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

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