SVG to start importing sand for construction

This country will have to begin importing sand for construction, which will drive up the cost of construction, all because of climate change.

This is a fact we must accept, said the Prime Minister, adding that we must begin to protect our beaches in this time of climate change and unprecedented natural disasters.

Speaking at a press briefing at Cabinet Room on Monday, Dr Ralph Gonsalves said coming to terms with our environment involves cost, but if we don’t, we are going to suffer more and more when natural disasters strike.

Gonsalves, recently back from the 29th Intersessional Meeting of the Heads of Government of CARICOM in Haiti, said that during that meeting, issues highlighted included disaster management and recovery.

He said at the meeting submissions were made by the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) in relation to its comprehensive disaster management strategy.

Gonsalves noted that the discussion was linked to the matter of climate change and there was a presentation on what is being done regionally and internationally in advocacy and trying to tap into funds. He said we must always remember that with climate change, what is happening in the region is unfamiliar.

“We have had familiar patterns of good and bad weather, but the bad weather we have been having … repeatedly is unfamiliar, so it is very difficult to make the requisite preparations for that which is unfamiliar.”

He noted that in 2017, not only was the weather unfamiliar, but it was unprecedented in its severity, “and the unfamiliarity and the unprecedentedness, those two conditions make the circumstance for us urgent.”