BY AINSWORTH MORRIS

Environment Watch writer

editorial@jamaicaobserver.com

JAMAICA is at risk of missing the 2030 deadline to achieve First-World status if Government and other stakeholders don’t adopt a more coordinated approach to combating climate change.

That’s according to Professor Michael Taylor, senior lecturer and director of the Climate Studies Group at the University of the West Indies (UWI), who delivered the keynote address at GraceKennedy Foundation’s annual lecture at Jamaica Pegasus hotel in Kingston on March 10.

“Without a change in response, climate change will offset the gains we have already made in terms of priority development. It will offset the food security we are going after and the access to basic services. It is going to transform the environment into a hazard and what we premise economic development on,” the professor said.

The country’s development roadmap is set out in Vision 2030, a plan that is expected to make Jamaica “the place of choice to live, work, do business and raise families”. It has seven guiding principles and four national goals tied to governance, the society, the economy, and the natural environment. The expected outcomes under goal number four are:

* Sustainable management and use of environmental and natural resources;

* Hazard risk reduction and adaptation to climate change; and

* Sustainable urban and rural development.

But if things continue as they are, reasons Professor Taylor, these targets might not be achieved.

“Climate change threatens sustainability. Climate change is affecting the region’s geophysical, biological and socio-economic systems. Climate will continue to impact national budgets, compromise livelihoods and exacerbate poverty,” he warned.

“In the face of the region’s inherent sensitivity to climate, its growing vulnerability, and the threat posed to its future sustainability, climate clearly demands change. There is a demand in change for how we perceive the issue of climate and in the importance we place on the issue. We cannot keep doing things as we have always been doing them, not acknowledging the impact and real threat of climate change to Caribbean existence as we know it,” Taylor continued.

The professor explained that climate change will result in sea level rise, higher temperatures, changing rainfall, more extreme weather events, ocean acidification, retreating glaciers, shrinking ice sheets and changes in snow cover, and negatively affect our economic activities, profit margins and standards of living by the year 2030. Additionally, the physicist stated that some scientists have identified Jamaica’s temperature departure date to be in 2023.

“When we have reached temperature departure, lots of things will happen because we will move out of the realm where biodiversity will be able to live,” he warned.

He said based on the Stockholm study, if there is inaction, the Caribbean’s cost for climate change will be US$22 billion annually by 2050 and $46 billion by 2100.

“Climate is demanding attention, consideration and action. Climate is demanding change. In the face of changing climate, there is a cost to inaction.”

In an effort to combat climate change and help Jamaica achieve the objectives of Vision 2030, professor Taylor says it’s time for all Jamaicans to take action. He recommends:

* climate change education for all;

* development of a climate change response registry;

* strengthening of community groups and structures which address climate change;

* prioritising management of water resources;

* prioritising disaster risk management;

* fostering innovation and entrepreneurship;

* fostering regionalism; and

* developing a sustainable communication strategy on how to address climate change and its impacts.