Climate Change Workshop

Climate change. cringe... Those two words can lead to a very heated debate within many crowds.  Truth of the matter is I am serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the environment sector in the Caribbean- part of my job, well most of my job really, is trying to educate and prepare local people on this inevitable phenomenon.  I am working on two projects, both of them directly related to the mitigation of climate change-not only promoting better hillside farming practices, but also educating these communities and farmers of what climate change is, how it is effecting them now and what they need to be prepared for.  

According to the workshop that I went to on Monday, the Caribbean region will be one of the highest impacted regions in the world.  Some of the ways that Jamaicans are being impacted now include drought (resulting in poorer farming conditions and lack of fresh water for human use), more extreme weather (when it rains-it pours).  It is predicted that air temperatures will increase, ocean temperatures will increase, droughts will be more common, heavy rainfall and storms will be more common and the frequency of tropical storms and hurricanes will increase.  All of these factors will make life on this island much different.  Everything from infrastructure, roads, agriculture, fisheries and many other aspects of life will be impacted.  Flooding will increase, roads will wash out, coastal erosion will increase as sea levels rise, farming will be impacted and coral reefs can be effected.  Although everything cannot be prevented and some will not happen for many many years, there are some things that Jamaicans need to prepare for now- drought, storms, erosion, flooding.

There is a proposed project funded through the World Bank that would bring funding to this small island and many others in the region helping the island to prepare and to take weather data.  This would include equipment, media, education and much more.  

Many of these environment and  infrastructure problems stem deep- beyond climate change and I think its a wonderful reason to fix some of the problems and to prepare for the future.