Earth Today | ‘No time for naysayers in race to climate readiness’
Published:Thursday | August 29, 2019 | 12:00 AM
IT IS up to small island developing states, including Jamaica, to chart their own course towards climate readiness, based on the findings of the special report on global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, which, in part, is the product of the labour of home-grown scientists.
This is the view of UnaMay Gordon, head of the Climate Change Division of the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation, which is mandated, among other things, to ensure climate change considerations are taken on board in all development planning for Jamaica.
“I wouldn’t make a fuss over the countries that are objecting to having the report. We will continue to get the resistance. It is incumbent on us to use the report as small island developing states,” she said.
“They can’t stop us from using the report. We are a party (to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and to the Paris Agreement). We have accepted the report, accepted the science, and we must use the report,” Gordon insisted.
She was responding to questions from The Gleaner on the likely implications of the report’s lack of endorsement from countries, including the United States, Saudia Arabia, Russia and Kuwait, even as it paints a picture of a bleak future for a world the fails to strive for a no-more-than 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in global temperatures.
Indeed, the report – the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and including local scientists such as Professor Michael Taylor of the Climate Studies Group Mona – indicates that to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius when compared to two degrees Celsius, is to reduce the deleterious effects of climate change to natural ecosystems and related socio-economic fallout.
The 1.5 degrees celsius ambition is reflected in the historic Paris Agreement, a deal inked in France in 2015 and which has seen countries committing to “holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and pursuing efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.
Such risks and impacts include:
n extreme weather events, such as hurricanes, the likes of which wreaked havoc over sections of the Caribbean in recent years as they got up to categories 4 and 5;
n warmer temperatures and the attendant prevalence of diseases, such as dengue, the likes of which Jamaica has struggled with over the last year; as well as
n under-mined water and food security, associated with drought events and excessive heat waves.
According to Gordon, vulnerable countries must take stock and pursue those actions to realise the best possible climate change outcomes for their countries, taking advantage of available partnerships to make it happen.
“Who are our major donors in terms of climate financing? It is the European Union, it is the Canadians. We have to stop focusing on what we see not happening and focus instead on what we see happening. We have to focus on our resilience, on partnering with the countries and the partners who are there for us and who have our best interest at heart,” she told The Gleaner.