Following the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report detailing impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability associated with climate change , Deputy Director and Science Advisor at the 5Cs Dr Ulric Trotz discussed the findings with leading Jamaican journalist Dionne Jackson-Miller on the flagship discussion programme “Beyond the Headlines” on Monday March 31, 2014 at 6:20 pm. Below is the audio clip and transcript of the interview
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| Dr Ulric Trotz |
Mrs. Dionne Jackson Miller
And BBC’s Razia Iqbal and that was such an interesting point. Let me raise it with our guest. Let me start off with our guest Dr. Ulric Trotz who is Deputy Director and Science Advisor at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, lots of alliteration going on there. Dr. Trotz thank you again, appreciate you joining us sir.
Dr. Trotz
Thank you too.
Mrs. Dionne Jackson Miller
That is your policy-makers. Now have these reports, they’ve got wide publicity around the world, they’ve got extensive media coverage, the reports coming out from the Intergovernmental Panel. Based on what you are seeing, have they had the effect of changing what you have been seeing and hearing from our policy-makers here in the Caribbean?
Dr. Trotz
Well, that’s a battle that we are fighting. As you’ve heard in the last interview, climate change is more or less stated as something in the future. And when you look at the political life of our political directorate, it really doesn’t match with that long term sort of view. Five years, ten years with climate change, we are talk about 2050, end of the century. That’s the language we discuss climate change in. So, we have made some progress in the Caribbean. In Jamaica, for instance, your own country, you now have a Ministry with responsibility for climate change. In several countries in the Caribbean there is some political movement. The problem is how do we get the resources to do the things that we have to do if we are going to deal with climate impacts in the Caribbean.
Mrs. Dionne Jackson Miller
Because I note, follow up on that, I know for instance that important work in the field had been done here in the Caribbean as well as elsewhere in the world. But the idea is, are the results of that research being translated into tangible action then into real action, into change, in terms of planning decisions, in terms of mitigating decisions and so on? Are we still fighting that fight?
Dr. Trotz
No, I don’t think so. We, at the Centre, made some tremendous progress regionally. In terms of looking at what is being done, learning from those lessons and trying to transfer this to the Caribbean. In terms of policy, we have just developed what we think is a very effective tool which will enable our policy-makers, particularly people in the Ministries of Finance and Planning to integrate climate risks into their planning horizon, so that climate risks are basically accounted for and this would be reflected in the final action that they agree on for implementation. But as I said earlier, that’s just the first step. The next step is getting the resources to carry out the implementation and this is where we as developing countries have a big fight on our hands. You could remember Sandy in New York, the floods in Britain. These things are happening in developed countries but they have the resources basically to deal with it. Holland, for instance, they have a one-in-a-thousand year defence mechanism for sea-level rise and floods. We in the Caribbean can hardly afford the resources to deal with a one-in-a-five year event much less a one-in-a-thousand year event.
Mrs. Dionne Jackson Miller
Is it possible, you think, or perhaps, I should say, likely that that issue of getting funding especially from the international community may now get easier with this report that people are now calling the most serious? Yet, some of the points being made that we seeing climate change affecting food security, we seeing it affecting human security; that people in poor countries are going to be feeling the effects disproportionately, that no one is safe and that they will continue to see severe difficulties in this regard. The word “risk” used over and over and over in the report, do you think that the Caribbean countries may be able to use this and piggyback on this to say to the international agencies “we need more aid in this respect”?
Dr. Trotz
Well, we have been saying that for a long time. As a matter of fact, that has been one of the sorts of foundations of our interface with the developed world under the umbrella of the convention. That is, look, as a region, we didn’t really contribute significantly to this problem. The problem we have now is a result of your pattern in development. But being in the region that we are, exposed to weather and climate elements, being poor (poverty), we are very vulnerable to the impacts. So we feel that you have some responsibility to provide resources to help us to protect ourselves from the impacts. This has not happened. Right now we are hoping that the Global Climate Fund, the GCF, would be capitalized at the level that was promised in Cancun, which is hopefully at a level of 100 billion dollars a year by 2020, which will allow countries to have access to the sort of resources we need for adaptation and for mitigation. The other point is, you know the authors of the report made a very telling statement which I think we need to worry about. And that is that climate change; you know we’ve been talking about 2020, 2030, 2050, etc. But this statement was from the evidence we have right now. We’re not speaking about a hypothetical future. That climate change is here and we are seeing impacts for instance in the bleaching of our coral reefs, the melting of the permafrost up in the Arctic, and distressingly the decreasing yields for wheat and corn and maize, the two staples that contribute to the whole question of hunger alleviation and food security. So, we in the Caribbean, our attitude at this point in time, is look, we are basically seeing changes in our weather, in our climate, the events in St. Vincent, Dominica and St. Lucia on Christmas Eve, very unusual, and it wasn’t a hurricane. It was just unusual rainfall which caused tremendous damage. And these extreme events, as we call them, are becoming much more frequent and much more devastating. So it’s a very worrisome scenario for us.
Mrs. Dionne Jackson Miller
Alright, we’re gonna leave it there and I thank you so much. I really appreciate you joining us.
Dr. Trotz
Thanks. It was a pleasure.
Mrs. Dionne Jackson Miller
Dr. Trotz talking to us there, Deputy Director and Science Advisor at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre.
© 2014