St. Kitts and Nevis was this weeks offered an opportunity to expound on its efforts to galvanise the Caribbean region, with UNESCO’s assistance, towards a common vision on linking a region-wide water and climate change policy.
A Caribbean regional video conference was hosted by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP) at the Montevideo office (Uruguay) to present its World Water Resources Report 2020 (WWDR2020).
St. Kitts & Nevis’ Ambassador to UNESCO, Dr. David P. Doyle, underlined the vulnerability factor triggered by limited freshwater resources – both ground and surface water – due to rising sea levels, climate variability and change.
“For many small islands across the globe, encirclement by marine water, saltwater intrusion into groundwater resources has become a problem of some magnitude. Recent COVID-19 pandemic has added urgency to the issue, from a sanitation perspective,” he said.
Referring to the results of a High-Level Symposium on Achieving Water Security in Caribbean SIDS, held in St. Kitts last October, Ambassador Doyle noted the commonality of issues discussed at this event that were underlined in the UNESCO Water & Climate Change Report 2020.
This related, in particular, to the adverse effects of climate change on water resources, including groundwater, and water-related disasters such as flooding and drought.
“Exacerbating this trend are the extended and more frequent periods of drought”, he said, which the WWDR2020 report forecasts will impact the region harder in the years ahead.
Participants heard, in particular, from UNESCO’s two key water experts: Massimiliano Lombardo, Programme Specialist in Natural Sciences, based at the UNESCO Cluster Office for the Caribbean in Jamaica, and Miguel Doria, UNESCO’s Regional Hydrologist for Latin America and the Caribbean, based at the UNESCO Regional Office for Sciences in Latin America and the Caribbean, in Montevideo.
They summarized some the WWDR2020 findings in relation to the Caribbean region. They presented perspectives for the Caribbean region arising from the WWDR2020.
Three aspects were highlighted:
• According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), drought risk is projected to increase, especially if temperatures rise more than 1.5°C, which explains that up to 50% of the year is projected to be very warm in the Caribbean region at 1.5°C, with a further increase by up to 70 days at 2°C versus 1.5°C. The Caribbean islands also face threats from sea level rise, including salinization, flooding and pressure on ecosystems.
• Grenada was cited as an example of best practices in terms of reflecting water-related needs into national climate plans and strategies. Grenada’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) Programme of Action 3 (out of 12) aims to establish a ‘climate-responsive water governance structure’, recognizing the need for institutional development across planning, policy and information systems, alongside infrastructure.
• Generally, national development plans in the Caribbean tend to recognize water-related impacts of climate change and, in some cases, the importance of water management to economic development. However, UNESCO notes that they do not explicitly treat water management and climate change as interlinked sectors requiring integrated responses. Moreover, despite the cross-sectoral treatment of water issues in the climate change strategies of the countries, their progress in implementing Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) suggests there will be challenges in integrating water and climate action in practice.
In contributing to the wider water strategy debate, Ambassador Doyle noted that for the past two years, the Government of St. Kitts & Nevis has lobbied in Paris for urgent attention to be deployed by UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Hydrological Programme (IHP), to address these water challenges.
Doyle advised that: “In doing so, we will be able to identify priorities for action at the highest political level, building on scientifically-proven solutions and providing leading-edge guidance to governments across the Caribbean on, among other areas, governance, data collection, water use efficiency and harvesting, and storage.”
The Water Symposium in St. Kitts and Nevis last October was seen as a first step towards encouraging Caribbean states to forge a partnership with the IHP, as the only intergovernmental programme of the UN system devoted to water research, water resources management, and education and capacity-building.
Among the scientific-led solutions explored, briefly, at the Symposium were:
• Enhancing governance for sustainable groundwater resources.
• Adapting groundwater management to integrate regional/national water and agricultural policies.
• Reviewing land use to water sector.
• Improving sustainable groundwater abstraction through better groundwater monitoring.
• Incorporating Managed Aquifer Recharge to capture and store excess storm-water in wet periods.
Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis, Dr Timothy Harris, opened the Symposium.
He noted that it was a first step, with UNESCO’s assistance, to ultimately galvanise Caribbean water ministers to move towards making a political commitment on a range of approaches.
These would address issues of primary concern to achieving water security – from political and public awareness, to technology and capacity-building to undertaking institutional changes to instituting legal measures.
Going forward, the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis will be pursuing a dialogue with the UNESCO IHP team in Paris, and with its offices in Jamaica and Uruguay, to develop a Caribbean-wide policy framework on water security.
The Secretary-General of St. Kitts & Nevis National Commission for UNESCO, Dorothy Warner, who remotely attended the video conference, commented after the event: “The weak link between water management and climate change policies across the Caribbean is a point we must address urgently. As the UNESCO Water and Climate Change Report 2020 firmly stresses, these interlinked sectors require integrated responses.”
