#cyen246

what is water to you? for me water is special #cyen246 #wateris

Climate change one of the most talked about topic. There has been so much information about climate change on the internet. However, the real question is how many people really understand how climate change impacts them. Information may be out there but do the youth understand? Even further than that do the residents of the Caribbean island themselves understand. How many persons actually understand how the rising sea level is going to affect them.  Our livelihoods for instance in Barbados which is a Small Island Developing State (SIDS) have many hotels along the coast, the hospitals is near the coast, the airport is along the coast as well as the residents. Have any of the residents thought about how the rising sea level is going to affect them.  When these are underwater where would they be relocated, where land size is an issue. Having one hospital is already a challenge so when the only hospital is unusable due to it being inundated by water, how will the residents be cared for? By the way the car park floods when there is intense rain fall. So many of the country’s revenue would have to be focused on finding and developing new sites for the new development. Does the country have the capacity to do such work? I mean how many of us really are concern about the climate change impacts to small islands. The real question here is how many of the more developed countries care. They are making the money they are rich while the developing islands are suffering. We have gone way beyond mitigation, adaptation has become the key. The beaches are eroding, the rainfall patterns have changed, the increase sea surface temperatures have caused major damage to the coral reef. Must I add that the stress on the water supply is very evident! Barbados is already one of the most water stressed countries (according to the World Resources Institute) and relies on the desalination plant to augment the water supply. The demand for water is split among tourism, residential, industrial and farming to add to this demand climate change has resulted in the reduced rainfall and prolonged dry season which is impacting on the ability to meet the demands. How many of us have really considered the water shortages that is occurring? Have we realized that we can be out of water? Let me guess you didn’t and why shouldn’t you think about it because either you don’t live on an island or it is not seen as an immediate effect. For some of the residents climate change impacts is only seen to be prevalent in the next 50 to 100 years. The impacts are real and it is occurring. However, the urgency of the problem is only seen as years away. I hope soon everyone in my country really knows and start to care about climate change.  By Waynelle Collymore-Taylor