Earth Today | UnaMay Gordon waves goodbye to Jamaica’s Climate Change Division
Published:Thursday | September 15, 2022 | 12:07 AM
UNAMAY GORDON has travelled the globe, leading and collaborating with teams of negotiators intent on securing the best possible deals for a safe climate future for Jamaica and other small island developing states.
Now, after six years on the grind as principal director of Jamaica’s Climate Change Division (CCD) – years in which she has lost some good friends and respected colleagues to sickness and death – she is hanging up her own heels, but only from formal national service.
As Gordon tells it, with the expiration of her contract for her second three-year term as principal director of the CCD in July, the time had come.
“I was doing national service. The job was in service of the national good; and I thought I had given enough national service,” she told The Gleaner.
SATISFIED
Looking back, Gordon is satisfied with her achievements, including, she said, “leading the charge” on Jamaica’s ratification of the historic Paris Agreement; deepening private sector engagement on climate change; and work on a number of essential policy and other documents to inform the national climate change agenda.
The documents include the Gender and Climate Change Policy Strategy; the Technology Needs Assessment and accompanying Barrier Analysis; and the first Biennial Update Report and Third National Communication on Climate Change Report submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Especially important to Gordon has been ensuring that Jamaica had a ‘seat at the table’ in climate change negotiations.
“If you are not at the table, then you are either the meal or the crumbs; and so we participated in the discourse at all levels. We ensured that Jamaica is represented on the mechanisms of the UNFCCC,” said the former CCD boss, who has herself served on the Bureau of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC, among other areas.
The bureau supports the COP presidency and other bodies for the effective operation of sessions. Gordon’s term saw her participating in the planning for the 25th sitting of the global climate talks.
“If you don’t elevate yourself, then you don’t understand the process. That (participation on the Bureau) for me opened a lot of eyes, brought a lot of respect,” she noted.
At the same time, Gordon said other officers in the CCD have and continue to themselves provide leadership through representation on, for example, the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage and the Board of the Clean Development Mechanism.
Today she has no regrets and considers that she has left things in good hands.
“I believe in succession planning. The team I left there, I don’t expect them to not know what to do,” she noted.
And her advice to the next CCD team lead?
“To be present and to build on the gains that we have made … Also, I think they have to look to the future. The space is very dynamic but also an ungrateful space. It needs commitment. I did the work because it is what I wanted to do … I wanted to serve my country,” Gordon said.
For herself, she is back to consulting while also operating the Institute of Sustainable Livelihood, Leadership and Exchange, registered in Belize and for which she is founder.
“I am a well-recognised, global expert in my own right, offering myself where I am needed,” said the Netherlands-based Wageningen University grad and holder of certificates in organisational leadership and emotional intelligence from Incae Business School in Costa Rica and the Covey Institute respectively.
“I am working on the goodbyes. But I remain in the space because there can be no breaks,” she added.