Belize-based centre to play key role in regional initiative to reduce the lethal impacts of Climate Change

By BBN Staff: The Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) is set to play a leading role in a new Climate Change and Health Project launched this week by the European-Caribbean Forum (EU/CARIFORUM), according to the Jamaica Observer.

The five-year project, which has its virtual launch on Tuesday, is aimed at reducing mortality and morbidity from health consequences of climate change and promoting linkages to the environmental determinants of health. Under the project, the CCCCC, which is one of two regional institutions accredited to the Green Climate Fund, will lead the development of health and climate change concept notes for funding.

Funding for climate change-related projects remains a major concern for countries in the region and forms a part of many high-level climate change meetings, such as the  United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as the COP.

Other key organizations involved in the project include the Trinidad-based Caribbean Public Health Agency which will design, develop and pilot an integrated surveillance system within three CARIFORUM countries, which will focus on zoonotic, vector-borne disease, foodborne and waterborne disease, respiratory disease, and heat-related illness; and the Barbados-based Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology will under the project develop an early warning system for Sahara Dust in one CARIFORUM country.

Speaking at the launch, CARICOM Secretary-General Irwin LaRocque, acknowledged that the Caribbean is facing many challenges, but that climate change was the most urgent and deadliest of them all.

“It is no exaggeration to say that climate change threatens our very existence. We have experienced its devastating effects, mainly through the greater frequency and intensity of storms, unusually heavy rainfall, drought, and rising sea levels. There is, however, another less obvious consequence, the effect on health,” LaRocque said.

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