On June 8, we celebrate World Oceans Day. Here are seven economic and environmental reasons you too should celebrate and think about conserving the oceans and coral reefs in our region:
More than three-quarters of the surface of the earth are covered by oceans.
Despite the estimated 1.5 billion tons of carbon released every year by tropical deforestation. Or that the current CO2 concentration in the atmosphere has reached the highest level in at least 650,000 years. It is world environment day and I’m smiling.Despite the fact that world deforestation contributes directly to about 20% of our current greenhouse gas emissions and CO2 has been proven to have a direct effect in climate change.
The provision of energy efficient cook stoves and renewable energy development will improve living standards in low-income rural communities in Honduras in a program financed by the Scaling-Up Renewable Energy Program. The program will primarily benefit indigenous and Afro-Honduran communities not connected to the national power grid. Activities will help to change the focus of Honduras’ current rural electrification paradigm from primarily expanding the grid (sometimes uneconomical) to including alternatives for isolated communities.
The investment plan for Haiti’s Strategic Program for Climate Resilience (SPCR) presents a strategy for climate change adaption and identifies four initiatives that will be administered collaboratively by the IDB and the World Bank. The country’s SPCR was endorsed by the PPRC Sub-Committee during its last meeting in Washington, DC, in May 2013.
An IDB program to provide loans and grant financing to Jamaican private sector groups and community-based organizations for initiatives to reduce their risk to natural disasters and adapt to the impacts of climate change will be carried out with financing from the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR).
Low-income farmers in Jamaica will implement a comprehensive set of water storage and conservation measures to conserve water and soil resources and increase resilience to climate change in an IDB project financed by the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR). The project will be carried out in vulnerable sections of the Jamaica’s Rio Minho and Rio Bueno River Basins, which are among the island’s most severely degraded watersheds. The water conservation measures will be part of an initiative to mainstream climate change adaptation into national and local development planning.
Jamaica will design a broad-based strategy for reducing the economic and social effects of severe weather events and other climate change impacts in an IDB knowledge and capacity building initiative financed by the Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR). Jamaica’s size and geographic location make it particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change.