CARICOM Secretary General Irwin LaRocque says the region must adapt to climate change realities

​CARICOM Secretary General Ambassador Irwin LaRocque says the region must adapt to the realities of climate change. CARICOM is mobilizing resources to support reconstruction of hurricane ravaged Member States, with the intention of building back smarter and better, against the existential threat of climate change. LaRocque said that intention was in “full knowledge that we are into a new era,” when hurricanes have now become “game changers”
 
He was at the time speaking at the opening of Technical Consultations at the CARICOM-UNDP High Level Pledging Conference, on Tuesday morning (20th November) at the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The 2-day event is an effort to mobilize national governments, regional organizations, international development partners, private sector, and civil society, to support the construction of what can become the world’s first hurricane resilient countries.
 
LaRocque reminded stakeholders of the devastation by hurricanes Irma and Maria in the space of two weeks, and said “The Region must therefore adapt to this reality. Time is not on our side. The next hurricane season is seven months away”. He reminded the partners that at their 21st Meeting (COP21) in Paris, December 2015, the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, agreed to “hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2° C above pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5° C.”
 
He said that since the Paris Agreement, Caribbean scientists have carried out studies to explore the consequences of a 1.5 and 2.0-degree Centigrade warmer world, and “They found that given the current trend, the 1.5 target will occur within the next decade, much sooner than previously anticipated. With 1.5, the scientists are predicting generally harsher climatic conditions for our Region.”