"Climate change information sharing and sustainable development issues," that's what 35 participants from more than a dozen organizations across the Caribbean spent the last two days discussing. The two day session which began yesterday at the University of Belize Campus in Belmopan wrapped up today at the Biltmore Hotel in the city. Discussions were led by Climate Change Project Manager Dr. Ulric Trotz and interim Technical Coordinator Carlos Fuller. Today they both discussed the importance of information sharing among all these organizations.
Dr. Ulrric Trotz, Project Manager
"We haven't found much difficulty in getting institutions to sit with us and talk about collaboration because, as you know, given the recent events in the Caribbean and more recently in New Orleans, climate change is now at the top of many of our agendas. So we are taking advantage of this interest and working with our colleagues in the Caribbean. I don't think its our institutional culture not to speak to each other, I think we already know that most of today's problems have to be handled by people from several disciplines, the whole multi-disciplinary approach is what we need to support and they are committed to that."
Carlos Fuller, Interim Technical Coordinator
"The idea is to bring all the agencies in the Caribbean who are working on climate change issues. Bring them together to tell us what their program is because we have instances where CARDI, for example, the Caribbean Agriculture Research Institute, may be working on climate change in agriculture and the institute which deals with hydrological water and health may be working on something. We need to get these people to talk to each other so that they can understand where they are coming from in climate change. We have very limited resources, as you know, and so we don't want two or three agencies working on the same thing and we would have wasted time when we could have hit three birds with three stones instead of trying to hit three birds with one stone. We can share our ammunition and use it wisely."
The CARICOM Climate Change Center is based in Belmopan.
