This project is to help identify strains of crops that would be resilient to climate variability and climate change.

Dr. Arlington Chesney, CARDI’s executive director, told IPS that the project would focus firstly on starches and vegetable protein since “those are critical

components of the diet of the ma-jority of people in the region.”

Among the crops identified for research are sweet potato, cassava, corn, peas and beans. Dr. Chesney said the project has done a review of the soil types and changes in temperatures and rainfall patterns in various islands over the past 20 years, preparatory to selecting the crop varieties for investigation.

“We would try to characterise these varieties morphologically and genomically. We are looking at their DNA to determine if there are some inherent characteristics that are more resilient to climate change so that we could, with time, have a group of these variet-ies that we could say have a better than average chance of doing well under these new [climate] condi-tions,” Dr. Chesney said.

Much of the DNA work will be done by CARDI’s European part-ner in the project, the Wageningen University in Holland, which is considered one of the foremost agricultural universities in that country.

The university “will also do matching between the DNA crop performance and ecological measurements, temperatures, and rainfall,” said Dr. Chesney. CARDI will be providing mainly logisti-cal and technical support on the project.

Dr. Chesney, like CAMI, stresses that his organisation’s work on equipping farmers to cope with climate change seeks to ensure the region’s food supply by improving farmers’ standard of living.

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Colleen James arrived in St. Vincent and the Grenadines from Can-ada two days before Christmas hoping to enjoy the holiday season with her family. Now she’s getting ready to bury her two-year-old

daughter and 18-year-old sister.“I never do nothing wrong. I always do good,” a dazed James told IPS as she

looked out across the flood damage occasioned by a slow-moving low-level trough that brought torrential rains, death and destruction not only to St. Vin-cent and the Grenadines but St. Lucia and Dominica.

Disaster officials have so far recovered nine bodies and the search continues for three more people reported missing and feared dead.

In St. Lucia, five people were killed, including Calvin Stanley Louis, a police offi-cer who died after a wall fell on him as he tried to assist people who had become stranded by the floods.

CHRISTMAS DELUGE BRINGS DISASTER TO EASTERN CARIBBEAN By Desmond Brown

The trough system resulted in 171.1 mm of rainfall within a 24-hour period ending at 8.50 a.m. on Dec. 25.

Trinidad’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar has requested that the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) mobilise food and emergency supplies to be sent to St Lucia.

The CEO of ODPM, Dr. Stephen Ramroop, has contacted the Deputy Prime Minister of Saint Lucia Philip J. Pierre and received a list of items that were urgently required, including

A cleric prays with Colleen James in Cane Grove, St. Vincent hours before it was confirmed that James' sister had died in the floodwaters. Her two-year-old daughter is still missing. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

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By Desmond Brown

“We looked across and saw people float-ing down a river.” -- Curt Clifton

canned goods, biscuits, infant formula, water, mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits, disaster kits and first aid kits.

The ODPM expects tp ship two 40-foot containers to Saint Lucia by 1.00 p.m. local time Thursday.

No requests have come from the other affected islands as yet.St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who has

cut short his holiday in London, is due here on Thursday.Curt Clifton told IPS he was visiting a friend in the Cane Grove community on

the outskirts of the capital, Kingstown, when they “looked across by the neigh-bour and saw people floating down a river” and rushed to their aid. They man-aged to rescue James and one of her daughters.

The floods have caused widespread damage in all three islands. Roads, bridges and in some cases, houses, have been swept away and the telecommunications compa-nies, as well as public utilities, are urging patience as they assess the situation.

“We have seen quite an extent of damage, particularly from the gutters coming down, bringing a lot of debris on the road,” Montgomery Daniel, minister of housing, informal human settlements, lands and surveys, told IPS.

“It is going to take some time for us to clean it up. We are going to need the assistance of heavy-duty equipment,” he said.

Sixty-two people were left homeless in the wake of the flooding.Health officials have also urged residents to be wary of diseases associated with

the floods as in many cases pipeborne water has been disrupted.Dominica’s Environment Minister Kenneth Darroux, a surgeon by profession, is

hoping that the island’s plea to the World Bank for financial assistance will help the island better prepare in the long-term for the devastating effects of climate change.

Darroux is spearheading efforts by the Dominica government to secure 100 million euro from the World Bank to fund the country’s Strategic Programme for Climate Resilience (SPCR).

“Discussions are at an advanced stage,” Darroux, who now serves as minister of environment, natural resources, physical planning and fisheries, told IPS. The funds will be part loan and part grant.

Darroux noted that “the traditional climate change and environmental issues were not really producing the results that the government wanted,” adding that climate change should be viewed as a development issue rather than just isolated changes in the climate.

The World Bank-assisted programme is scheduled to begin in 2014 and will address key issues in various parts of the country. These include capacity-build-ing for adaptation to climate change at a cost of 3.7 million euro; construction of storm drains at a cost of 5.2 million euro; agroforestry, food security and soil sta-bilisation at a cost of 6.0 million euro; and road works totaling 56 million euro.

Dominica has so far received 21 million dollars from the climate investment fund, 12 million of which is grant financing and nine million is “highly conces-sionary financing”, Darroux said.

The country also expects a further 17 million dollars from the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP), which is a regional project being undertaken by the World Bank which is running simultaneously with the PPCR.

“This investment package will seek to begin addressing the deficiency that was identified in the SPCR,” Darroux told IPS.

“I am confident that the implementation of this project will show the world

that the people of Dominica stand ready to play out part in the cli-mate change fight.”

The PPCR is a collaborative effort between Dominica, Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Each island has a national pro-gramme and the Caribbean Com-munity Climate Change Centre (5Cs) serves as a focal point for the regional tracking of activities.

The issue of climate finance is a major one for Caribbean countries and several decisions taken at the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Cli-mate Change (COP 19) in Warsaw, Poland, this past November are of particular relevance to the region.

The Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) reached its target of mobilis-ing 100 million dollars to fund six projects. These include a project in Belize, which had been submitted by PACT, one of only two National Implementing Entities (NIE) in the Caribbean accredited to the Adaptation Fund.

The other NIE is in Jamaica, which has also received funding for its project.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was also operationalized at COP 19. Developed countries have been asked to channel a significant portion of their 100-billion-dol-lars-per-annum pledge for climate change through the GCF.

The Board of the GCF has been tasked with ensuring that there is an equitable balance of funding for both adaptation and mitigation. All developing countries are eligible for funding from the GCF.

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Ramdeo Boondoo, a root crop farmer in Caroni, Trinidad, under-stands better than most the challenge of developing crops that are both climate resilient and marketable.

“It is the eye that buys, not the money,” Boondoo said. Crops must be able to re-sist effects of climate change while looking and tasting as good as their tradition-al counterparts. But such produce requires decades of experimentation, which researchers in the Trinidad are beginning to undertake.

“It is very rare that you will get [a genetically altered] crop that is as good as any of the parents” from which the new variety is made, said Herman Adams, a con-sultant at the Trinidad-based Caribbean Agricultural Research and Development Institute (CARDI).

Popular varieties of crops were developed over the centuries by people cutting slips of old varieties that they enjoyed and then growing them as clones in a pro-cess known as vegetative reproduction, according to Adams.

TASTE TEST STYMIES CARIBBEAN’S CLIMATE-RESISTANT CROPSBy Jewel Fraser

“It takes over 20 years of selection and cross-pollinating to get the right organo-leptic qualities, includ-ing taste, which is hard to recapture.”-- Herman Adams

Ramdeo Boondoo grows several root crops on his farm, including sweet potatoes, cas-sava, yam and tannia in Caroni, Trinidad. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

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Developing climate-resilient crops, however, requires sexual reproduction – combining one climate-resilient crop with another variety, which has a preferable taste or shape, to produce a new variety.

“It takes over 20 years of selection and cross-pollinating to get the right organo-leptic qualities, including taste, which is hard to recapture,” Adams said. Organo-leptic qualities are those affecting the senses.

He explained that sexual reproduction disrupts the parental genetic combina-tion that gives the traditional varieties their appealing taste.

Boondoo has been working on developing a sweet potato that combines the climate-resilient qualities of the traditional “chicken foot” variety popular in Trinidad with the uniform shape of the American Centennial sweet potato.

The chicken foot sweet potato is the most resilient, according to Boondoo. “It withstands drought and damp conditions,” he said. “But…they do not carry a uniform shape or size.”

Manufacturers of agro-products, such as chips and flour made of cassava or plantain, want crops that are not just uniform in taste but also in shape, to make mechanical processing easier. The American Centennial variety has a uniform shape but does not appeal to locals who are accustomed to sweet potatoes with a firmer consistency.

If Boondoo can develop a sweet potato with the traits of both the chicken foot and the American Centennial, he will be better able to supply food processors while also giving local consumers more variety, and his crop losses due to floods or droughts would be greatly reduced.

Chairperson of the Tobago Agro Processors Association, Darilyn Smart, also emphasised that “uniformity is key for the export, hotel and restaurant sectors.”

“In order to export to the EU, produce must meet requirements in terms of size, shape, degree of ripeness, and so on,” Smart told IPS. “For the hotels and restau-rants it is also important that we provide consistent products, especially if they are being used on the buffet table.”

Producing new varieties of crops that meet these exacting standards is “a long process”, according to Adams. It involves cross-pollination of the plant, first on a small scale, and then, depending on the initial outcome, large-scale field trials are conducted.

Another objective of these trials is also to produce “high-yielding, competitively priced products,” Boondoo said.

CARDI is working with farmers on these field trials to identify climate-resilient varieties that will also fare well on the market. The institute’s assistance includes training in good agricultural practices, said Dr. Janet Lawrence, an entomologist and programme leader for protected agriculture at CARDI.

“When you create a good environment through [good agricultural practices], then varieties can show their true genetic potential,” Adams explained. Those varieties that show the greatest promise are then used for the field trials.

Smart told the IPS that the Tobago Agro Processors Association will soon be introducing its own pilot project to “ensure crops are uniform, consistent, and disease free, as much as possible.” The project will rely on bio and organic farm-ing methods.

Some of the produce from this project will be used by agro-processors, who will manufacture a value-added product for hotels and supermarkets. “We’re seeking to export the other products to the Caribbean and European countries,” she said.

CARDI also manages a germplasm bank where farmers can obtain material for new varieties of produce with greater yields than popular varieties that are

planted, Lawrence said. The germ-plasm bank has over 14 varieties of cassava and 12 of sweet potato.

As well as breeding climate-resil-ient varieties, CARDI is promoting the use of protected agriculture – altering the environment to enhance growth – to protect crops from extreme or adverse weather conditions and to control pests that are associated with climate vari-ability and change.

Protected agriculture “spans a continuum from the use of row covers, shade structures to complex structures/greenhouses,” Lawrence said in an e-mail.

Through its protected agricul-ture research and development programme, CARDI “has sought to generate, validate and trans-fer ‘best’ practices that have the potential to improve the efficiency and productivity of the [protected agriculture] operations,” Lawrence told IPS.

Studies in protected agriculture include evaluations of heat tolerant varieties, coverings to reduce tem-peratures within protected systems, and management strategies to suppress pests. Developing shade structures to exclude insect pests are also included.

CARDI has worked with several local, regional and agricultural organisations to disseminate infor-mation on the basic principles and practices of protected agriculture, Lawrence said. So far the institute has trained over 200 individuals and organisations.

Crops must be able to resist effects of climate change while looking and tasting as good as their traditional coun-terparts.

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Industrial engineer Ancel Bhagwandeen thinks that growing your food indoors is a great way to protect crops from the stresses of cli-mate change. So he developed a hydroponic system that “leverages the

nanoclimates in houses so that the house effectively protects the produce the same way it protects us,” he says.

Bhagwandeen told IPS that his hydroponic project was also developed “to leverage the growth of the urban landscape and high-density housing, so that by growing your own food at home, you mitigate the cost of food prices.”

Hydroponics, a method of growing plants without soil using mineral nutrients in water, is increasingly considered a viable means to ensure food security in light of climate change.

His project is one of several being considered for further development by the Caribbean Climate Innovation Centre (CCIC), headquartered in Jamaica.

The newly launched CCIC, which is funded mainly by the World Bank and the

INDOOR MINI-FARMS TO BEAT CLIMATE CHANGEBy Jewel Fraser

government of Canada, seeks to fund innovative projects that will “change the way we live, work and build to suit a changing climate,” said Everton Hanson, the CCIC’s CEO.

A first step to developing such projects is through Proof of Concept (POC) funding, which makes available grants from 25,000 to 50,000 dollars to successful applicants to “help the en-trepreneur to finance those costs that are related to proving that the idea can work,” said Hanson.

Among the items that POC funding will cover are prototype development

Ancel Bhagwandeen with his hydroponic unit for growing vegetables indoors. The unit makes use of smart electron-ics. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

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such as design, testing, and field trials; market testing; raw ma-terials and consumables necessary to achieve proof of concept; and costs related to applications for intellectual property rights in the Caribbean.

A POC competition is now open that will run until the end of March. “After that date the applications will be evaluated. We are looking for ideas that can be commercialised and the plan is to select the best ideas,” Hanson said.

The CCIC, which is jointly managed by the Scientific Re-search Council in Jamaica and the Caribbean Industrial Research Institute in Trinidad and Tobago, is seeking projects that focus on water management, resource use efficiency, ener-gy efficiency, solar energy, and sustainable agribusiness.

Bhagwandeen entered the POC competition in hopes of securing a grant, because “this POC funding would help in terms of market testing,” he explained.

The 48-year-old engineer says he wishes to build dozens of model units and “distribute them in various areas, then mon-itor the operations and take feedback from users.” He said he would be testing for usability and reliability, as well as looking for feedback on just how much light is needed and the best locations in a house or building for situating his model.

“I would then take the feedback, and any issues that come up I can refine before going into mass marketing,” he said.

Bhagwandeen’s model would enable homeowners to grow leafy vegetables, including herbs, lettuce and tomatoes, inside their home or apartment, with minimal expense and time.

The model uses smart electronics, meaning that 100 units can run on the same energy as a 60-watt light bulb, he said. So it differs from typical hydroponics systems that consume a great deal of energy, he added. His model can also run on the energy provided by its own small solar panel and can work both indoors and outdoors.

Bhagawandeen said his model’s design is premised on the fact that “our future as a people is based more and more on city living and in order for that to be sustainable, we need to have city farming at a family level.”

A U.N. report says that “the population living in urban areas is projected to gain 2.6 billion, passing from 3.6 billion in 2011 to 6.3 billion in 2050.” Most of that urban growth will be concentrated in the cities and towns of the world’s less developed regions.

To meet the challenges of climate change adaptation, the CCIC “will support Caribbean entrepreneurs involved in developing locally appropriate solutions to climate change.”

Bhagwandeen said that support from organisations like the CCIC is critical for climate change entrepreneurs. “From the Caribbean perspective, especially Trini-dad and Tobago, we are a heavily consumer-focused society. One of the negatives of Trinidad’s oil wealth is that we are not accustomed to developing technology for ourselves. We buy it.

“We are a society of traders and distributors and there is very little support for innovators and entrepreneurs.”

He said access to markets and investors poses a serious challenge for regional

innovators like himself, who typically have to rely on bootstrapping to get their business off the ground.

Typically, he said, regional innova-tors have to make small quantities of an item, sell those items, and then use the funds to make incrementally larger quantities. “So that if you get an order for 500 units, you cannot fulfill that order,” he said.

Fourteen Caribbean states are involved in CCIC: Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Caribbean CCIC is one of eight being developed across the world.

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Agriculture has always played an important role in the socioeco-nomic development of Guyana, one of just two Caribbean Com-munity (CARICOM) member states that straddle South America.

Agriculture accounts for more than 20 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is food-secure, and agricultural commodities represent more than 40 percent of its export portfolio.

The 15-member regional bloc has always looked to Guyana, with an estimated 3.3 million hectares of agricultural land, as having a vital role in the Caribbean’s thrust towards food security.

But the chief executive officer of the National Agricultural Research and Ex-tension Institute (NAREI), Dr. Oudho Homenauth, warns that climate change is robbing Guyana of some of its prime agricultural land.

MANGROVES COULD BE SAVIOUR OF GUYANA’S SHRINKING COASTLINEBy Desmond Brown

“We are seeing increasing rainfall, higher tides and so forth,” he told IPS, noting that this has consequences for farmland, particularly along the coast.

“The seawater, as you know, is saline and once saline water gets on the land it is very difficult for that land to recover for crop production because there is nothing we can do in terms of adding any kind of amendment to correct soil salinity.”

Homenauth explained that “the land will have to be left for over a period of

Geotextile tubes help natural regeneration of mangroves. The biodegradable tube filled with sand and water is used to form a barrier. Spar-tina grass is then planted in the area. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

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“I’ve heard people say ‘I’m poor and I’m not a scientist and I can’t do anything.’ In fact we can do much as small countries, including in the reduction of emis-sions.” -- Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

time until that salinity is lost” and as the authorities move to protect the agricul-tural land and also its population, most of whom live along the coasts, Homen-auth told IPS that Guyana has come to recognise the importance of mangroves, especially for coastal areas.

He said the country has been on an intensive campaign to protect and restore its coastal mangroves.

Approximately 90 percent of Guyana’s population lives on a narrow coastline strip a half to one metre below sea level. That coastal belt is protected by seawall barriers that have existed since the Dutch occupation of the country.

In recent times, however, severe storms have toppled these defences, resulting in significant flooding, a danger scientists predict may become more frequent.

“Everybody knows Guyana’s seawall, the famous seawall, which is an expensive structure to maintain and to continue to build, particularly as sea level rises,” Agriculture Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy told IPS.

He said that maintaining the seawalls is an enormous cost for Guyana, which has been spending an average of three billion dollars a year to maintain and strengthen the defences.

“But in order to ensure that the seawall and sea dams continue to serve us well and to be less vulnerable to the onslaught of the ocean, we have been protecting and promoting the growth of mangroves and other structures such as geotextile tubes to reduce the impact of the waves coming in,” Ramsammy said.

“We’ve been doing bamboo growth along the seawalls to reduce the impact of the waves coming in. So a number of different structures are being tried but mangroves represent a major response of the Guyana government in supporting the seawall and therefore reducing the impact of water hitting against the wall, against the dams etc.”

Guyana has about 80,000 hectares of mangroves in place right now and over the last three or four years, the country has been “accelerating the growth of man-groves”, many of which were lost 20 to 30 years ago.

“We lost some of our mangroves and we are restoring those mangroves now. But we are also establishing mangrove growth in places that we’ve never been to,” Ramsammy said, noting that “with the water and movement onto the shore, it is very difficult to grow mangroves.”

As a result, Guyana has been conducting research to determine the best tech-nology to use to achieve success.

“You need mangroves to grow to a certain extent before it can withstand the water and so we’ve been trying things like various grasses and so on to hold the soil together and we have been succeeding in these,” Ramsammy told IPS.

Technicians came up with the idea of constructing geotextile tubes to help natu-ral regeneration. A biodegradable tube filled with sand and water is used to form a barrier so that at high tide, muddy water can enter the area and sediment left behind can help build the soil up to a necessary level.

Spartina grass is then planted in the area. The technicians have found that the mangrove seeds would get caught in the grass and would later germinate.

When it comes to climate change and global warming, Ramsammy believes Guyanese should take pride that they are perhaps the most aware country in the world.

“I can’t say that our people know all the details, all the science, but that’s not the point. If we could also make them aware of the science that’s okay but they are very aware of climate change as a phenomenon; they are very aware of what climate change can do to us and therefore they are becoming part of the climate

change revolution,” he told IPS.“We have vast room for improve-

ment in Guyana and the Caribbean but I think that Guyana would rank as one of those countries where people are very much aware. Are they doing what is necessary? I think they lag in terms of their knowledge and what they do, but if you don’t create the knowledge, actions will not follow.”

Ramsammy noted that no coun-try is too small to do something about climate change. In fact, he said there are things that every citizen in the world can do.

“I’ve heard people say ‘I’m poor and I’m not a scientist and I can’t do anything.’ In fact we can do much as small countries, including in the reduction of emissions,” he said.

“We have in Antigua or even Guyana hotels etc. If these hotels were to switch [from] the use of fossil fuel to the use of bio-digest-ers, using the waste to create en-ergy, we can make a big difference in emissions and maybe in the global environment. It is a needle in the sand but at least it creates an avenue for every citizen to play a role and I think we should adopt that kind of approach that all of us as citizens could do something,” Ramsammy added.

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Erle Rahaman-Noronha is not a revolutionary, not in any radi-cal sense at least. He is not even that exciting. In truth, Raha-man-Noronha is merely a man with a shovel, a small farm, and a big

dream. But that dream is poised to conquer the Caribbean.Rahaman-Noronha wants to see ‘permaculture’ – short for permanent agricul-

ture – take root and spreads across the Caribbean, and he is doing his part by teaching anyone who will listen about its benefits.

Joining him is a fluid group of permaculturalists working from their home is-lands and sharing the same goal: to harness permaculture as a solution to climate change, food and water insecurity, and rising costs of living.

“Here, this is the Bible,” Rahaman-Noronha tells IPS, laying a book on the table. Behind him, orange trees rustle in the wind, the sharp smell of Trinidadian cook-ing wafts out an open window, and white-faced capuchin monkeys screech in the distance. The cover reads, ‘Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual’, and the contents offer surprisingly simple solutions to modern problems through economical-

PERMACULTURE POISED TO CONQUER THE CARIBBEANBy Mark Olalde

ly and environmentally sustainable living.

Author of the manual, Australian Bill Mollison, first used the term nearly four decades ago and since then the idea has spread to Europe and the U.S. Now, the developing Caribbean is beginning to embrace the philosophy of permaculture, especially since 2008’s global recession.

Born in Kenya, Rahaman-Noronha – whose work was recentlyhighlighted in a TEDx talk – fulfilled a keen inter-est in the environment by studying applied biochemstry and zoology in Canada.

Erle Rahaman-Noronha cutting produce on his farm. Credit: Mark Olalde/IPS

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“I’ve always had a strong passion for the outdoors and conservation, but just doing conservation doesn’t make money,” he says with a chuckle. “Permaculture allows me to live on a site, produce food on a site, produce an income, as well as practice conservation.”

Wa Samaki is Rahaman-Noronha’s permaculture farm, and it has been his workplace, classroom, grocery store, and home since he relocated to Trinidad in 1998. Meaning “of the fish” in Swahili, Wa Samaki covers 30 acres in Freeport in central Trinidad.

Although he uses no fertilisers, herbicides, or pesticides, Rahaman-Noronha is able to make a living off the farm’s fruit, flower, lumber, and fish sales. His newest addition is a large aquaponics system, a closed loop food production system in which fish tanks and potted plants circulate water and sustain one another.

With his partner John Stollmeyer, Rahaman-Noronha works to spread aware-ness of permaculture across the Caribbean, home to nearly 40 million people who are particularly susceptible to climate change.

The pair consults Trinidadian businesses, teaches permaculture design courses (PDCs), and holds workshops everywhere from Puerto Rico to St. Lucia. “How are we going to create sustainable human culture?” Stollmeyer asks. “Discovering permaculture for me was a wake up call.”

Where environmentalism meets savvy economicsThe need for conservation is in no small part a result of climate change, espe-

cially when the Hurricane Belt covers nearly all of the Caribbean.Trinidad and Tobago continues to compound the issue as both a major exporter

and consumer of fossil fuels. The country produced more than 119,000 barrels of oil per day in 2012 and 1.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that same year, all the while boasting the second highest rate of CO2 emissions per capita in the world, more than twice that of the United States.

United Nations data dating back to 2005, the last time such statistics were com-piled, indicates that industrialised agriculture accounts for 20 percent of green-house gas emissions in Latin America and the Caribbean.

In this environment, Rahaman-Noronha’s goal is to become an incubator of conservation start-ups that cannot secure necessary bank loans. Currently, he houses beekeepers and a wildlife rescue center on the farm for minimal rent, and he hopes that list will grow.

One such entrepreneurial mind that passed through Wa Samaki was Berber van Beek, a native of Curaçao who recently moved home after years of wandering the world. Before returning to the Caribbean, she practiced permaculture across Eu-rope and Australia, but when van Beek wanted to develop her skills in a tropical climate, she came to Rahaman-Noronha.

“He gave me a lot of freedom on his farm to make and create a design,” van Beek says, describing a garden of banana trees she planted at Wa Samaki.

In Curaçao, van Beek uses permaculture as more than simply a food source. She realises its social potential and is working to start after-school programmes for at-risk youth who can learn useful gardening skills and the responsibility and respect for nature that come with caring for their own gardens.

In addition, she is soon opening her first large-scale organic gardening class, closely resembling a PDC.

Such initiatives are urgently needed in Curaçao, which is facing a stagnant economy and is currently nursing a youth unemployment rate of 37 percent.

According to van Beek, shifting global climates and markets have major effects on her own island in which nearly everything must be imported. “If you go to the

supermarket, look where your food is coming from. Is it coming from Venezuela or is it coming from the U.S. or is it coming from Europe?” she says. “People could be more aware of what to buy and what not to buy.”

The problem, experts say, is regional. According to the Food Export Association of the Midwest USA – a group of nonprofits focus-ing on agricultural issues – around 80 percent of food consumed in the Caribbean is imported.The beauty and purpose of permaculture is that it is a system of solutions that can be practiced at any level to combat environmental issues.

“You can start in your backyard, so there’s no cost. You can implement certain parts of it in your apart-ment if you really need to,” Raha-man-Noronha explains. “If you have a porch with some sunlight, you can plant something there and start thinking about permaculture.”

Naturally, van Beek took his mes-sage to heart, keeping a perfectly groomed permaculture garden in her own tiny backyard, using dead leaves as fertiliser and recycled rain and shower-water to sustain the plants.

“Seeing is believing,” she says. It’s her own quiet mantra, spoken when she describes her approach to spreading permaculture, and vocalised when she needs the energy to keep pressing on and to convince others that this is the right path.

Rahaman-Noronha, too, has worked to convert non-believers. From schools who tour the wildlife center and his farm to the several thousand people who watched his TEDx talk online, he is adamant that he has traded in misconcep-tions for progress.

“I think [the reason] I don’t get challenged…is that I’m not just preaching permaculture,” he says. “I’m actually practicing it.”

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Water rationing has become a way of life for the 1,800 residents of the tiny island of Barbuda, which has been experiencing prolonged dry periods, especially in the Highlands area near

the main agricultural lands.Marine biologist John Mussington told IPS the problem is that the wet peri-

od has shifted from the traditional July to September period to September to November, and when the rains do come, the showers are sharp and end just as quickly.

“Without areas to store the water when it comes, it runs off into the sea or penetrates underground,” Mussington told IPS. “The other problem is that the groundwater is ‘hard’ due to high levels of calcium and magnesium, and in many cases salty due to saltwater intrusion.

“This groundwater is not suitable for agriculture and because the wet season has shifted, the traditional method of planting crops at particular times so that they can be rain-fed is not as effective,” Mussington added.

SHIFTING RAINY SEASON WREAKS HAVOC ON BARBUDA’S CROPSBy Desmond Brown

Some small famers in the Caribbean have come together to build their own catchments to harvest rainwater for crops and livestock. Credit: Des-mond Brown/IPS

“We find that our droughts are drier than normal and our wet seasons are wetter than nor-mal,” -- Keithley Meade

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The director of the Antigua and Barbuda Meteorological Services, Keithley Meade, said that climate change poses the greatest threat to Barbuda and the rest of the Caribbean region.

“If you look at what happened in the southern islands in December…climate change is impacting us,” Meade told IPS.

A slow-moving, low-level trough on Dec. 24 dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Dominica, killing at least 13 people.

“We find that our droughts are drier than normal and our wet seasons are wet-ter than normal,” Meade said.

As the conditions worsen, the state-owned Antigua Public Utilities Authority (APUA) has been urging residents to practice water conservation, with several public service announcements (PSAs) airing on radio and television.

“No rainfall is expected within this period. We have been getting some drizzle, but not the gut showers that are needed,” water manager Ivan Rodriques told IPS.

On average, Antigua and Barbuda requires 5.6 million gallons of water per day, increasing to six million gallons during the peak tourism season.

But there is a flicker of hope: the island is set to benefit from an artificial catch-ment area to trap rainwater.

The much needed help is thanks to the Reducing the Risks to Human and Natu-ral Assets Resulting from Climate Change (RRACC) project, being implemented by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Susanna Scott, coordinator of the RRACC project, told IPS the artificial catch-ment would be used “to demonstrate an adaptation option that can reduce the threats of drought and decreasing water availability on the agriculture sector.”

Mussington welcomes the plan to build a water catchment and storage area on the western edge of the Highlands to overcome some of the challenges being faced by the island. “Incidentally, the concept and initial project design was my doing. By harvesting rainwater on the Highlands and storing the water, it can be used throughout the year to produce high value vegetable crops.

“By incorporating an aquaponics component, Barbuda could become self-suffi-cient in vegetables and also have the availability of fresh fish for local consump-tion and export in a more efficient production system,” he said.

Gaston Browne, who is seeking to oust Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer in gen-eral elections, constitutionally due here in March, has vowed to make Barbuda “the breadbasket” of the twin-island state.

But with forecasts for hotter and drier conditions going forward, Browne could find it difficult, if not impossible to realise his promise for the drought-stricken island.

Barbuda and mainland Antigua are not the only countries where drought, brought on by climate change, is wreaking havoc on agriculture and water re-sources.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists said last month was the warmest January since 2007 and the fourth warmest on record. It also marked the driest month for the contiguous United States since 2003 and the fifth driest since records started being kept in 1880.

On Feb. 24, while launching the United Nations (UN) International Year of Small Island Developing States, Antigua-born General Assembly President John Ashe said “this year takes place at a time when the vast majority of islands are combatting the ravages of climate change, and some, like the Maldives are literal-

ly sinking because of it.”Ironically, predictions are that

the tiny 62-square-mile island of Barbuda could sink in 60 years due to sea level rise.

“The challenges that small island developing states are facing are challenges that all countries should be concerned about,” the head of the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Wu Hongbo, said at the launch.

He noted that small islands are particularly vulnerable because of their unique locations. For ex-ample, the hurricane season has devastating impacts on lives and property, particularly in countries which see an increasing number of cycles and decreasing rainfall.

“Climate change represents a grave threat to the survival and viability of a number of low-lying nations,” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said in his address at the launch of the International Year.

To galvanise support for address-ing climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mobilising political will, Ban will convene a Climate Summit on Sep. 23 in New York.

U.N. member states agreed two years ago to support 51 highly vulnerable Small Island Develop-ing States (SIDS) – a group that was politically recognised at the Rio Summit in 1992, underscored at a major international conference in Barbados in 1994 and again at a follow-up meeting in Mauritius in 2005.

The group of states share similar sustainable development challeng-es, including small but growing populations, limited resources, re-moteness, susceptibility to natural disasters, vulnerability to external shocks, excessive dependence on international trade, and fragile environments.

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Antigua is one of the most drought-prone countries in the Carib-bean. So whenever it rains, the inhabitants generally regard the weather as “showers of blessing”.

But that is starting to change. Many farmers now see the rains as a curse and are now fighting an uphill battle to save their crops, vital for both the local and foreign markets.

“We are a drought-prone country,” Ruleta Camacho, senior environmental officer in the ministry of agriculture, told IPS. “The issue now is that due to the impact of climate change, we are having exacerbated drought and exacerbated rainfall events.”

Heavy rainfall can damage crops and high humidity brings with it an infestation of pests and diseases, increasing the consumption of pesticides.

“We are having large amounts of rain in very short times. There are a number of communities that are affected by flood conditions, communities where the

“BLESSED” RAINS BECOME A CURSE IN ANTIGUABy Desmond Brown

Oraine Halstead (left) and Rhys Actie tend tomatoes in a greenhouse at Colesome Farm at Jonas Road, Antigua. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

“Due to the changing climate we are having hotter summers and it’s a pretty difficult time when you have the plants being stressed and the fruits are falling from the trees. -- Delrie Cole

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“The yield and lifes-pan [of crops in a greenhouse] basical-ly are three times as much as open-field production.” -- Delrie Cole

livelihoods of the population could be affected,” Camacho added.One such community is Jonas Road where Delrie Cole has been farming for the

last three years. But since Cole introduced greenhouse technology to his farm, he is no longer at the mercy of the rains.

With the greenhouses he is also able to grow his vegetables – cilantro, parsley, basil, peppers, eggplant, lettuce, pumpkins and tomatoes – during periods of drought or deluge.

“The need for the greenhouses came about because of climate change and a lack of production in the summer season when you have more stressful conditions,” he told IPS.

“Due to the changing climate we are having hotter summers and it’s a pretty difficult time when you have the plants being stressed and the fruits are falling from the trees.

“The greenhouse basically gives you that edge where you can better operate in terms of control, cutting down some of the humidity that you would have during the summer,” he explained.

Greenhouse farming, which is cultivation of plants inside a building with glass walls and roof under controlled conditions, has become necessary with climate change.

Temperature and humidity can be controlled, making it possible for farmers to grow crops year-round.

“The yield and lifespan basically are three times as much as open-field produc-tion,” said Cole, who has been a farmer for more than 30 years.

“We are doing crops which are running 12 months, so whereas you would have planted a field that is carrying us through 12 months, farmers in the open would have been planting three crops within that same length of time and their yield would be less.”

Farmers in Antigua stand to benefit from the Reducing the Risks to Human and Natural Assets Resulting from Climate Change (RRACC) project being imple-mented by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“The ministry of agriculture has identified the threat of heavy rainfall on cash crops such as lettuce and tomatoes,” Susanna Scott, coordinator of the RRACC project, told IPS.

“A lot of damage could result from intense rainfall, which is expected to increase with climate change and also in time of drought the impact of the dry weather on these crops is severe as well,” she said. “So what we are looking at doing is invest-ing in greenhouses to provide a protective area for crop growing.”

Antigua’s main agricultural exports include cotton to Japan and fruits and vege-tables to other Caribbean territories.

Hot peppers and vegetables are also exported to the United Kingdom and Canada. Other agriculture products are bananas, coconuts, cucumbers, mangoes, livestock and pineapples.

Agriculture is currently a rather insignificant part of the economy, making up just four percent of GDP. However, it appears that cultivation is on the rise, with approximately 300 acres of land planted with vegetables.

Antigua has also been campaigning to encourage more youth to get involved in agriculture and there is evidence of some success.

Oraine Halstead and Rhys Actie, who are both under the age of 25, are full-time farmers.

“As a boy growing up with my grandmother, she was involved in planting vegetables and I got a little knowledge of it and fell in love with it,” Actie, a national of St. Lucia who moved here at the age of nine years and is now 23, told IPS.

Halstead, who has been a farmer for two and half years, said farming is a very fulfilling career.

“I love to be around plants, taking care of them. It’s a joy to see them grow to maturity and the food they produce,” he told IPS.

In the wake of climate change, greenhouse farming is seen as the only way to protect crops and manage a better yield than in normal condition. Farming under controlled condition protects crops from wind, rain, sun and precipitation.

The advantages of vegetable production in tropical greenhouses include higher yield and quality; reduced risks for quality and yield; less susceptibility to disease and damage caused by heavy rainfall; extended harvest time; reduced water consumption; and better use of fertiliser and pesticides.

“People are more keen as to what they consume and where it’s coming from. We are doing vine ripening so the flavour is good. Consumers are knocking on our doors because of the quality and the taste of our tomatoes,” Cole told IPS.

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The tiny island of Nevis in the northern region of the Lesser Antil-les is one of the few remaining unspoiled places in the Caribbean. It is now seeking to become the greenest, joining a growing list of

Caribbean countries pursuing clean geothermal power.Last month, legislators on the volcanic island selected Nevis Renewable Energy

International (NREI) to develop a geothermal energy project, which they said would eventually eliminate the need for existing diesel-fired electrical generation by replacing it with renewable energy.

In January 2014, NREI will begin to construct a geothermal power plant and injection and production wells on Crown Land leased from the Nevis Island Administration.

Acting Premier Mark Brantley said the island, with a population of 9,000, plans to remain “how the Caribbean used to be” while striving to earn the title of “greenest place on earth”.

“Nevis is committed to beginning this journey on the path to greener living,” Brantley told IPS. “The use of renewable energy will result in a reduction of emissions of pollutants and greenhouse gases, thus advancing Nevis’ commit-ments under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.”

The UNFCCC is an international environmental treaty negotiated in June 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED),

informally known as the Earth Sum-mit, held in Rio de Janeiro. The treaty’s objective is to “stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

The treaty itself, which set no binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms, is legal-ly non-binding. Instead, the treaty provides a framework for negotiating specific international treaties (called “protocols”) that may set binding lim-its on greenhouse gases.

The parties to the convention have met annually from 1995 in Confer-ences of the Parties (COP) to assess progress in dealing with climate change. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol

Ramgopaul Roop explains how sustainable farming, in-cluding conservation farming and a water harvesting system, has allowed him to run a suc-cessful business despite unpre-dictable climate conditions. Credit: Jewel Fraser/IPS

NEVIS EMBARKS ON GEOTHERMAL ENERGY JOURNEYBy Desmond Brown

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was concluded, establishing legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emis-sions.

The 2010 Cancún agreements state that future global warming should be limited to a two-degree Celsius increase from pre-industrial levels. The twentieth COP will take place in Peru in 2014.

Utilities Minister Alexis Jeffers said Nevis currently imports 4.2 million gallons of diesel fuel annually, at a cost of 12 mil-lion dollars, a bill the island hopes to cut down significantly. Nevis consumes a maximum of 10 mw of energy annually.

“The use of geothermal energy will not only make Nevis a greener place in the future, but also make it less vulnerable to volatile oil prices, as the cost of geothermal energy is sta-bilised under a long-term contract,” Jeffers told IPS.

“In addition to providing lower cost, cleaner electricity for Nevis, this can potentially be expanded to include St. Kitts and other islands in the future,” Premier Brantley said. St. Kitts, which lies two miles northwest if Nevis, uses a maxi-mum of 46 mw of energy each year.

Nevis is the smaller island of the pair, known as the Fed-

eration of St. Kitts and Nevis. It is home to active hot springs and a large geothermal reservoir. Seven volcanic centres have been identified on Nevis and drilling at three sites has indicated that the geother-mal reservoir is capable of producing up to 500 mw of constant baseload power year round.

Dominica recently launched its own geothermal project with the construction of a small power plant for domestic consumption and a bigger plant of up to 100 mw of electricity for export to the neighbouring French islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique.

The nearby island of St. Vincent subsequently announced the launch of a 50-million-dollar project, funded by the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foun-dation, the St. Vincent and the Grenadines govern-ment, Barbados Light and Power Holdings and Reyk-javik Geothermal.

Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said a contin-gent of Icelandic scientists had arrived on the island and would remain until the end of the year investi-gating the mountainous nation’s geothermal poten-tial, estimated at 890 mw.

Barbados is also making a major shift away from fossil fuels, aiming for 29 percent of its power gen-eration from renewable sources by 2029. An electric light and power bill was passed with bipartisan sup-port in parliament on Dec. 17.

Opposition leader Mia Mottley said the most signif-icant thing the government can do for residents is to reduce the cost of electricity to 29-30 cents a kilo-watt-hour as soon as possible.

“We have said consistently that the most important thing the government can do is to reduce the cost of electricity next month. Not two years from now; not five years from now; not 10 years from now,” Mottley said.

“If we understand how the costs are incurred, we then understand it can only be unacceptable for the government to preside over the Barbados National Oil Company profiteering to the tune of 53 million dollars last year, and ordinary people in this country in households and business are struggling to pay electricity bills.”

Barbadians currently pay 41-42 cents per kilo-watt-hours.

Prime Minister Freundel Stuart said that as part of the drive to make Barbados more sustainable, the government had entered a partnership with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), which would help develop a framework to diversify the country’s energy mix and reduce its heavy depen-dence on fossil fuels.

Mount Nevis sits at the centre of the volcanic island of Nevis, which has reserves of geothermal energy. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

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Home to the second longest barrier reef in the world and the largest in the Western Hemisphere, which provides jobs in fishing, tour-ism and other industries which feed the lifeblood of the econo-

my, Belize has long been acutely aware of the need to protect its marine resources from both human and natural activities.

However, there has been a recent decline in the production and export of ma-rine products including conch, lobster, and fish, even as tourism figures continue to increase.

The decline is not helped by overfishing and the harvest of immature conch and lobster outside of the standard fishing season. But the primary reason for less conch and lobster in Belize’s waters, according to local experts, is excess ocean acidity which is making it difficult for popular crustacean species such as conch and lobster, which depend on their hard, spiny shells to survive, to grow and mature.

According to the executive director of the Caribbean Community Climate

BELIZE FIGHTS TO SAVE A CRUCIAL BARRIER REEFBy Aaron Humes

The humble CREWS buoy hosts several in-struments designed to measure conditions above and below the water, and keep track of these developing threats.

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Credit: Aaron Humes/IPS

“What happens on the land will eventu-ally reach the sea, via our rivers.” -- Dr. Kenrick Leslie

Change Center (CCCCC), Dr. Kenrick Leslie, acidification is as important and as detrimental to the sustainability of the Barrier Reef and the ocean generally as warming of the atmosphere and other factors generally associated with climate change.

Carbon dioxide which is emitted in the atmosphere from greenhouse gases is absorbed into the ocean as carbonic acid, which interacts with the calcium present in the shells of conch and lobster to form calcium carbonate, dissolving those shells and reducing their numbers. Belize also fac-es continuous difficulties with coral bleaching, which has attacked several key sections of the reef in recent years.

Dr. Leslie told IPS that activities on Belize’s terrestrial land mass are also contributing to the problems under Belize’s waters. “What happens on the land will eventually reach the sea, via our rivers,” he noted.

To fight these new problems, there is need for more re-search and accurate, up to the minute data.

Last month, the European Union (EU), as part of its Global Climate Change Alliance Caribbean Support Project handed over to the government of Belize and specifically the Min-istry of Forestry, Fisheries and Sustainable Development for its continued usage a Coral Reef Early Warning System (CREWS) buoy based at South Water Caye off the Stann Creek District in southern Belize.

Developed by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospher-ic Administration (NOAA), it has been adopted by the

CCCCC as a centrepiece of the effort to obtain reliable data as a basis for strate-gies for fighting climate change.

Dr. Leslie says the CREWS system represents a leap forward in research tech-nology on climate change. The humble buoy hosts several instruments designed to measure conditions above and below the water, and keep track of these devel-oping threats. The data collected on atmospheric and oceanic conditions such as oceanic turbidity, levels of carbon dioxide and other harmful elements and others are monitored from the Centre’s office in Belmopan and the data sent along to international scientists who can more concretely analyse it.

The South Water Caye CREWS station is one of two in Belize; the other is located at the University of Belize’s Environmental Research Institute (ERI) on Calabash Caye in the Turneffe Atoll range. Other stations are located in Jamai-ca, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Dominican Republic, with more planned in other key areas.

According to the CEO of the Coastal Zone Management Authority and Institute (CZMAI), Vincent Gillet, this is an example of the kind of work that needs to be done to keep the coastal zone healthy and safeguard resources for Belize’s future generations.

A report released at the start of Coastal Awareness Week in Belize City urges greater awareness of the effects of climate change and the participation of the local managers of the coastal zone in a policy to combat those effects. Several recommendations were made, including empowering the Authority with more legislative heft, revising the land distribution policy and bringing more people into the discussion.

“We need to be a little more…conscious of climate change and the impacts that it has,” Gillett said. He added further that the Authority expects and has the government’s support in terms of facilitation, if not necessarily in needed finance.

The report was the work of over 30 local and international scientists who contributed to and prepared it.

In receiving the CREWS equip-ment, the Ministry’s CEO, Dr. Adele Catzim-Sanchez, sought to remind that the problem of climate change is real and unless it is ad-dressed, Belizeans may be contrib-uting to their own demise.

The European Union’s Ambas-sador to Belize, Paola Amadei, reported that the Union may soon be able to offer even more help with the planned negotiations in Paris, France, in 2015 for a global initiative on climate change, with emphasis on smaller states. Belize already benefits from separate but concurrent projects, the latter of which aims to give Belize a sustain-able development plan and specific strategy to address climate change.

In addition, Dr. Leslie is pushing for even more monitoring equip-ment, including current metres to study the effect of terrestrial activ-ity such as mining and construc-tion material gathering as well as deforestation on the sea, where the residue of such activities inevitably ends up.

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As Jamaica struggles under the burden of an ongoing drought, ex-perts say ensuring food security for the most vulnerable groups in society is becoming one of the leading challenges posed by climate

change.“The disparity between the very rich and the very poor in Jamaica means that

persons living in poverty, persons living below the poverty line, women heading households with large numbers of children and the elderly are greatly disadvan-taged during this period,” Judith Wedderburn, Jamaica project director at the non-profit German political foundation Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES), told IPS.

“The concern is that as the climate change implications are extended for several years that these kinds of situations are going to become more and more extreme, [such as] greater floods with periods of extreme drought.”

LESSONS FROM JAMAICA’S BILLION-DOLLAR DROUGHTBy Desmond Brown

Wedderburn, who spoke with IPS on the sidelines of a FES and Panos Caribbean workshop for journalists held here earlier this month, said Caribbean countries – which already have to grapple with a finite amount of space for food production – now have the added challenges of extreme rain-fall events or droughts due to climate change.

“In Jamaica, we’ve had several months of drought, which affected the most important food production parishes in

The Yallahs River, one of the main water sources for Jamaica’s Mona Reservoir, has been dry for months. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

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“The food production line gets disrupted and the cost of food goes up, so already large numbers of families living in poverty have even greater difficul-ty in accessing locally grown food at reason-able prices.” -- Judith Wedderburn of FES

the country,” she said, adding that the problem does not end when the drought breaks.

“We are then affected by extremes of rainfall which results in flooding. The farming communities lose their crops during droughts [and] families associated with those farmers are affected. The food production line gets disrupted and the cost of food goes up, so already large numbers of families living in poverty have even greater difficulty in accessing locally grown food at reasonable prices and that contributes to substantial food insecurity – meaning people cannot easily access the food that they need to keep their families well fed.”

One local researcher predicts that things are likely to get even worse. Dale Ran-kine, a PhD candidate at the University of the West Indies (UWI), told IPS that climate change modelling suggests that the region will be drier heading towards the middle to the end of the century.

“We are seeing projections that suggest that we could have up to 40 percent decrease in rainfall, particularly in our summer months. This normally coincides with when we have our major rainfall season,” Rankine said.

“This is particularly important because it is going to impact most significantly on food security. We are also seeing suggestions that we could have increasing frequency of droughts and floods, and this high variability is almost certainly going to impact negatively on crop yields.”

He pointed to “an interesting pattern” of increased rainfall over the central re-gions, but only on the outer extremities, while in the west and east there has been a reduction in rainfall.

“This is quite interesting because the locations that are most important for food security, particularly the parishes of St. Elizabeth [and] Manchester, for example, are seeing on average reduced rainfall and so that has implications for how pro-ductive our production areas are going to be,” Rankine said.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) an-nounced recently that September 2014 was the hottest in 135 years of record keeping. It noted that during September, the globe averaged 60.3 degrees Fahren-heit (15.72 degrees Celsius), which was the fourth monthly record set this year, along with May, June and August.

According to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Centre, the first nine months of 2014 had a global average temperature of 58.72 degrees (14.78 degrees Celsius), tying with 1998 for the warmest first nine months on record.

Robert Pickersgill, Jamaica’s water, land, environment and climate change minister, said more than 18,000 small farmers have been affected by the extreme drought that has been plaguing the country for months.

He said the agricultural sector has lost nearly one billion dollars as a result of drought and brush fires caused by extreme heat waves.

Pickersgill said reduced rainfall had significantly limited the inflows from springs and rivers into several of the country’s facilities.

“Preliminary rainfall figures for the month of June indicate that Jamaica re-ceived only 30 per cent of its normal rainfall and all parishes, with the exception of sections of Westmoreland (54 percent), were in receipt of less than half of their normal rainfall. The southern parishes of St Elizabeth, Manchester, Clarendon, St Catherine, Kingston and St. Andrew and St. Thomas along with St Mary and Portland were hardest hit,” Pickersgill said.

Clarendon, he said, received only two percent of its normal rainfall, followed by Manchester with four percent, St. Thomas six percent, St. Mary eight percent, and 12 percent for Kingston and St. Andrew.

Additionally, Pickersgill said that inflows into the Mona Reservoir from the Yallahs and Negro Rivers are now at 4.8 million gallons per day, which is among the lowest since the construction of the Yallahs pipeline in 1986, while inflows into the Hermitage Dam are currently at six million gallons per day, down from more than 18 million gallons per day during the wet season.

“It is clear to me that the scientific evidence that climate change is a clear and present danger is now even stronger. As such, the need for us to mitigate and adapt to its impacts is even greater, and that is why I often say, with climate change, we must change,” Pickers-gill told IPS.

Wedderburn said Jamaica must take immediate steps to adapt to climate change.

“So the challenge for the govern-ment is to explore what kinds of adaptation methods can be used to teach farmers how to do more successful water harvesting so that in periods of severe drought their crops can still grow so that they can have food to sell to families at reasonable prices to deal with the food insecurity.”

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© IPS-INTER PRESS SERVICE DECEMBER 2014

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