Posts Tagged Caribbean

I remember speaking with a fisherman on the beach. There weren’t many people on the beach that day and, understandably, not many people had gone out to sea, he’d said. More important to me that what he said, was him. His dreadlocks and his skin were the kind that had seen lots of sun and the sea, about which he spoke in a very familiar, if not familial manner.

So when I hear that people’s whole livelihoods will be wiped out by climate change, I only need to think of that Rocky day to see not only how devastating, but just how possible that could be. There are many such fishing villages in Jamaica and across the Caribbean, upon which many people depend for their lives.

Now, I know my views on climate change are decidedly skewed because of where I’m from: one of those small countries that they say are only minimally responsible for climate change, but will feel it the most. But I’m not about to argue that large countries should bear the burden. Everybody knows and agrees that they should. That was the point of the Kyoto Protocol.

So, as my first year university professor used to say after he had outlined some conundrum or the other: What [are] we going [to] do?

It’s not an original solution. In order to ‘protect’ vulnerable populations, we, those populations, first need to understand what exactly it is that we need protection from. I read somewhere that Barbuda, a small island in the Caribbean Sea, is likely to sink in 50 years due to rising sea levels. How many people in the Caribbean or even Antigua and Barbuda are aware of the gravity of this?

My grandfather doesn’t know what climate change is. Why should he? It just hasn’t been important enough in the context of a country where crime is the number one problem. That being said, why should he know and understand, for example, that he should try to use less electricity, when for most of his life he has lived without it? So, the crux is to achieve this sensitization, without turning it into a ‘force-it-down-their-throats’ kind of public education campaign, which makes the organizations that put it on look good, but really doesn’t do much educating.

We need to find a way to reach everybody. From those who inch along in bumper to bumper traffic every morning, one-by-one, in what is easily the biggest status indicator in Jamaica, their air-conditioned cars, to those from the lower parts of town who aspire for and often eventually acquire one of those air-conditioned units themselves and join that unmoving line of traffic.

I don’t know how it is to be done.

But say we successfully do this and people understand the problem. How do they help to fix it? Last week, a co-worker at the Japanese high school where I work, in giving a synopsis of a demonstration social studies class, said the main point for him was the idea: think globally, act locally in relation to caring for the environment. That idea is quite a few years old, but that has to be it.

We, these vulnerable populations must begin to take our environment seriously. In my country, the environment just isn’t a priority. Not on the national level, not on an individual level. So the first step has to be toward making people care about the environment. Then we should focus on creating an understanding of the consequences of not caring.

Let us help people understand that the Rockys scattered across the Caribbean could cease to exist. That the terrible hurricanes we get every season could increase. That our ocean, which attract so many tourists each year and therefore feed many families, could become warmer, that the marine life will be depleted. Get an understanding of these facts into our people’s heads and then we can get moving.

And perhaps there is already some movement. Last week, the Jamaica Institute for Environment Professionals hosted its fourth biennial conference on climate change, with the aim of outlining ways for the Caribbean to respond. Anyone was invited. I don’t know yet what came out of this conference. But whatever it was, if that information can reach as much of the populace as possible, in an effective manner, and on a sustained basis, the process can begin.