GOVERNMENT PLANS FOR AN ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY

Amid growing concern for the environment around the globe, the Government of Grenada has developed an ambitious environmental management plan for 2007.

With the environment and sustainable development becoming an increasingly complex and demanding portfolio, the Government of Grenada is responding by planning to advance a draft of environmental management and sustainable development legislation by year's end.

If passed, one of the key elements of the legislation will be the creation of an Environmental Management Authority.

Successfully passing this legislation will mark a critical turning point for Grenada on issues such as poverty, food security, environmental integrity, toxic waste, and climate change.

Though critics might suggest that this will increase the budgetary and administrative burden of a cash-strapped government, the benefits of pursuing this agenda should outweigh the costs.

In a recent National Capacity Assessment on environmental management in Grenada, one of the cross cutting capacity barriers identified was the lack of cohesion in policy, administration, and the chain of accountability when it comes to environmental management.

Under the present circumstances, this is partly because environmental management is being undertaken among a number of Ministries and government departments.

In addition to this timely goal, Minister David-Antoine outlined an ambitious agenda for her Ministry to the members of the Sustainable Development Council on February 16 th.
They include beautification; such as tree planting; as well as the removal of an estimated 600 derelict vehicles in Grenada.

Minister David-Antoine also presented plans to create an environmental information management framework which will house the plethora of documents, reports, data and information related to environmental management in one location. This 'environmental library' will include hard copy and digital information.

Public engagement is also on the agenda. The National Environment Policy and Management Strategy were developed through extensive community consultation, and this year's plans will continue along that vein, explained the Minister.

The Ministry plans to provide training to community groups to aide them in accessing funding available from the United Nations Development Programme and other international organizations.

Public education is also on the agenda, with a goal to raise the level of public awareness about the urgency of environmental issues as well as empowering individuals to take action in their own lives and communities.

A communications and awareness raising toolkit has already been created, and in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, primary and secondary schools will be the first beneficiaries of the awareness raising activities planned for 2007.

ENVIRONMENTALISTS WERE RIGHT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

Happily, the climate change debate is finally over: Global warming is happening, it will continue to happen, and human activity is the cause of it. Sadly, the environmentalists who have been warning the world about this for the last 40 years were right.

On February 2^nd, 2007, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or ‘IPCC’ for short (and yes, one could question whether these panels get long boring names so they are hard to quote and harder to remember) published a summary of their 4^th Climate Change Assessment since it began in 1988. With the advance of satellite technology and the use of ice core samples, this is the first report capable of proving once and for all that climate change is not a natural process.

In the past, sceptics argued that climate change could be part of a natural cycle. They also argued that because earth’s processes took place over centuries rather than decades, measurements over the last hundred years or so could hardly make a case for global warming. Fortunately recent years have provided the scientific community with new tools of measurement with satellite data and ice core samples, making their conclusions much more difficult to refute and ignore.

The ice core samples can be read much like tree rings to provide very reliable data for atmospheric conditions that date back as far as 650,000 years. Satellite data has provided far more detailed and reliable observational data on just about how everything interacts on earth such as temperature, wind, dust, ocean currents, precipitation rates and more. In fact, the combined science of balloon technology and satellite data has provided evidence that global warming is not just happening on the surface of the earth, it is happening in the upper layers of our atmosphere at the same rate.

This new IPCC report may be the beginning of a new era of acknowledging climate change as a priority. The history of the world ignoring the early warnings has been long and discouraging indeed. In 1987 the Bruntland Report, was published under the title, “Our Common Future”, which not only warned the world of the things that we are seeing today, but also provided a very comprehensive coping strategy to go with it, which was called “Agenda 21”. These reports were largely ignored by industry and international leaders. In 1992 the Rio Summit generated the Kyoto Accord, which still had not been ratified by the world’s largest greenhouse gas contributor, the United States. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development did not generate anything capable of combating the sustainable development needs earth has.

Perhaps with the abundance of conclusive evidence emerging, leaders and policy makers will take the aggressive action that will be required for survival before it is too late, and create something like a “Survival Commission”. Lest we forget why all this matters, it is not just about temperatures, sea level rise, droughts, floods or storms. It is the integrity and fine balance of gasses in the atmosphere that makes this planet capable of supporting life.

Jennifer Ellard-Deveney has worked as an environmentalist for over 20 years. She has a Specialized Honours Degree in Environmental Studies and Political Science from York University, and was a delegate in the United Nations Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002. She has been living in Grenada for nearly two years after coming here to assist with Hurricane Ivan recovery efforts and is a member of Grenada’s Sustainable Development Council. Jennifer currently writes a weekly column for the Grenada Advocate on sustainable development issues.

FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT: SECOND NUCLEAR AGE

(Part 2 of 2) The combined threats of climate change and nuclear proliferation forms the heart of concern for the keepers of the Doomsday Clock. Recognizing that climate change will threaten life support systems for humanity and the planet, which in turn will generate conflicts; the keepers of the clock turn their eyes to the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used in these conflicts to come.

During the Cold War, many scientific, military and political experts believed that the risk of nuclear annihilation was mitigated by the fact that the United States and the Soviet Union were deterred from using their cache of nuclear weapons in conflict because both sides had developed enough weapons to ensure “Mutual Assured Destruction’, or MAD. Because of this MAD situation, it was reasonable to hold some faith that both countries would exercise restraint in the use of nuclear weapons against each other. Today’s world is a far different landscape, with bombs that are much bigger and far more countries already possessing or within reach of possessing nuclear capacity.

In 1945 a relatively small nuclear bomb was used on Hiroshima, which killed 100,000 people and destroyed an entire city. There are 50 known bombs in existence today which are capable of killing 200 million people in one explosion, though this is not the only reason for last weeks change in the Doomsday clock. More troublesome concerns are on the global horizon at this time, claim the Board.

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, signed in 1970, has arguably failed. India, Pakistan and North Korea have tested nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War, Israel has nuclear weapons and chooses not to declare them, and it is believed that as many as 30 countries may now possess the capacity, and increasingly the motivation, to develop nuclear weapons. Approximately 24 new nuclear reactors are scheduled to be built around the world over the next five years, 30 are scheduled to be built in China between now and 2020, and countries all over the world are now expressing interest in developing their own nuclear power. This increases the risk of proliferation because the spent plutonium fuel from power reactors are weapons-usable after reprocessing, and as the Board argues, waste material could end up in the hands of ‘civilian’ interests, like terrorists, just as easily as it can aid nuclear weapons development by states.

Jennifer Ellard-Deveney has worked as an environmentalist for over 20 years. She has a Specialized Honours Degree in Environmental Studies and Political Science from York University, and was a delegate in the United Nations Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002. She has been living in Grenada for nearly two years after coming here to assist with Hurricane Ivan recovery efforts and is a member of Grenada’s Sustainable Development Council. Jennifer currently writes a weekly column for the Grenada Advocate on sustainable development issues.

FIVE MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT: CLIMATE CHANGE

(Part 1 of 2) Climate change was one of two factors that moved the Doomsday Clock closer to midnight last week. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists Doomsday Clock conveys how close humanity is to catastrophic destruction – the figurative midnight – and monitors the means humankind could use to obliterate itself. The ‘keepers of the clock’ are the Board of Directors and Board of Sponsors, of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists which include 18 Nobel Laureates, as well as some of the best minds of this age; such as Stephen Hawking. The clock was created in 1947 by scientists who were involved in the ‘Manhattan Project’ at the University of Chicago, which was responsible for creating the first nuclear weapons in the world. These weapons were detonated on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in 1945.

The Board of Directors issued a statement explaining why the Doomsday clock was moved forward by two minutes. The Board did not mince words. They repeated their strong message throughout the statement. “We have concluded that the dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons”, the statement read. “Global warming poses a dire threat to human civilization that is second only to nuclear weapons”, the latter being known to be capable of completely obliterating the planet and everything on it.

Climate change threatens our life support systems, “Coral reefs will disappear”. Ten years ago, any authority speaking on climate change would have used words such as, ‘might’ and ‘could’, before making predictions as large as the total loss of coral reefs, which are the foundation of the entire oceanic food chain and ecosystem balance. Losing the reefs is similar to the first domino falling in a chain reaction of events. At the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, scientists were already observing and warning the world about the likelihood of coral reefs dying out within 1-2 decades. Few paid attention. This kind of scepticism does not exist now: The evidence is mounting and the evidence is overwhelmingly clear.

Other examples cited to illustrate the grave threats climate change poses to humanity included the United State losing most of the cities on the east coast, such as New York, Boston, and nearly all of Florida. They also cited concerns that the projected number of environmental refugees in India and China alone will soar as high as 400 million, a number nearly twice the size of the population of the United States today. They cited increasing consensus within the scientific community about expected droughts, water shortages, extreme weather and other factors that threaten to upset the balance of life support systems for humans on this planet.

The Board also observed that changes in climate are happening faster than had been predicted. Pressures resulting from climate change (such as mass migrations and wars over resources like water and arable land) which will ultimately affect world stability increase the complexity and concern about the spread of nuclear weapons throughout the world.

It is the combined threats of climate change and nuclear proliferation that forms the heart of concern. Recognizing that climate change will threaten life support systems for humanity and the planet, which in turn will generate conflicts; the keepers of the clock turn their eyes to the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used in these conflicts to come.

Jennifer Ellard-Deveney has worked as an environmentalist for over 20 years. She has a Specialized Honours Degree in Environmental Studies and Political Science from York University, and was a delegate in the United Nations Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002. She has been living in Grenada for nearly two years after coming here to assist with Hurricane Ivan recovery efforts and is a member of Grenada’s Sustainable Development Council. Jennifer currently writes a weekly column for the Grenada Advocate on sustainable development issues.

El Nino To Bring Hottest Year Ever

GRENADA’S FISHERMEN are no strangers to the impacts of ocean currents and the thermocline. Lobster fishermen can describe how the temperature changes in the ocean as they dive to find lobsters hiding under rocks and corals in the ocean below. They can also tell you that during a hot summer, they may only pass through one thermocline as they dive, instead of two or three, which is normal in this region. The water can be warm at one depth and be five degrees cooler a few inches below that. Fishermen know how ocean currents can affect the movements of fish, and the kind of catch they bring in. Ocean currents around the world can run either above or below the thermocline in a phenomenon called thermal oscillation. Ocean currents, trade winds, and global temperatures are affected by thermal oscillation.

Usually, Pacific Ocean currents travel below the thermocline. When the currents flow above the thermocline, it generates an unusually warm area of water in the East Pacific that has been observed to be as high as five degrees warmer than usual during the peak of an El Nino year. Meteorologists at the United Kingdom’s meteorological office have observed an El Nino event forming in the Pacific and believe that this event could lead to 2007 being the warmest year ever recorded. 2006 was already recorded as nearly a half degree warmer than the 1961-1990 average, which made it the 6^th warmest year on record.

The accompanying image produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) shows the El Nino as of January 8^th, 2007, with areas already three degrees above normal, which can be seen as the red and orange areas on the map. The Spanish call this naturally occurring event ‘El Nino’ which translates into ‘Christ Child’ in English because it usually appears around the time the Christian world celebrates Christmas.

When El Nino events occur, the weather around the world becomes unusual. Meteorologists claim that the ‘warming’ effect that follows an El Nino event typically takes four months to be observed. El Nino events have even been observed to reverse the direction of trade winds, which have soaked Latin America with rain while the Asia Pacific region copes with severe droughts. In the last El Nino event in 1998, Latin America is estimated to have suffered over $8 Million (USD) in losses, though many economists believe the figure is much higher.

Unusual weather events in Grenada can also come with a price tag. Weather can affect things like shipping, fishing, tourism, agriculture and sports. Some of these sectors can thrive in drought conditions where the sunny weather that comes with drought is desirable, which might actually yield better profits. However, this is not always the case. Agriculture for example can brace for droughts, floods or both by planting crops that are known to be resilient to changes in soil moisture, as well as ensuring that some of the crops have a short growing period which can help to reduce losses. Other methods of protecting crops, such as terracing steep slopes that support crops can prevent erosion in heavy rainfalls and provide a buffer for climate variations.

The most vulnerable communities in an ‘El Nino’ year are the islands of Carriacou and Petit Martinique. These islands lack natural water sources, and are dependant on rainwater collection to supply water to people, livestock and crops. There is a desalinization facility in Carriacou, but this facility would not be sufficient to provide all the water needs for the island in the event of a prolonged drought.

Jennifer Ellard-Deveney has worked as an environmentalist for over 20 years. She has a Specialized Honours Degree in Environmental Studies and Political Science from York University, and was a delegate in the United Nations Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002. She has been living in Grenada for nearly two years after coming here to assist with Hurricane Ivan recovery efforts and is a member of Grenada’s Sustainable Development Council. Jennifer currently writes a weekly article for the Grenada Advocate on sustainable development issues.

Could Climate Change Be Good For Grenada?

IMAGINE a north pole without ice in the summer of 2040. This is the warning American scientists gave the world as they gathered for the Annual General Meeting for the Geophysics Union in San Diego California last week. Reuters reports that scientists have revealed evidence demonstrating a melting process that is speeding up, and that the melting of the arctic could happen quite suddenly over the next few decades, bringing catastrophic effects to the entire planet.

It is already happening. An article published by National Geographic in September this year reports that in the time between 2004 and 2005, the arctic lost a total of 14% of its perennial ice. And in the time between October 2005 and April 2006, the east arctic permafrost was reduced a further 70%. The melting is speeding up, and we are running out of time to adapt.

From a human perspective, conflicts are likely to emerge as countries compete and cope with the impacts of climate change, such as water shortages, financial losses, environmental refugees, disease, adapting to changed weather conditions and more. While most of the world will be facing catastrophe, Grenada is better positioned to survive than many other parts of the world.

This is because many elements that make Grenada vulnerable today could make the country stronger in the future. Grenada has a large “To-Do” list to get ready, but unlike its larger and industrialized neighbours, Grenada has very little that the country has to “Un-Do”, which is a tremendous logistical and cost saving asset. Because of Grenada’s small size and location, the country could to develop a combined wind and solar energy grid using existing technology that would ensure access to power regardless of what happens in the rest of the world. It could also provide limitless access to affordable power that could drive a profitable high-tech economy and increase the countries adaptability and resilience to changes to come.

With incentive based planning, Grenada can encourage the population to relocate business and residences on higher ground over time with far less National disruption and expense than would be caused by moving cities like New Orleans, Miami or Venice with millions of people in them.

Grenada’s small population also provides an opportunity to develop a National Food Security Policy that could ensure Grenada can always feed its own population no matter what happens. This would protect Grenada from shipping shortages, conflicts, quarantines or other challenges that could affect access to foreign food, aid and supplies.

Grenada can survive climate change only if the citizens insist that Climate Change becomes and remains a National Priority with all political parties. We will witness unprecedented change in our lifetimes, and if we all do our part – it could be for the better.

Jennifer Ellard-Deveney has worked as an environmentalist for over 20 years. She has a Specialized Honours Degree in Environmental Studies and Political Science from York University, and was a delegate in the United Nations Summit for Sustainable Development in 2002. She has been living in Grenada for nearly two years after coming here to assist with Hurricane Ivan recovery efforts and is a member of Grenada's Sustainable Development Council. Jennifer currently writes a weekly article for the Grenada Advocate on sustainable development issues.