When floods overwhelmed the Eastern Caribbean in December last year, St. Vincent’s new smart hospital, completed just a few months earlier, stood the test of “remaining functional during and immediately after a natural disaster.”
Buildings are among the largest consumers of earth’s natural resources. According to the Sustainable Buildings and Climate Initiative, they use about 40 percent of global energy and 25 percent of global water, while emitting about a third of greenhouse gas emissions.
Global institutions are still in the learning phase when it comes to successfully managing water and energy in an integrated manner as part of the quest for sustainable development.
An initiative to reduce the carbon footprint of Tobago’s tourism sector may be stymied by “bread-and-butter issues” and the failure of government authorities to vigorously pursue the initiative.
Trinidad and Tobago holds the dubious distinction of being among the top 10 emitters of carbon dioxide per capita in the world, much of it due to the petrochemical industry that is the main driver of its economy.
Since they first emerged as a result of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, carbon offset markets have been a key part of international emissions reductions agreements, allowing rich countries in the North to invest in “emissions-saving projects” in the South while they continue to emit CO2.
Industrial engineer Ancel Bhagwandeen thinks that growing your food indoors is a great way to protect crops from the stresses of climate change. So he developed a hydroponic system that “leverages the nanoclimates in houses so that the house effectively protects the produce the same way it protects us,” he says.
The rise in natural disasters in the Caribbean due to climate change has led to increased suffering for both men and women, much of it as a consequence of socially constructed roles based on gender, experts say.
In the southwest peninsula of Cedros, one of Trinidad’s driest areas, Jenson Alexander grows the cocoa used for many years by the British chocolate giant Cadbury.
Ramdeo Boondoo, a root crop farmer in Caroni, Trinidad, understands better than most the challenge of developing crops that are both climate resilient and marketable.
Even as weather extremes bedevil Caribbean farmers, Ramgopaul Roop has turned his three-acre fruit farm into a showcase for how to beat climate change.
A centuries-old system for ensuring water security is making a comeback in the Caribbean.
Dalchan Singh, a root crop farmer and board member of the Agricultural Society of Trinidad and Tobago, says the past year has seen drastic changes in the weather of this twin-island Caribbean nation.
The Caribbean is in danger of becoming “a region of serial defaulters” with respect to international debt obligations, according to one expert, and this may partly be due to its economies suffering frequent shocks from natural disasters.
When James Husbands, a 24-year-old Barbadian businessman, began weighing the possibility of manufacturing solar water heaters, there was already a prototype on the island that had been designed and installed by an Anglican priest living there in the early 1970s.