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WASHINGTON, USA: The Caribbean region is already suffering some of the negative impacts of climate change, and urgent action must be taken to mitigate the effects of such human activities as over-fishing and pollution, a group of regional climate-change experts argued on Thursday at the Organization of American States (OAS).
Launching the first in the Caribbean Seminar Series “Bringing the Caribbean’s Sustainable Development Agenda to Washington,” OAS Assistant Secretary General Albert R. Ramdin told participants that despite varying views on the causes of climate change, “there is clear evidence from NASA satellites that the polar ice cap as a whole is shrinking at a rate of about 9 percent each decade. A vicious cycle is in progress: As more of the polar ice cap disappears, the warmer the earth will become.”
The seminar series is a joint effort of the OAS Department of Sustainable Development, the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (CCCCC) and the World Bank.
In stressing the need for a holistic approach, Ramdin said the OAS agenda “cannot and should not be divorced from the reality of the political, social, economic and environmental changes ongoing in the Americas.” He noted the particular development challenges faced by the smaller member countries, especially those in the Caribbean and Central America, noting Grenada’s experience during and after Hurricane Ivan in September 2004.
“Prior to the arrival of Hurricane Ivan, Grenada’s economy was projected to grow by 4.7% in 2004 and at an average rate of 5% between 2005 and 2007. After Hurricane Ivan, economic activity declined to negative 1.4% in 2004. There was an inevitable contraction in tourism, a halt in production of traditional crops,” he said.
Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador Deborah-Mae Lovell argued that “the possibility that our climate may change is enough for us to take notice and to be pro-active. We stand to lose nearly everything, if the predictions of the scientists come true.” She described this first seminar as an excellent opportunity to think about the policies, programs and strategies that might be employed to overcome the challenges to the sustainable development of the Caribbean countries—which, she added, can take no solace in the fact that they are not the major emitters of greenhouses gases that are at the heart of the problem.
According to CCCCC Deputy Director Dr. Carlos Fuller, the average temperature in the Caribbean region increased by 1 degree Celsius in the 20th century, with sea levels rising by 2 millimeters per year, and scientific projections are for much steeper change in the next four decades. He said adaptation strategies must be put in place to meet the urgent needs of mitigation, and called for more scientific studies to inform the policy options. “Our political directorate needs hard evidence” articulated in economic terms, he stressed. “The onus is on the scientific community to provide that evidence to them.”
Source: www.caribbeannetnews.com
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The PRECIS Caribbean Project
The Providing REgional Climates for Impacts Studies (PRECIS) Project is a regional(Caribbean) modelling system derived from a third-generation Hadley Centre RCM which has been so configured that it can be set up and run over any area of the globe, on relatively inexpensive but fast PCs. PRECIS is freely available for use by developing country scientists involved in vulnerability and adaptation studies conducted by their governments.
The PRECIS RCM is driven at its boundaries by data from the Hadley Centre GCM corresponding to a range of SRES emissions scenarios. It produces vast amounts of climate data including standard variables such as temperature and precipitation, for future periods (2070 - 2100). Because of its high resolution, national climate change scenarios for small countries such as those that make up the Caribbean can, then, be created. Software is also provided for processing, analyzing and displaying the data produced by PRECIS.
With funding from the Global Environment Facility (GEF) via the Mainstreaming to Adaptation in the Caribbean (MACC) project, the Japanese Trust Fund operated by the World Bank, and coordination by both the Caribbean Community Climate Change Center (CCCCC) and INSMET the PRECIS Caribbean project has been in existence for nearly four years.
Source: Glimpses of the Future A Briefing from the PRECIS Climate Change Project
For More Information on PRECIS: Click Here
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Belize Reef Die-Off Due to Climate Change?
Photograph copyright Paul Morrison
Tim McClanahan, a conservation zoologist with the Bronx, New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, has studied the coral barrier reefs of Belize for the past decade.
McClanahan said he was "hooked" when he noticed that the Belize Barrier Reef System, the world's second largest, showed signs of ill health similar to damaged reefs near densely populated locations like Jamaica. "Why would these reefs out in the middle of the Caribbean, far from land, located near a small country with a small population, not look like they should?" McClanahan recalled.
For years, scientists have known that localized human factors such as pollution and overfishing damage coral reefs. But what about the effects of global environmental changes? Many reefs lay close to densely populated countries, making it difficult to distinguish between changes caused directly by humans from those with more widespread origins.
When the health of Belize's reefs began to decline, McClanahan and other scientists saw a unique opportunity. "The Belize situation is quite unique, and it suggests global change because the country is small and the pollution and human effects are less than they might be in many other Caribbean countries," McClanahan said. "There's lots of debate about localized human influence versus global, and this reef was one of the best places to test that."
Scientists say rising ocean temperatures, increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation, and more frequent and violent storms and weather patterns possibly caused by global climate change have lead to a partial die-off of the reefs known as coral bleaching.
Coral Bleaching
Coral bleaching—a type of slow death evident when multi-hued coral reefs turn a ghostly, translucent white—is relatively new to Belize. The first mass bleaching occurred in 1995, with an estimated partial mortality of 10 percent of coral colonies, according to a report by the Coastal Zone Management Institute in Belize.
In 1997 and 1998, a second mass-bleaching event occurred, coinciding with devastation wrecked by hurricane Mitch. Biologists observed a 48 percent reduction in live coral cover in the Belize reef system.
In the past, scientists often attributed bleaching events to local causes: storms, sedimentation, and pollution. But when bleaching began to occur in more remote reefs like Belize, scientists began to revise their assumptions.
"This coral bleaching is pretty solidly tied to rising ocean temperatures," said Melanie McField, a Belize-based reef scientist with the World Wildlife Fund, a non-profit environmental organization in Washington, D.C. "It's a fact that global temperatures have risen. There's lots of data and little argument that increased ocean temperatures are the primary agent of bleaching. Ultraviolet light also causes bleaching, and the combination of the two gives you the worst bleaching response."
"As for tying overall temperature increases to overall global warming, there is still some debate, but less every year," she said. "I think the majority of scientists agree that global warming is happening and that it's the root cause of these coral bleaching events."
If that's the case, the reefs seem destined for increased problems. Global climate change models predict that ocean temperatures will continue to rise in the foreseeable future.
Source: www.nationalgeographic.com
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