Above: Ocho Rios

By the Caribbean Journal staff

It costs Jamaica nearly $163 million for weather-related problems every year, according to new Environment Minister Robert Pickersgill, who said one of his main priorities would be to sensitise the country to the importance of climate change and its environmental impact.

“When calculated accumulatively, it is a whole lot of money,” he said. “If you do not do something to preserve the infrastructure, then you are just going around in circles.”

Pickersgill said a climate change unit was being set up in the offices of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, in order to make it “more manageable and accountable to the Ministry.”

After the People’s National Party’s win in the national election, new Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller’s government added Climate Change to the portfolio of the Environment Ministry, which now includes, Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change.

It had previously included the portfolios of Water, Housing and the Environment.