Global Community must help SIDS with climate change

While Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have received great financial help from the global community in addressing climate change, they cannot meet the demands to address it alone. The global community therefore has a responsibility to assist.

So says Michelle Maicoo, Professor of urban and regional planning in the department of geomatics, engineering and land management at the UWI, last week at the Institute of International Relations (IIR), St Augustine Campus.

Maicoo said SIDS received significant funding from the global community, which assisted them in making developments to deal with and combat climate change, and added that 41 per cent of financing available to SIDS to deal with climate change. But she added SIDS cannot shoulder the responsibility alone.

“The cost of global warming cannot be met by SIDS with small carbon footprints and they are expected now to take giant footsteps with climate change. The global community has a responsibility.” She said the global community can learn from SIDS’ experiences and strategies dealing with climate change.

“Town and country division uses several development guidelines and they double as climate change adaptation measures,” she said. “They include site and building coverage of land parcels. You cannot build on an entire site, you have to leave space for ground water infiltration.”

“In some Caribbean islands households have also used traditional building techniques which have proved very useful in adapting to climate change. For example building homes on stilts in flood prone areas like Chagrins in TT and Georgetown in Guyana have been effectively used to limit the loss of human life and damage.”

“We need to learn how to re-incorporate the building styles into our architecture and planning policy.” Speaking along with a panel of professors, Maicoo said these strategies needed to be revisited and re-purposed to continue to treat with climate change.