Recently the Institute of International Relations at the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, announced the launch of a post graduate Master of Science programme in Climate Studies, starting in the forthcoming academic year. As envisaged, the course will be interdisciplinary with a focus on Energy, Food Security (two priority issues identified for action by CARICOM Heads), Climate Justice and Coastlines. The 35/36 credit courses will be taught over a period of two semesters and consists of six taught courses – four core courses and two elective courses and four research practicum and project based courses. The core climate change courses are (a) Climate Dynamics and Modelling (b) Climate Change Impacts: Mitigation and Adaptation. (c) Climate Change: Political and Economic Options (d) Communication Planning & Media Relations for Disaster Risk Reduction.
Twenty seven years ago in 1997, CARICOM countries embarked on a regional effort to address emerging issues related to changes to the global climate regime and commenced implementation of the regional Caribbean Planning for Adaptation to Climate Change (CPACC) project, which aimed to build capacity across the Caribbean to identify and address the challenges arising from this phenomenon. Through a succession of projects over the years, the regional effort has been maintained and included the establishment of a Regional Climate Change Centre based in Belize, with a mandate to coordinate regional efforts to address climate hazards.
One of the early acts under the regional effort initiated under the CIDA funded successor project to CPACC , the Adaptation to Climate Change in the Caribbean (ACCC) project, was the initiation of a Masters programme in Climate Change at the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES) in the Faculty of Science and Technology at the Cave Hill campus of UWI in Barbados. At the time the programme was conceived, climate change was regarded as an environmental threat, hence its placement in CERMES. The CERMES programme comprised a selection of core courses in the first semester and courses from one of three specialisation streams in the second semester – (a) Land Management and Environmental Resilience (b) Tropical Coastal and Marine Resource Management (c) Water Resources Management. Under the ACCC project a Climate Change option was added to the set of specialisation streams and consisted of the following: (a) Climate dynamics and modelling (b) Policy response to Climate Change (c) Climate change impacts: mitigation and adaptation (d) Disaster risk and resilience in Caribbean tourism. Among the core courses offered in the first semester were the following : (a) Introduction to environmental planning and management (b) Professional skills for environmental managers (c) Environmental impact assessment (d) Geoinformatics for environmental management (e) Resource economics (f) Measurement and analysis in natural resource management . Students were also required to undertake a research project as part of the course requirement. The full-time programme is delivered in fourteen months; this entails a ten month period for course delivery and a four month period for the research project. The Barbados programme has produced a wonderful group of climate change practitioners who over the years have been utilising their knowledge and skills to support Caribbean efforts nationally, regionally and internationally to address the challenges Caribbean countries face in pursuing a climate resilient and low carbon development pathway.
The St. Augustine effort at this time is welcome, given the fact that over the years climate change has evolved into the most serious developmental (and not merely environmental) challenge we face globally. To successfully cope with this challenge we need all hands on deck and hands that are conversant with the knowledge and attitudes needed to guide Caribbean action as we transition to a zero carbon world. The inclusion of energy and food security issues in the St Augustine programme offerings reflects the present need to move away from our dependence on fossil fuel to provide for our energy needs and to address the global threat that climate change poses to global and regional food security – two issues that CARICOM Heads have identified for priority action.
At the same time, I would like to posit that these two Masters programmes, though a step in the right
direction, are not enough to arm the Caribbean with the knowledge and capacity to successfully pursue a climate resilient and low Carbon development pathway. Evolving as it did into a serious global developmental challenge, which pervades every aspect of our lives and aspirations for sustainable development, it is incumbent on our entire educational system to introduce climate change considerations to ensure we reach the entire Caribbean population. Most importantly, as a start, it should be mandatory learning across the entire spectrum for all those who pass through the regional tertiary education system.
I can recall that when the University of Guyana opened its doors some six decades ago, all registered second year students in the Arts and Social Sciences had to complete two compulsory courses in Caribbean Studies and Social Biology. This requirement was based on the premise that exposure to these courses would infuse into our graduates attitudes that were required in our citizenry to address the challenges of a country just emerging from the throes of colonialism. The late Harold Drayton has written about this initiative in his autobiography, An Accidental Life (Chapter Six). Now that we are faced with the pervasive threat that climate change poses to our development aspirations and to our very existence globally, we need to arm our citizens with an understanding of the threat and what as individuals we need to know, so that collectively, we can undertake and support the actions necessary for our survival. As a start, all students in our tertiary education system across the campuses of the Caribbean should be required to take a compulsory climate change elective, designed for the purpose of nurturing an understanding and appreciation of the importance of and urgency for coordinated action across the region, to address our existential challenges arising from a changing global climate regime.
Additionally, for more specific capacity, climate change should be introduced into key disciplines (in fact, in all). Starting with Food Security, the curriculum in the Agriculture faculty should contain issues related to the impacts of climate on Caribbean agriculture and the several options available to mitigate those impacts (smart agriculture practices, shade houses, no/low till agriculture, hydroponics, varietal selection, drip irrigation, AI applications in agriculture etc.). Graduates from the program should be armed with the specific knowledge of how to respond to climate change threats to the sector and ready to lead and support the actions required when they assume posts in the sector after graduation. Similarly, climate change considerations should be infused into the engineering, health, business, Social Sciences and Arts curricula. Issues dealing with renewable energy, energy efficiency, energy audits, smart grids etc. should be part of the curriculum in engineering departments. Our architects and engineers need to know how to incorporate adjustments to their design criteria to accommodate the impacts of climate change . All medical students across the region need to be familiar with the serious impacts climate change has on the health and well-being of our population and to have the knowledge to provide direction and services to ameliorate those impacts on the communities they will serve. As my daughters and friends insist, in the Arts, students will find a wealth of knowledge and aesthetic engagements with the environment, the land and climate change across Caribbean literary and cultural production that can be put to good use in shifting how we think about what is important in this region of ours. Our poets and writers and artists and theatre practitioners are essential in this effort to shift hearts and minds – through their work, in fact, they are often at the unacknowledged forefront of these conversations.
As we transition to a net zero world, the private sector and corporate Caribbean also have an important role to play in our effort to “green” our economy, and the issues related to this should be part of the training of aspiring entrepreneurs. CARIMAC is responsible for the training of outstanding regional media personnel and here it is imperative that emerging media professionals become au fait with the entire landscape of the climate change problematique as it relates to the Caribbean, skilled at understanding issues, scrupulous in their investigations, and fearless in posing the necessary critical questions. This will prepare its graduates to join forces with other regional partners to support a dynamic and effective public education and outreach effort and help to foster attitudes and behaviour throughout the region that will lead to a groundswell of support for the implementation of actions that would help the region avert the destructive consequences of a changing Caribbean climate. Climate change issues are now very prominent in the legal field with several litigation issues premised on human rights and climate justice (some of these actions internationally have been brought by young people, who refuse to accept what they are being asked to inherit by the contemporary status quo) and even contested jurisdictions, and should be an issue that forms part of the curriculum in our Law faculties. This list is not exhaustive but indicative of the pervasive relevance of the urgent need for climate action across all frontiers and the need for our educational system to take the lead in ensuring climate change literacy that leads to effective climate action in the Caribbean is assured, through actions along the lines suggested.
I have focused the discussion here on our tertiary institutions but for the level of transformation we need to achieve, climate change issues should be brought into every level of our education system, from the nursery to the University.
