Environment

Commonwealth expert trying to unravel the escalating costs of climate change to the hurricane prone Caribbean.

Dr Mark Bynoe – Environmental economist

Caribbean countries are only too familiar with the ravages of climate change. Hurricanes yearly batter shores, floods wreak havoc and harvests wither as the pace of global warming seems to quicken with every passing season.

‘The potential threat is severe’, warns Dr Mark Bynoe, an environmental economist whose research at the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre is funded by the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation. ‘With a 1°C increase we could get a three to six feet (one to two metres) rise in sea levels. In a country like Guyana, where 90 per cent of the populace live on land that is as much as six feet below sea level, the impacts of a 2°C rise are unimaginable’.

Financial cost-benefit analysis
But there is hope. Just as the effects of climate change are varied, manifested in sunscorched crops or devastating tornadoes, so too the options for mitigating or adapting to change are wide-ranging – provided you have the technology and resources.

From his office in Belize, Dr Bynoe has been conducting a cost-benefit analysis into the ways in which governments can adapt to threats to tourism, agricultural and agro-forestry, energy, health and infrastructure sectors.

Working in collaboration with the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Dr Bynoe’s research is designed as a follow-up to the Stern Review – a groundbreaking 2006 report commissioned by the UK Government which concluded that without prompt action the economic impact of climate change could be as severe as that of the world wars and depression of the early 20th century.

In his analysis Dr Bynoe is drawing upon studies from Jamaica, Barbados and Guyana, among other countries, as well as organisations such as the World Bank, the University of the West Indies and the Institute of Marine Affairs in Trinidad and Tobago.

One such study, from Belize, looks at how the country’s renowned coral reef – vital to the nation’s fishing and tourist industries – might be rehabilitated. Threats to this reef, the second longest stretch of coral in the world, caused by pollution and overdevelopment, sedimentation, overfishing and rising sea temperatures place the country’s economy at risk.

‘Once the coral goes, it will affect the whole of Belize’, says Dr Bynoe. ‘Whole livelihoods will be put under strain if fishermen cannot provide for their families’.
A ‘business as usual’ approach?
‘Part of my remit’, he continues, ‘is to ascertain what is possible and what is not possible. What we have to recommend is whether to re-examine our building laws – do we need more resilient structures? Do utility lines need to be above or beneath ground?

‘If we have floods, how do we deal with them? Does it mean building more structures, more sluices, more pump stations, or does it just mean changing the way we conduct certain activities?’

Dr Bynoe insists that the region can no longer afford to follow a ‘business as usual’ approach. World Bank estimates suggest the damage to Caribbean Community countries caused by climate change will rise to US$11 billion annually by 2080 – a staggering 11 per cent of the region’s collective GDP.

‘Challenge of realisation’
Yet, despite the evidence, overcoming what Dr Bynoe terms the ‘challenge of realisation’ is proving no mean feat. Though climate change deniers are on the wane, scientists still face problems convincing government ministries of the urgency for action.

‘Why are we going down this route? Let’s be quite candid’, he says. ‘We hope to show the policy-makers the costs of inaction’.

If governments do not fully grasp the increasing costs of climate change, countries such as Guyana may no longer be able to defend themselves from the rising seas, he explains. Natural sea defences like jetties, dykes and mangroves will simply prove inadequate.

‘Unless they can find resources to rehabilitate new sea defence structures, they will have to beat a hasty retreat inland’, he says. ‘So they are stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea’.