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Jamaica To Strengthen Climate Change Focal Point Network

June 5, 2017 Webmaster

JAMAICA’S CLIMATE Change Division (CCD) is working on strengthening coordination and overall efficiency within the island’s focal point network, tasked to ensure climate change considerations are included in the planning and operations of each ministry, department and agency of government.

A first step is a lunch meeting to be held this Friday to share on the state of play with international climate change deliberations, post the entering into force of the historic Paris Agreement Jamaica’s ratification of which became official on May 10.

“We will also have a discussion about how we prepare for a pre-COP (Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), what type of pre-COP event we would want to have this year (ahead of the international talks to be held in Bonn), and the mini-COP we have planned for schools with the Ministry of Education,” revealed Una May Gordon, principal director for the CCD.

This meeting follows on a recent stocktaking of how the focal point representatives currently do their work and the way in which they use their knowledge of climate change.

The next step will be to secure a dedicated officer to handle coordination of the network, which currently has some 27 representatives from across the public sector.

“We are hoping that the consultant should be on board in June,” Gordon told The Gleaner, adding that funding for that person has come through the Japan Caribbean Climate Change Partnership (JCCCP).

The Jamaica component of the JCCCP was launched in June last year by the United Nations Development Programme and is designed to “bring together policymakers, experts and representatives of communities to encourage policy innovation for climate technology incubation and diffusion”.

The island is set to receive US$1.8 million of the US$15 million earmarked for eight Caribbean islands to help with climate change adaptation and mitigation.

Network Coordination

In addition to coordination of the focal point network with a focus on sectors such as forestry, water and energy, for which adaptation and mitigation plans are being or will be developed Gordon said the consultant will also support the climate change board and its activities.

Attention is also being paid to the composition of the network.

“We are re-examining the focal points to see if we have the right people in place and to ensure we get more depth and adequate coverage across all the portfolios,” Gordon noted.

“I think we can add a few more (representatives) because some ministries have changed. There is (for example) the Ministry of Education, Youth and Information, so we need two there. Another is the Ministry of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport,” she added.

The CCD, meanwhile, has managed to add to its own team over recent months. There is now a mitigation officer Omar Alcock who takes over from Gerald Lindo, who left last year.

There is also a climate finance adviser whose services have been provided through support from the Commonwealth Secretariat, as well as a public awareness and behaviour change officer, appointed through the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience.

“I am quite satisfied with my little team,” said a smiling Gordon.

Gleaner

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Advocates Advised To Maintain Gender And Climate Change Body

January 17, 2017 Webmaster

The effort to mainstream gender in climate change considerations while cementing the place of women in decision-making in that arena has a supporter in Dr James Fletcher, recent head of the CARICOM Task Force on Sustainable Development.

“Women are disproportionately affected by climate change, particularly in small-island developing states. Anytime here in Saint Lucia, if there is a drought, the people you see going miles to collect water are not the men, it is the women because they are the ones who, unfortunately, have the children on their hands and the household on their hands,” he noted.

“So women are always the ones who are disproportionately affected by natural disasters, and I think there must be some sensitivity in funding to the fact that there is a gender imbalance in the impacts of climate change and other natural disasters,” Fletcher added.

He was speaking with journalists at the Marrakech Climate Talks in November last year on the issue of a lack of funding to support the gender work programme that emerged from the Lima Climate Talks two years earlier.

Decisions in that work programme include:

– To enhance the implementation of the decision to promote gender balance and improve the participation of women in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations and in the representation of parties in bodies established in line with the Convention or the Kyoto Protocol; and

– that additional efforts be made by parties to the convention to improve the participation of women in their delegations and in all of the bodies established under the convention.

Among other things, it also invites parties to advance gender balance and promote gender sensitivity in developing and implementing climate policy and achieve gender-responsive climate policy in all relevant activities under the UNFCCC.

However, in Marrakech – as in Lima – it emerged that financing to achieve the provisions of the work programme is a challenge.

Fletcher’s advice to the women and gender constituency is to press ahead with their efforts.

“The thing with some of these discussions is it takes a while for common sense to prevail. So things you think people would get immediately, they don’t, and you must have a lot of back and forth. But I think that is the nature of the multilateral process. People come with different agendas, different perspectives,” he said.

CONTINUING THE PROCESS

“It really speaks to the need to continue having faith in the process, to continue pressing the line, and continue developing a coalition and seeking out allies and seeing how you can get support,” added Fletcher, who is also the former sustainable development minister for Saint Lucia.

He revealed that this is what had happened in the small island developing states’ effort to have the world take up the issue of loss and damage associated with climate change.

“When we started out with loss and damage, loss and damage was quintessentially a small-island state issue, and then suddenly, other people realised ok, there is a lot of merit in this, and we started developing allies and having more people come and support our cause,” he said.

“It is unfortunate that on a gender issue you need to go in that way because you figure anybody should realise that is an issue. But I think, probably, it is one of these areas where we need to do more work and where we need to do more sensitisation and make people understand the imperative of making sure that the funding is gender sensitive,” Fletcher noted.

Gleaner

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China Tells Trump That Climate Change Is No Hoax It Invented

November 19, 2016 Webmaster

screen-shot-2016-11-19-at-13-31-23

China couldn’t have invented global warming as a hoax to harm U.S. competitiveness because it was Donald Trump’s Republican predecessors who started climate negotiations in the 1980s, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin said.

U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush supported the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in initiating global warming talks even before China knew that negotiations to cut pollution were starting, Liu told reporters at United Nations talks on Wednesday in Marrakech, Morocco.

Ministers and government officials from almost 200 countries gathered in Marrakech this week are awaiting a decision by President-elect Trump on whether he’ll pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change. The tycoon tweeted in 2012that the concept of global warming “was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive.” China’s envoy rejected that view.

“If you look at the history of climate change negotiations, actually it was initiated by the IPCC with the support of the Republicans during the Reagan and senior Bush administration during the late 1980s,” Liu told reporters during an hour-long briefing.

Reagan’s Legacy

While Reagan died in 2004, George Schulz, who served as his secretary of state, has become one of the most prominent Republicans voicing concern about climate change and urging action.

“The potential results are catastrophic,” said Schulz, 95, in an interview with Bloomberg in 2014. “So let’s take out an insurance policy.”

Increased U.S. efforts to curb emissions through investing in new cleaner technologies and manufacturing could actually boost U.S. competitiveness, Liu countered. “That’s why I hope the Republican’s administration will continue to support this process.”

A fortnight of discussions in Marrakech were thrust into the spotlight last week by Trump’s victory. The negotiating texts being drafted by delegates and officials in north African country were suddenly overshadowed by a uncertain political future cast by Trump’s shadow over the two-decade-old process.

Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who helped secure the Paris Agreement last year, said the majority of U.S. citizens back action on climate change and tried to assuage concern.

“No one has a right to make decisions for billions of people based solely on ideology,” he said. “Climate change shouldn’t be a partisan issue. It isn’t a partisan issue for our military. It isn’t a partisan issue for our intelligence community.”

China’s President Xi Jinping underlined the importance of cooperation between the two largest economies when he spoke to Trump on Monday, said Liu, who added China will continue its fight against climate change “whatever the circumstances.”

He added that richer nations should take more responsibility than poor countries for financing the fight against climate change, in line with the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. “Of course we’re still expecting developed countries including the United States will continue to take the lead on mitigating climate change,” he said.

Bloomberg

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Donald Trump Could Be OPEC’s New Best Friend

November 14, 2016 Webmaster

Last week, I wrote that OPEC needs friends and a miracle to re-balance the oil market. Could President Trump be that unwitting buddy, providing the miracle by tearing up the nuclear agreement with Iran and removing almost a million barrels a day of supply at a stroke?

Trump’s number one priority is to dismantle the “disastrous” deal — although his to-do list might have changed since saying that back in March. As luck would have it, that daily million barrels is about the same size as the cut OPEC needs to make, as I calculated last week.

Can he do it? Yes, despite assertions to the contrary from Iran’s President Rouhani and a slew of analysts. Here’s how:

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the deal is snappily titled, wasn’t ratified by Congress, but brought into force by President Obama via executive order. Trump could rescind that. The fall-out would be messy, but it could be done (in theory).

There’s another way too, enshrined within the agreement itself. The dispute resolution mechanism allows any signatory to refer a perceived breach of the deal’s terms to the joint commission created to oversee the accord. If the complaining party isn’t satisfied with the outcome and believes the breach constitutes “significant non-compliance”, it can refer it to the U.N. Security Council. The Security Council would then vote — and here’s the killer blow — – not on whether to re-impose sanctions, but on whether to “continue the sanctions lifting.”

That might not sound like a big difference, but it’s critical. By framing the vote this way, the U.S. could, in theory, veto the resolution. All the U.N. sanctions on Iran would then be re-imposed. Simples.

That just leaves EU sanctions, which prohibited — among other things — the importing of Iranian oil into EU countries. We might expect some sort of European backlash against unwinding the deal, but it might not be very effective.

The tortuous process of re-establishing Iran’s oil trade with Europe shows that only too clearly. Although there were willing buyers and a very willing seller, the difficulty came in finding insurers who would underwrite the transactions, or shippers to carry the crude. All the big re-insurers had at least some U.S. involvement and they were extremely hesitant to pick up the business — even with the apparent backing of the Obama administration. They would drop the business like a scalding hot potato if the new president killed the deal. End of Iranian oil flows to Europe.

Elsewhere, important Asian buyers were threatened in the past with the loss of access to the U.S. banking system to persuade them to cut their purchases of Iranian. This tactic would probably work again.

Of course, Iran would treat the move as grounds to abandon its own commitments. Coming shortly before Iran’s presidential election in May, it would be a huge boost to Tehran’s hardliners. You’d expect life to become more difficult for the Americans in Iraq, where it’s engaged alongside Iranian-backed militias in ousting Islamic State from its last stronghold in the country — another Trump priority.

But at least the crude price would recover, which would be great for U.S. oil, if not so good for motorists. I guess the new president will have to choose who to please.

Bloomberg

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Hurricane Matthew A Cautionary Tale In Caribbean Battle With Climate Change

October 6, 2016 Webmaster

Caribbean waters have been disturbed by Hurricane Matthew, which has left a trail of death and destruction in its wake this past week.

While Jamaica was spared the full wrath of Hurricane Matthew, others in the Caribbean were not, making well the case for holding global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius in the face of a changing climate.

So says respected meteorologist and former climate change negotiator for Jamaica, Clifford Mahlung.

For him, the experience of Matthew – leaving in its wake a trail of bodies and extensive infrastructure damage in not only Haiti, which took a severe battering, but also the Dominican Republic and Cuba – is chock-full of takeaways.

“The lessons that we gather from Matthew are numerous. It certainly strengthens the argument that we keep our global temperatures as close as we can to 1.5 degrees, because anything above 1.5 will result in many such systems like the one we just experienced with this hurricane,” Mahlung told The Gleaner.

In the run up to and during the international climate change talks held in France last year, the Caribbean aggressively lobbied for and ultimately secured the inclusion of 1.5 degrees Celsius as a target referenced in the new climate deal.

Dubbed ‘The Paris Agreement’, it has as its goal to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, recognising that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change”.

The agreement will come into force next month following reports of endorsement from European nations yesterday, which sent the accord across a crucial threshold. “European nations raised backing for the 2015 Paris Agreement to countries representing 56.75 per cent of world greenhouse gas emissions, above the 55 per cent needed for implementation,” a Reuters news report said, quoting from a United Nations website.

With this year’s global climate change talks, to be held in Marrakesh, now only weeks away, Mahlung said Hurricane Matthew lends significance to the coming into force of the agreement. It also underscores, he said, the need for global financial and other support for climate change adaptation and loss and damage associated with extreme weather events in small-island developing states (SIDS).

HURRICANE CATEGORIES

“Hurricane Matthew was able to maintain category three or higher for several days. It shows that we can get a category five hurricane in a matter of hours,” Mahlung said.

“It shows the difficulties of even doing some of the predictions, as we saw how the projected tracks changed considerably over time; and this is not because the models are not good, but that the kind of conditions we now face with respect to tropical cyclone development have changed significantly from the good old days of, say, a Gilbert or Ivan,” he added.

According to the meteorologist, SIDS have to remain vigilant.

“You can appreciate that there were times when the people in Haiti and Dominican Republic would have thought that the system would not have come to Hispaniola. We saw where, in the final analysis, Jamaica was spared and the track was changed, resulting in grave devastation in Hispaniola and particularly Haiti,” Mahlung noted.

“So when we make the case with respect to adaptation in Marrakesh in a few weeks time, and also loss and damage, we will go into those negotiations with first-hand experiences of just what severe weather events such as a tropical cyclone, can do to small-island states,” he emphasised.

Former head of the Meteorological Service, Jeffrey Spooner, for his part, said there was no question of the need to continue the push for a climate-secure Caribbean.

“My real wish is that Marrakesh continues the work to ensure that we get to the point where we can really seal this deal to cap the increase in global temperatures at 1.5 degrees Celsius. Jamaica, CARICOM and SIDS need to continue to press for that,” he said.

pwr.gleaner@gmail.com

The Gleaner

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Woman In Charge – Climate Change Division Gets Female Head

September 9, 2016 Webmaster

From getting acquainted with how government does business to informing and reassuring partners and planning for the Marrakesh negotiations next month, it’s been a whirlwind of activities for the new captain at the helm of the Climate Change Division.

But no neophyte to work and management in the development arena, UnaMay Gordon, 58, has been handling things with aplomb.

The first order of business has been to get the lay of the land and to make some decisions as to direction.

“I took over the division in the middle of the year. It means, therefore, that an operational plan would already be in place. I am looking at it now to see what was done, what was achieved and spending time tying up loose ends. Most of that is completed now,” Gordon, who has been in the position for just a month, told The Gleaner.

She comes to the division following two years of work as an environmental consultant and having served in various capacities with organisations such as the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture and GraceKennedy Limited.

Partners have been written to on the change in leadership and the necessary steps taken to settle Jamaica’s representation and/or participation in various climate change processes and events.

ONGOING WORK

Meanwhile, work at the division – tasked to coordinate, facilitate and support climate change mainstreaming in Jamaica, from adaptation to mitigation, together with finance – goes on.

Cabinet recently gave the nod for a Climate Change Advisory Board to replace what was the Climate Change Advisory Committee headed by Dr Conrad Douglas. The division is now seeing to it that that is operationalised.

“We are (also) looking at what is going on with the climate change focal point and how we are going to use them to assist with the work of the division. There will be increased focus on the network to ensure we can deliver on the mandate,” revealed Gordon, who compiled Jamaica’ First National Communication on Climate Change to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and is the principal author for the island’s national biodiversity strategy.

There are currently some 27 designated focal points inside various ministries and agencies of government to advance the integration of climate change considerations into the planning for and operations of each entity.

Also on the agenda, Gordon said, is attention to the Climate Change Policy Framework.

“The policy framework is set within (Jamaica’s national development plan) Vision 2030. I would want to ensure that we are implementing the policy, which is the guide for the Government’s work and to ensure that there is a monitoring framework in place to track the progress,” said the woman, who founded the Institute for Sustainable Livelihood Leadership and Exchange that promotes entrepreneurship as a vehicle for sustained livelihood among youth and women in the Americas.

Ongoing stakeholder engagement is another crucial element of the work of the division now and in the future- as is growing the small staff.

Two years ago, the division got going with a secretary, a principal director (Albert Daley) and two senior technical officers – one with responsibility for adaptation (Dr Orville Gray) and the other for mitigation (Gerald Lindo).

In the last two months, both Daley and Lindo have left.

With Gordon in as Daley’s replacement, she said efforts are under way to have a new mitigation officer join the team. Recruitment of a public relations officer and consultant behaviour change specialist is also underway.

There are, too, efforts to take advantage of available support for climate change financing personnel.

“The plan is to make modifications and to ensure that we manage, especially with our international partners, the gap that was left by the transition and to ensure that the representation to the international community is maintained seamlessly,” said Gordon, the holder of a masters in environmental sciences from Wageningen Agriculture University in Holland and recipient of the honorary degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in Humanities from the United Graduate College and Seminary International.

“Jamaica has been a leader. We have led a number of the international processes, so just to ensure there is no gap, that is very important for me,” she added.

Gleaner

Climate Climate Change Environment Government News

Keep Commitment To Transition To Low-Carbon Economy, Urges UN Climate Change Office

August 26, 2016 Webmaster

The United Nations (UN) climate change secretariat has added its voice to concerns being raised about a proposal made by China’s Jiuquan Iron and Steel Company (JISCO) for the construction of a coal-fired plant in St Elizabeth.

The proposal was announced after JISCO completed a deal to acquire the Alpart alumina factory from Russian company, UC Rusal. The new Chinese owners plan to upgrade the plant with an aluminum smelter that would be powered by a 1,000-megawatt coal-fired plant.

Based on calculations provided by the CoalSwarm Global Plant Tracker, a 1,000 megawatt coal plant would produce 5.6-5.8 million tonnes of CO2 annually, increasing Jamaica’s emissions of CO2 by 79-82 per cent. Greenpeace campaigner Lauri Myllyvirta has said that the construction of the plant would violate the Paris Agreement signed under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Commenting on the possible impact of the proposed coal plant on Jamaica’s UNFCCC standing, Nick Nuttall, UNFCCC spokesperson, pointed out that Jamaica had submitted an ambitious national climate action plan to the UN aimed at achieving a nearly eight per cent emission reduction by 2030. He also argued that the action plan promised commitments of greater investment in greener sources of homegrown energy such as wind and solar power rather than increases in oft-imported fossil fuels.

He argued that economic growth and job creation were not antithetical to environmental protection.

“Many complex choices will be made by governments over the years and decades to come, including with regard to energy sources, but today, there is an ever clearer consensus that overcoming poverty and growing GDP, which are critical for developing countries, can go hand in hand with generating new kinds of high-tech jobs; creating healthier, less polluted societies and a transition to a low carbon economy …,” he said in an email response to The Gleaner.

Prime Minister Andrew Holness has said that the Government is committed to balancing its economic-growth aspirations with its environmental and international commitments.

Comments solicited from Jamaica’s mission to the UN and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs were not forthcoming up to press time.

Gleaner

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France and India are launching a global alliance aimed at bringing solar energy to everybody

December 1, 2015 Webmaster

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (L) and French President Francois Hollande (R) shake hands during a news conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris, April 10, 2015. REUTERS/Charles Platiau

Thomson ReutersIndian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Francois Hollande attend a news conference at the Elysee Palace in Paris

PARIS (Reuters) – French President Francois Hollande and India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on Monday launch an international solar alliance aimed at eventually bringing clean and affordable solar energy within the reach of all.

The launch will coincide with a summit of world leaders at the start of two weeks of talks on the outskirts of Paris to seek a new global deal on curbing climate change, by shifting from fossil fuels towards renewable energy.

An Indian government statement on Sunday said there were well over 100 solar-rich countries in the tropics that could be members of the International Solar Alliance to develop clean and affordable solar energy.

“Solar energy is a practical and efficient way to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions,” it said.

Aware of the shadow cast by the failure of the 2009 Copenhagen summit, the last attempt to reach a global climate deal, the United Nations is placing as much weight on the efforts of individual governments as on an overarching U.N. agreement.

More than 180 nations have submitted national action plans, but they are not enough to achieve a goal of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times — the cap scientists say is essential to prevent the most devastating consequences of global warming.

India’s national plan focuses on solar, saying it is expected to grow significantly. The aim is to reach capacity of 100 gigawatts by 2022, to be scaled up further in the future.

Firms such as Tata Power have invested heavily in solar as a reliable source capable of delivering power to some of India’s poorest people.

businessinsider.com

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