ecosystem Archives - SolarBuzz Jamaica

NGOs, Small Businesses Get Funding For Climate Change Adaptation

February 10, 2017 Webmaster

Special Climate Change Adaptation Fund administrators from the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica and beneficiaries show off the cheque representing the most recent awards at the signing ceremony last Monday.

WITH A changing climate that threatens to wash away entire communities and derail livelihoods, local civil society organisations and small businesses are being empowered to respond – with capital.

This is thanks to financing made available through the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR).

There exist two financing mechanisms, according to Dr Winsome Townsend, project manager for the Adaptation Programme and Financing Mechanism under the PPCR.

One is the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCAF) that is being administered by the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica.

The SCCAF, according to project documents, is “to finance adaptation and disaster risk-reduction projects and cover associated programme management costs”.

“Grants from this trust fund will be accessed by community-based organisations, other civil-society groups and selected public-sector agencies, for clearly defined high-priority activities, particularly related to building the resilience of the natural environment and contributing to livelihoods protection and poverty reduction,” the documents revealed.

Last Monday, the first 18 beneficiary organisations were awarded sums to the tune of $84.9 million to undertake projects designed to enhance resilience at the community level.

“There was a call for proposals in October last year and out of that, about 80 proposals were received and about half that amount were shortlisted. They were further assessed and out of that, an initial 18 were approved,” said Townsend.

“Twelve were pending approval. Those 12 have now been approved. So out of that first call, approximately 30 have been approved,” she added.

PROJECTS TO BE PURSUED

Projects to be pursued include water harvesting and greenhouses, aquaponics systems and food processing, as well as various ecosystem restoration initiatives.

Townsend said another call will be issued later this month or early March.

The second mechanism is a line of credit, intended “to provide loan financing to support adaptation measures of farmers and other businesses in the agricultural sector, and small hoteliers and other businesses in the tourism sector”.

Five projects have been approved to the tune of some $25 million, Townsend said. However, the overall level of interest in the line of credit – administered by JN Small Business Loan – is not immediately clear.

“Because it has started soft, we don’t know yet. We can’t at this time make any determination as to the level of enthusiasm,” Townsend said.

Still, she is hopeful for its success, given what is at stake.

“It is not just the Government who needs to put in measures in terms of climate change adaptation, but everybody, including citizens. Of particular interest is the private sector because businesses are under threat from climate change, and so the private sector needs to respond to these threats,” she said.

“The micro, small and medium-size businesses are at greater risk because of their capacity to respond. They are not as resilient as the more established or bigger enterprises,” Townsend noted.

Gleaner

Climate Climate Change Environment Government News

Humans Aren’t Just Changing the Climate. We’re Changing ‘Life Itself’ It’s not just about us.

November 19, 2016 Webmaster

screen-shot-2016-11-19-at-13-24-28

The earth has warmed barely a single degree Celsius, and yet virtually no place on the planet is unaffected by climate change. That’s the conclusion of both a new study published in the journal Science and a popular-science book out this week, The Unnatural World, by David Biello, the science curator at TED and a Scientific Americancontributing editor.

“This new age is not just climate change,” Biello writes, “it is everything change: the sky, the sea, the land, the rocks, life itself.”

The Science article reviews dozens of field studies and assembles them into a mosaic of ubiquitous change, from the genes of organisms to entire regions. More than 80 percent of the 94 biological and ecological systems surveyed show signs of the changing climate. Led by Brett Scheffers of the University of Florida, a team of 17 scientists trawled academic journals and enumerated observed changes across terrestrial, marine, and freshwater environments. The study’s seven pages are a dense catalog of pervasive, dynamic weirdness that paint a picture of changing ecosystems.

No particular item should strike fear in the hearts of readers but, taken together, the data portray a living world that’s trying to cope. Some highlights: Pink salmon are migrating about two weeks earlier in the summer than they did 40 years ago, spawning in ever-warmer waters and causing the fish’s genome to change. Southern flying squirrels, native to the eastern U.S., are becoming northern flying squirrels, now native to the Pacific Northwest, Canada, and Alaska. Colors—which help determine an animal’s sensitivity to light and consequently its ability to thrive in unfamiliar conditions—are shifting in butterflies, dragonflies, and birds. Some places have new diseases, and old diseases have arrived in new places.

The changes, large and small, illuminate the overarching global and regional changes that scientists have warned about, and now documented, for decades. The chemical and physical stability of many ecosystems, and therefore biodiversity, are under assault. The consequences for human society are both foreseen and unforeseen. “Losing genetic resources in nature may undermine future development of novel crop varieties and compromise key strategies that humans use to adapt to climate change,” the Science authors write.

They also suggest where to start: “It is now up to national governments to make good on the promises they made in Paris” to cut emissions and keep ecosystems safe. President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to leave the historic climate accord, backed by almost 200 countries.

Change is so pervasive that geologists, keepers of the earth’s chronology, are considering the dramatic gesture of creating a new epoch, called the Anthropocene, to mark humanity’s influence.

The Anthropocene is the frame through which Biello peers in The Unnatural World. Read together, the book and the Science article demonstrate the astounding scale of human influence on the natural systems that sustain our planet.

“One of the longest-lived impacts of this new people’s epoch, longer lasting even than all the CO₂ piling up in the atmosphere,” Biello said about the Science paper, “will be our impact on evolution. The question now is: Will the Anthropocene be a blip in the rock record, like an asteroid impact, or can people learn to ameliorate our impacts and lengthen the span of this new epoch?”

Bloomberg