CLIFFORD Mahlung is tipped to head Jamaica’s first-ever climate change unit, which is scheduled to open its doors by yearend, sources have said.

“Mr Mahlung has the experience and the knowledge about climate change. I wouldn’t want to tell you that he is the person; these are positions that would have to be advertised.

But he should be one of the primary candidates,” said Jeffrey Spooner, head of the Climate Branch at Jamaica’s Meteorological Office, and the man who is co-ordinating the opening of the new unit.

Mahlung, in the meantime, said there was no question that he would be among those vying to head the unit.

“I will be one of the prospective candidates for head. It will be open to everybody, but I will be among them,” he said.

He said that his experience and technical know-how would help to safeguard his successful management of the unit, for which financing is now being worked out.

“My experience with respect to being involved with climate change and climate change issues over the past 12 years would certainly place me in an advantageous position,” he told Environment Watch. “.Plus, my former training as a meteorologist would also mean that I have an understanding of weather, and in particular climate. I have been in the Climate Branch since 1995, so I would bring that experience which is probably unique in Jamaica.”

Mahlung said that there was no question of the critical need for the unit.

“My personal opinion is that the establishment of the unit is that the time for it has arrived. The focus and priority that has to be given to the issue of climate change, and in particular adaptation, requires that the role not be additional to work currently being done by the climate branch but one that should be placed in a unit with its own focus,” said Mahlung, who currently serves on the 16-member executive board for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.

In that capacity, he is charged with approving projects designed to help developing countries like those in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean realise sustainable development, while giving developed countries the opportunity to earn carbon credits in order to meet their carbon emission targets stipulated under the 1997 agreement.

He was Jamaica’s chief climate change negotiator at the United Nations climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia last year, as he has done in previous years.

The climate change unit will, among other things:

. serve as a clearing house for all information on climate change;

. liaise with the Ministry of Land and Environment and the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) in order to have an input in the formulation of climate policy; and

. advance work on the national reports on climate change for the island.

It is to be staffed by four people, including two climate change officers and an information officer, in addition to the head of the unit.