Lovelette Brooks, News Editor

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados:

THE CARIBBEAN Community Climate Change Centre (CCCC), the regional body with oversight authority for climate change, headquartered in Guyana, is issuing a stern warning to governments across the region to move swiftly to put measures in place to deal with the increasing risks posed by global warming.

Examining the impact and implications of climate change for the Caribbean and coastal states at a workshop being held in Barbados, hosted jointly by the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Caribbean Broadcasting Union, Dr Ulric Trotz, science adviser to the CCCC, said the impact of climate change and its 'knock-on effects' are being felt here and now.

False perceptions

"We (the Caribbean) are plotting our own destruction on false perceptions. The natural variability of climatic change is being compressed into shorter periods of time as a result of global warming, and we have begun to see those changes," Trotz told senior journalists.

Already, he said, the region is experiencing warmer days and the most recent projections for the Caribbean shows an increasing warming trend, with temperatures set to increase between one and five degrees Celcius by 2080. There is greater warming in the north-west Caribbean which covers Jamaica, Cuba, Hispaniola, and Belize, than in the eastern Caribbean.

Grave implications

What are the implications? "Very grave, if we do not start climate-proofing development," he warned.

"Apart from changes in temperature which will trigger the frequency of weather extremes such as droughts, hurricanes, sea level rise resulting in coastal inundation and storm surge exaggeration will occur. Think of what this will do to our tourism industry. There are also serious threats to our coral reefs, mangroves, forests and our agricultural resources. The entire socio-economic base of the region will be seriously undermined," Trotz said.

Against this background, the CCCC adviser is calling on regional governments to place climate change within an environmental policy context and advance adaptation steps to deal with global warming.