ST JOHN’S, Antigua — St Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves says regional countries will be pushing to strengthen their institutional arrangements to deal with the impact of climate change.

Gonsalves, who is also chairman of the regional integration grouping Caricom, said that the issue would be also discussed at the upcoming Caricom Inter-sessional summit in Kingstown, March 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 the Caribbean Media Corporation (CMC).

He said this was a serious matter because “we do not contribute greatly to man-made climate change but we are on the front line 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”.

Gonsalves said this is a matter where the region would have to do much more co-ordinated 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”.