Above: the launch ceremony in Kingston (JIS Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

Jamaica is slated to launch a $6 million climate change resilience project in the greater Kingston metropolitan area, the government announced this week.

The project is called “Building Climate Resilience of Urban Systems through Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) in LAC.” The latter refers to Latin America and the Caribbean, where Jamaica was one of three countries selected by the United Nations Environment Programme to launch such a project.

The objective of the project is to “increase the climate change resilience of vulnerable urban communities,” according to the government.

Jamaica will be launching the project alongside El Salvador and Mexico.

“[We] must begin to think and plan in concrete ways in order to integrate climate considerations in all relevant plans and projects, to deal with rising temperatures, rising seas, deadlier disasters, and changing economic circumstances,” said Jamaica Environment Minister Robert Pickersgill. “This presents new challenges and opportunities to city planners, environmental planners, the construction sector and to civil society. These are very practical matters – where to build, how to build, and the role that ecosystem services can play – in order to develop and prosper within the new climate reality.”