Earth Today | Gov’ts urged to prioritise environmental considerations amid COVID-19 storm

THE GOVERNMENTS and people of the Caribbean are reminded to keep environmental considerations as key to sustainable economies and overall development front of mind, even as they negotiate the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The pandemic, up to yesterday, had infected more than 4.5 million people and claimed the lives of more than 316,000 globally, while governments dig ever deeper into their coffers to strengthen the public-health response and save lives.

Simultaneously, hundreds of thousands of people have found themselves out of work, while closeted at home, many anxious over what the coming weeks and months will bring. Among the emergent concerns have been for natural ecosystems and the implications for development over the long term.

“Awareness raising, communication and transparency are key in the struggle to define and agree upon a new greener, all-inclusive economy which values ecosystem services for all of us. It will be a global challenge,” said Jan Betlem, regional coordinator for the ‘Integrating Water, Land and Ecosystems Management in Caribbean Small Island States’ (IWEco) project, which is funded by the Global Environment Facility.

“Human activity has altered virtually every corner of our planet, from land to ocean. As we continue to relentlessly encroach on nature and degrade ecosystems, we start slowly to understand what scientists have indicated for decades: with our behaviour we are endangering human health. The time has come to accept that economies cannot grow endlessly. It may also be time to define ‘economy’ in a different way, to accept the need to include environmental factors when making decisions,” he added.

IWECO

IWEco, a five-year, Caribbean-wide project that builds on the work of previous initiatives to address water, land and biodiversity resource management as well as climate change, is itself weathering ‘the storm’ of COVID-19.

“We are noticing that government institutions and other partners are less available to carry out activities as planned for within the framework of the IWEco project. The short-term priorities, as usual, prevail over the longer-term goals,” Betlem noted.

“IWEco is a project, which ultimately aims to enhance the sustainable flow of ecosystem services and their contribution to sustainable socio-economic development in the Caribbean through the application of appropriate solutions for the improved integrated management of water, land and biological resources. This will ultimately result in greater resilience to pandemics like the COVID-19,” the project coordinator added.

In this way, Betlem would seem to echo the sentiments out of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which is one of the architects of IWEco.

In an April 6 statement, UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen said while the immediate priority is to protect people by limiting the spread of COVID-19, there is also the need to recognise “that the virus requires a sound environmental response”.

Against this background, Andersen said the UNEP stands ready “to support member states and front-line UN partners in providing technical expertise on chemicals and hazardous waste management as they seek to address the increase in waste necessitated by the medical response to the crisis. It is precisely because of the interconnected nature of all life on this planet that an ambitious post-2020 biodiversity framework matters greatly, and we remain committed to efforts to make this happen”.

“In the post-crisis setting as governments approve stimulus packages to support job creation, poverty reduction, development and economic growth, we will continue to support member states and partners to ‘build back better’, to capture opportunities for leapfrogging to green investments, such as renewable energy, smart housing, green public procurement, public transport – all guided by the principles and standards of sustainable production and consumption,” the UNEP boss added.

CONSERVATION NEEDS

Betlem, meanwhile, has cautioned against the over-exploitation of natural resources as people come up against financial hardship on the road to a COVID-19-managed world.

“We are very concerned about the global threat of COVID-19 for humankind, economies, livelihoods, etc. Experience has taught us that when human beings face bad economic times, this often results in a further over-exploitation of natural resources,” he told The Gleaner.

IWEco, he added, will do its part to guard against that.

“As a project, IWEco must first focus on completion of all agreed activities in order to achieve the anticipated outcomes as agreed with the donors. Even if there are some delays, unavoidable due to the current global crisis, our focus remains on enhancing the sustainable flow of ecosystem services and their contribution to sustainable socio-economic development in the Caribbean,” Betlem noted.

“The integrated approach promoted by IWEco is the longer-term answer for crises like the current one. We are yet to determine how we may be able to help, and this will depend on the impacts on our project participating countries,” he added.

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