From left Gline Arley Clarke, high commissioner for Barbados to Canada; Dr David Farrar, president of McMaster University and CCI co-chair; and Professor Lincoln Edwards, president of Northern Caribbean University and CCI co-chair, in conversation at the Canada-Caribbean Institute Research Symposium, held between October 17 and 19.Contributed

Climate change not a hoax for C’bean – NCU president

· The Gleaner

NORTHERN CARIBBEAN University (NCU) President Professor Lincoln Edwards has emphasised that climate change is not a hoax for people living in the Caribbean, as their lives have been affected in adverse ways by effects such as rising sea levels and super hurricanes.

Speaking recently at a Canada-Caribbean Institute Research Symposium in Ontario, Edwards pointed to rising prices and scarcity of agricultural produce as a result of the impact of Hurricane Beryl, which passed through the Caribbean on its destructive path to the United States in July of this year.

“The banana crops have been devastated, so we will all need to await the equivalent of the gestational period of a human being before seeing the revival of the banana industry,” he said.

He noted that “rising temperatures and marked global warming, the melting of major ice caps, the bleaching of the coral reefs, more extensive and frequent storm and wildfires, and the emergence of new diseases, are a threat to all of us.”

Edwards, who is co-chair of the Canada-Caribbean Institute alongside Dr David Farrar, president of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, invited the audience, comprised of academics and policy makers from across Canada and the Caribbean, to join the worldwide effort to realise the United Nation’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. These include reducing poverty, alleviating hunger, helping people towards health and well-being, providing quality education, reducing inequalities, achieving gender equality, providing clean water, creating more jobs, being responsible in our consumption and climate actions, and taking care of life below water and on land.He shared that Northern Caribbean University, located in central Jamaica, sustained $280 million in damage, and that a nearby laboratory school, Victor Dixon High, is still without a roof, which is the state of several public schools during the current rainy season.

Headlines Delivered to Your Inbox

Sign up for The Gleaner’s morning and evening newsletters.

The symposium, hosted by the university in Ontario from October 17 to 19, was held under the theme ‘Climate Crisis, Resilience, and Alternative Energy Sources’.