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| Dame Pearlette Louisy at the Living at the Sharp End of Environmental Uncertainty Conference, Bristol, 17 July 2014. Image credit: Amanda Woodman-Hardy |
On 17 July 2014, Dame
Pearlette Louisy, Governor-General of Saint
Lucia, came to the University of Bristol to give a keynote talk on the
challenges and strategies on environmental uncertainty from Saint Lucia and the
Caribbean. Her visit marked the start of
a Cabot Institute funded conference at the university, Living at the Sharp End of Environmental Uncertainty, where members of Small
Island States (SIS) came together with academics and stakeholders to thrash out
the problems facing SIS in a world of global environmental uncertainty. This blog post captures some of the key
points from Dame Pearlette’s talk.
Defining environmental uncertainty
Defining ‘environmental uncertainty’ is a
tricky prospect. What does the term
actually mean? It’s embedded into the
Cabot Institute’s strapline of ‘Living with environmental uncertainty’ but it
can be hard to define. Dame Pearlette
felt there were two principle components to ‘environmental uncertainty’ - a
lack of knowledge and a lack of knowledge about how an environmental system
will change in the future.
Environmental challenges in the Caribbean
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| Hurricane Tomas, 2010. Image credit: Ryder Busby |
The challenges facing the Caribbean are
strongly based around environmental uncertainty. It is an area highly prone to devastating
natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, landslides and volcanoes. Being a small geographical area its
vulnerability is increased especially as its dependence on tourism and
agriculture for income can ruin its resilience by the occurrence of one natural
event. The limited capacity to develop,
coupled with limited human resources and a fragile ecosystem means that the
Caribbean’s ability to implement disaster risk reduction is relatively low.
One of the key things that stood out for
me in Dame Pearlette’s talk was that the locals are noticing the effects of
climate change already. A
little rhyme they use about the hurricance season goes like this:
June - Too Soon
July - Standby
August - You must
September - Remember
October - It's all over
What is shocking is that hurricane season
now lasts six months (June to November) leaving communities on tenterhooks for
half of the year. Comparing this to the
old rhyme, it is clear to see that this is a much longer season than it used to
be.
Sadly communities in the Caribbean are
particularly vulnerable to all sorts of environmental impact. Those living on reclaimed land or at sea
level are prone to flooding by high water tides. Communities also rely heavily on coastal and
marine resources leaving them vulnerable when these are damaged by
environmental events. There is also the
problem of getting insured in the Caribbean.
The islands are classified as high risk which has led to very high
insurance premiums for people who can ill afford them. This has led to communities not redeveloping
after disasters.
Disaster management in the Caribbean
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| Haiti after Hurricane Tomas had passed through. Image credit: DVIDSHUB |
Caribbean disaster management is
difficult as the people who live there cannot manage disaster responses by
themselves. However there are fantastic
organisations across the Caribbean who are key to managing risk and are helping
to build a resilient and sustainable future:
- The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency seeks to reduce the risk and loss associated with natural and technological hazards and the effects of climate change to enhance regional sustainable development.
- The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre coordinates the Caribbean region’s response to climate change, working on effective solutions and projects to combat the environmental impacts of climate change and global warming.
- The Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility serves Caribbean governments and community's by providing insurance funds to communities quickly after disasters. They also look at building resilience after disaster.
- Environment and Sustainable Development Unit is responsible for providing natural resource and environment services to ensure sustainability of the people's livelihoods.
- UWI Seismic Research Centre serves as official source of information on earthquakes and volcanoes in the Caribbean.
- Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies promotes and facilitates sustainable development.
- Caribbean Youth Environment Network empowers young people and their communities to develop programmes/actions to address socio-economic and environmental issues.
Dame Pearlette was keen to point out that
enhanced international cooperation is needed if we are to improve sustainable
development in the Caribbean region.
New approaches to Saint Lucia’s landslide problem
Saint Lucia is volcanic in origin and it
has steep slopes. Most flat land there is situated in a narrow belt, which is
where most settlement is located.
Hurricane Tomas hit Saint Lucia in 2010 and it had a large impact on the
community and its financial health. Two
years later there was a landslide on the main arterial road Barre de
L'Isle. This cut the island in two and
caused substantial damage to infrastructure, buildings, the East Coast Road,
slopes and water catchments including the Roseau Dam which collected a lot of
silt. Saint Lucia are still trying to
desilt the dam which is causing water shortage problems this year.
It is particularly difficult to reforest
slopes after landslides as all the soil is swept away leaving bare rock. Landslide disaster
risk is increasing and new approaches to designing and delivering landslide
risk reduction measures on-the-ground are urgently needed. In response to that challenge, researchers at
the Cabot Institute developed a novel methodology, Management of slope stability in communities (Mossaic), the vision for which is to provide low cost,
community-based solutions, such as low cost drains and other related measures
to reduce landslide hazard. Watch the video below for more info.
You can read more about how the Cabot
Institute has been working with St Lucia on this poster and this powerpoint presentation.
Strategies for the Saint Lucia government
Dame Pearlette outlined some key
strategies that Saint Lucia is implementing to improve its resilience to
natural hazards and environmental uncertainty including a climate change
adaptation policy; a strategic programme for climate resilience; a special
programme on adaptation to climate change; a pilot programme for climate
resilience; and a national environmental education policy and strategy.
However there is one key challenge and
that is of funding. Saint Lucia has debts and what is troubling is that it is
now difficult to borrow because lenders are not sure of Saint Lucia’s ability
to pay their loans back which means the country continues to depend on external
assistance of NGOs. Although not an
ideal situation, there is interesting work being funded by NGOs. One such NGO is UNDP who are working with
communities to achieve environmental sustainability with emphasis on the poor
to build capacity.
Education for sustainable development - the future of environmental management?
At the end of Dame Pearlette’s talk, she
shared her thoughts on the best way forward.
She strongly felt that Education
for Sustainable Development (ESD) is the best way to bring about environmental
change. Even though no Caribbean policy
for ESD exists, there are many groups trying to embed ESD into their institutes
of learning. Dame Pearlette said that
knowledge management is the management of an organisation’s knowledge assets
for the purpose of creating value. The
key principle of uncertainty is about lack of knowledge. Therefore knowledge creation and knowledge
sharing is paramount for managing sustainability and thus it is the individual
or country’s responsibility to ensure it keeps learning to reduce its environmental
uncertainty.
Here at the University of Bristol, we also
believe that ESD is a worthwhile ambition to
embed sustainable development into our own curriculum. At the Cabot Institute
we have appointed an intern to undertake a Community Based Learning project to place environmental postgraduate students with
organisations in the local community. By
embedding our environmental knowledge and sharing it with our communities, we
can help build a more sustainable world and more resilient communities to what
seems to be a growing plight of environmental uncertainty.
Further reading: The Sinking Pacific: Climate Change and Aid in Tuvalu
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| Amanda Woodman-Hardy |