Barbados Leading The Way

United Nations Assistant-Secretary-General and Executive Co-ordinator of the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development Elizabeth Thompson believes that Barbados and the rest of the Caribbean have a tremendous amount to offer the negotiations.

Talking ahead of tomorrow’s commencement of the historic environmental meet, the former Minister of Environment said that the rest of the globe was now trying to catch up to Barbados’ National Green Economy Policy, which had been developed in 2007 and pointed out that this spoke volumes for its contribution to the conference.

“I think that there is a certain amount of leadership having done it and having developed in Barbados, a multi-stakeholder process – how we need to implement a green economy – I think there's a lot that we can offer there,” she stressed.

In addition, Thompson pointed to the island’s long-standing solar water heating industry, created in the 1970s.

According to her, “That is now an extremely long time – using indigenous technology that is certified as meeting the international standards of the Florida Solar Water heating Institute. Now, clearly, the world is now talking about these technologies, about how you implement them, about how you get stakeholder buy in, and these are things that we have already achieved.”

In addition, she noted, “Barbados has been able to move from developing to developed country status and therefore, I think we are well-positioned to advise and guide other developing countries of the things that we did right along the way and some of the things that we did wrong. Because learning from the mistakes is also really critical. The Caribbean, as a whole, I think, has similar examples of success stories which we can share.”

Thompson therefore remarked that small island developing states have shown an understanding of what the issues are.

 

Article by JMB of Barbados Advocate

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Date Posted

June 21 2012