Integrating Education on Climate Change in the UWI Open Campus: Promoting Sustainable Development in CARICOM

Abstract

The climate challenge and need for a responseeducation about environment, including climate change, allows participants to understand why we need to change and do things differently, and ultimately empowers people to promote and contribute to achievement of sustainable development. The seriousness of climate challenge cannot be overstated. The Fourth Report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) informs us of significance of climate challenge and of urgency of required actions from all levels of society to address deteriorating condition of our earth.1In response to research and reporting from IPCC and other groups in international scientific community, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) continues to lead in push for a unified approach to address global warming challenge facing us and threatening future generations. Significant work has gone into establishment of agreements and targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to initiate and sustain adaptation measures, and to engage all nations in process. At UNFCCC meeting in Copenhagen in 2009, while legally binding agreement hoped for by many did not materialise, there was a commitment by largest emitters - including United States of America, India and China - to make meaningful reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions. However, from viewpoint of most vulnerable nations at these meetings, represented as Association of Small Island States (AOSIS), which include nations of Caribbean, a greater sense of urgency is needed.Yet, in Caribbean region, there is still an understated response to climate challenge. The average individual and most corporations appear not to have grasped seriousness or urgency of climate challenge, especially our overexposure as a tropical island region to its negative impacts. The pioneering and relevant work of Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) located in Belize seems disconnected from daily routines of region's corporate and private citizens.The CCCCC has proposed a regional framework for climate resilience for region,2 identifying global climate change as the most serious threat to sustainable development facing Caribbean Common Market (CARICOM) and noting that in bleak picmre painted globally, CARICOM states indeed have considerable cause for concern as threats posed to region's development prospects are severe.3Another study on Caribbean region's vulnerability to global climate change reported that although Caribbean nations have contributed little to causes of global climate change, this region will pay a heavy price for global inaction in reducing emissions. Indeed, report was very pessimistic concerning future of this region if action is not taken to reverse trend toward a warming earth with its many negative and deleterious consequences:The two dozen island nations of Caribbean, and 40 million people who live there, are in front lines of vulnerability to climate change. Hotter temperatures, sea-level rise and increased hurricane intensity threaten lives, property and livelihoods throughout Caribbean. As ocean levels rise, smallest, low-lying islands may disappear under waves. As temperatures rise and storms become more severe, tourism - life-blood of many Caribbean economies - will shrink and with it both private incomes and public tax revenues that support education, social services, and infrastructure.4In light of these and other reports on potential dangers for our region, there needs to be a more consistent and focused effort to sensitise citizens of this region to climate challenge than obtains at present. Moreover, response of corporate Caribbean toward emissions reduction must be increased and reported widely. …