C8THE GLEANER, THURSDAY, JANUARY 12, 2017 • www.jamaica-gleaner.com •gleanerjamaica •jamaicagleaner • FEATURE

CLiC: A chance at skills building in conservation
exciting part is we try to do thiswithout uprooting them fromthe islands. We keep them intheir own institutions,” he said.

Petre Williams-Raynor
Contributing Editor

T

WO YEARS ago, a groupof Caribbean and UnitedStates (US) colleagues –among them Dr Leo Douglas ofBirds Caribbean – got together
to work out a programme toenhance conservation leadershipin the region.
Inspired by the US-based
Emerging Wildlife Conservation
Leaders training programme,
the group – including Kelvin
Alie, Michelle Benham, Andrea
Easter-Pilcher, Heather Eves,
and Nadra Nathai-Gyan – cameup with CLiC, short forConservation Leadership in theCaribbean, for which they now
comprise the board of directors.
“Our interest was to create afellowship programme that wasaccessible and affordable forCaribbean youth to be trained inenvironmental management,”
Douglas told The Gleaner.
“We spoke about the need formore international training for
Caribbean people in conservation work and about how a lot ofthe problems in the Caribbean
were becoming more global andhow we needed to address them
– from the lion fish to climatechange. We needed to get ourpeople thinking globally about
what it means to collaborate (forexample) and pulled together theRELEVANT INFORMATION

Leo Douglas

CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS

2014-2016 CLiC fellows on the Campus of St George’s University participate in a ProjectManagement Planning and Fundraising module class.
ideas of what this would look
like and what we wanted toachieve,” he added.
Fast-forward two years, andthey have had their first groupof fellows (2014-2016) and arerecruiting a second cohort.
“We would love to get more
Caribbean NGOs struggling totrain their staff into the programme,” remarked Douglas.
He added that they are also
keen to have younger people vie
for a place in the fellowship,
which is funded primarily by
the US Fish and Wildlife
Service and is available free ofcost to participants.

St George’s University (SGU)
in Grenada, through which theprogramme is run and withwhom they are seeking to have it
accredited, is also a partner. TheInternational Fund for AnimalWelfare also contributes.
The 2014-2016 group comprised
18 participants from 12 countries,including a representative fromthe Jamaica Conservation andDevelopment Trust.
A look at the evaluation documents of that first group reveal
some satisfied participants.
Comments included:n “My overall experience waspositive as I enjoyed every
aspect of the course. I liked thevideo sharing and having to leadthe class on different topics. This
type of teaching is what actually
helps increase my understanding
as opposed to the one-dimensional chalk talk”; andn “Beyond my expectation. Itwas truly an eye opener towards
the challenges ahead of us whenit comes to protecting our natural
resources and biodiversity. I amstrongly feeling the urge to starta new endeavour towards involving more young professionals inconservation initiatives.”
Douglas is pleased.
“Our scholars write grants,get funding, develop social marketing campaigns. The most

“A lot of things they are doing
online are related to their organisation, and then they spend maybe
10 days at SGU to keep themgrounded in the region and keepthem contributing what they arelearning to on-the-ground issues
and to their organisations andstakeholders,” added Douglas.
Criteria for selection to thisnext cohort include:n Being a citizen of theWider Caribbean region;n Having worked in the natural
resources conservation field for atleast three years and planning towork at least 15 additional years(preferably in the Caribbeanregion);n Being able to commit todevoting at least 10-12 hours
per month to a CLiC conservation project; andn Being able to fully participate
in all online and in-person training
courses/workshops/modules.
Applications are to be submitted— complete with a résumé,supervisor approval form, andreference letter — to conservationcaribbean@gmail.com by
5:00 pm on January 31.
pwr.gleaner@gmail.com

Advocates advised tomaintain gender andclimate change body
THE EFFORT to mainstream gender in climate change considerations while cementing the place of
women in decision-making in thatarena has a supporter in Dr James
Fletcher, recent head of the CARICOM Task Force on SustainableDevelopment.
“Women are disproportionatelyaffected by climate change, particularly
in small-island developing states.
Anytime here in Saint Lucia, if there
is a drought, the people you see goingmiles to collect water are not the men,
it is the women because they are theones who, unfortunately, have thechildren on their hands and the household on their hands,” he noted.
“So women are always the ones
who are disproportionately affectedby natural disasters, and I think
there must be some sensitivity infunding to the fact that there is agender imbalance in the impacts ofclimate change and other naturaldisasters,” Fletcher added.
He was speaking with journalists
at the Marrakech Climate Talks in
November last year on the issue of alack of funding to support the gender work programme that emerged
from the Lima Climate Talks twoyears earlier.
Decisions in that work programme include:n To enhance the implementationof the decision to promote genderbalance and improve the participation of women in United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) negotiations
and in the representation of parties
in bodies established in line withthe Convention or the Kyoto
Protocol; andn that additional efforts be madeby parties to the convention toimprove the participation of womenin their delegations and in all ofthe bodies established under theconvention.
Among other things, it also invites
parties to advance gender balanceand promote gender sensitivity indeveloping and implementing climate policy and achieve genderresponsive climate policy in all relevant activities under the UNFCCC.
However, in Marrakech – as in
Lima – it emerged that financing toachieve the provisions of the work
programme is a challenge.

CONTRIBUTED PHOTO

James Fletcher
Fletcher’s advice to the women andgender constituency is to press aheadwith their efforts.
“The thing with some of these discussions is it takes a while for common sense to prevail. So things you
think people would get immediately,
they don’t, and you must have a lot ofback and forth. But I think that is thenature of the multilateral process.
People come with different agendas,
different perspectives,” he said.

PHOTOS BY AMITABH SHARMA

Shuya Takahashi, director of Revival Policy at the Revival Planning Division, Higashimatsushima City Office,explains the functions of the solar-powered community energy management system.

Tsunami shapes future of community

CONTINUING THE PROCESS“It really speaks to the need tocontinue having faith in theprocess, to continue pressing theline, and continue developing a
coalition and seeking out allies andseeing how you can get support,”
added Fletcher, who is also theformer sustainable development
minister for Saint Lucia.
He revealed that this is what had
happened in the small island developing states’ effort to have the worldtake up the issue of loss and damage
associated with climate change.
“When we started out with loss
and damage, loss and damage wasquintessentially a small-island stateissue, and then suddenly, otherpeople realised ok, there is a lot of
merit in this, and we started developing allies and having more people
come and support our cause,” hesaid.
“It is unfortunate that on a genderissue you need to go in that way
because you figure anybody should
realise that is an issue. But I think,probably, it is one of these areas
where we need to do more work
and where we need to do more sensitisation and make people understand the imperative of making surethat the funding is gender sensitive,” Fletcher noted.
pwr.gleaner@gmail.com

Amitabh Sharma
ContributorHigashimatsushima, JAPAN:
AN UNDERPASS cuts into a mountain in Higashimatsushima,
leading to a flurry of construction activities, but it’s not theusual dust-billowing, heavy-equipment-whirring-type scene.
It is more like Lego blocks going up geometrically – a sign ofa landscape being developed to house a community that is sustainable, environmentally friendly, and, hopefully, morehumane.
“The development of the Eco Town model was in consultation with all the stakeholders,” informed Shuya Takahashi,
director of Revival Policy at the Revival Planning Division,
Higashimatsushima City Office.
“We had extensive meetings with citizens – officials of thecity government, local chamber of commerce, major companies,” he added.
City officials also met with schoolchildren and took
note of their recommendations.
“Their inputs matter the most,” said Takahashi. “After all, we
are doing all of this for them and the generations to come.”
Development of the new Higashimatsushima urban space isborn out of the Japanese government Future City Initiative(FCI) of 2011, which seeks to create cities that are not only
eco-friendly, but people-friendly, too.

ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES
This translates to dealing with resource and energy constraints,
global warming, and addressing the needs of an ageing society.
The goal, according to the FCI mandate, is to solve problems faced both in Japan and around the world by establishing
more sustainable social and economic systems and restoring a
sense of social connectedness.
“Our aim,” Takahashi said, “is to ensure no one is isolated,
and there is a community that is looking out for each otherand (with) facilities like hospitals, supermarkets, (and)Kizuna Solar Park, the mega solar-powered facility
that has the capacity to generate 2.1 million kwh/year
electricity, which can power 600 households.
schools that are easy to reach.”
Post the 2011 tsunami in Japan, the urban landscape ofHigashimatsushima has changed, with low-lying areas converted to public parks or agriculture land and dwellings now
located in elevated areas. These communities have a mix ofindividual town houses and apartment blocks.
“This mix ensures that the bigger buildings, which are close toindividual housing complexes, can be converted as shelters in
the event of a natural disaster,” Takahashi said.
Renewable energy forms the backbone of these emergent
communities, with solar energy used extensively as communities house battery storage units that double as emergency power
supply units for hospitals and schools in the event of an outage.
“During our discussions, independent power sources wererecommended, which has led to the development of a model
renewable energy district,” Takahashi informed.
Kizuna Solar Park, near the Pacific Ocean sea-face, is one
such initiative, with solar panels stretching over a vast expanse
and having the capacity to power 600 households annually.
amitabh.sharma@hotmail.com