Wednesday, October 14, 2009

UN lends a hand to community efforts to adapt to climate change

Xinhua: With small communities the least equipped to cope with climate change, a United Nations-backed pilot project is helping to boost their resistance to coastal erosion, sea-level rise, increasingly erratic rainfall, and other effects of global warming.

Ten countries are taking part in the Community-Based Adaptation (CBA) scheme, an initiative of the UN Development Program (UNDP) which is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), a global partnership among 178 countries, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the private sector to address global environmental issues.

… One of the CBA initiatives in Jamaica, a pilot country, seeks to help farmers in the Caribbean nation's Blue Mountains, where high-value cool-climate crops such as coffee are grown and which also serves as a watershed to the country's capital, Kingston.

Climate change is projected to increase the frequency and intensity of hurricanes and strong storms, while causing rainfall levels to decline, resulting in erosion and landslides in the region. This, coupled with unsustainable land management practices including slash and burn, which involves cutting and burning forests to create agricultural fields, is expected to make the area increasingly unsuited for farming crops requiring cool and moist climates….

The flag of Jamaica

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