Regional News

According to a communiqué from the two-day e-Parliament forum, the 19 legislators – from The Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, The Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago as well as Guyana – heard presentations on solar, wind, hydro and geothermal energy.

The Denmark-based e-Parliament is aimed at spreading productive policy ideas among democratic parliamentarians and helping to build broad coalitions to implement those ideas.
The conference at the Grand Coastal Inn was held under the theme `Climate Change and Energy Access’. The forum was supported by the European Commission and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

Legislators also agreed that the trade in energy should be promoted in clusters and in this regard they were interested in a geothermal project on the isle of Nevis.

 The legislators hoped that other groups of islands could develop a similar trade in energy”, the communiqué noted.

The communiqué also agreed that Caribbean countries should draw up action plans for renewable energy and work on anticipating the problems of rising sea-levels by identifying potential resettlement scenarios.

It was further agreed that regional countries should focus on small-scale energy-saving projects which could have a big impact without too much investment. Solar water heaters in hotels was cited as one example. It was also agreed that government buildings should be made an example by making them energy efficient.

The need for a unified policy on climate funding measures such as the Clean Development Mechanism and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation was also agreed. This united voice would help to ensure that smaller countries got their fair share of funding, the communiqué noted.