Stronger coastal buildings and structures must be the order of the future to withstand the ravages of climate change.
This is the warning from Dr Ulric Trotz, head of the Barbados-based Caribbean Planning for Adaptation to Climate Change (CPACC).
He told the WEEKEND NATION architects and coastal engineers must change the way in which they design such buildings. For example, he said, they usually take into account strong storms which occur periodically such as once every 50 or 100 years, but Trotz said this yardstick was no longer appropriate.
“What climate change is telling you in simple language is that the one-in-50-year and one-in-100-year event will be more frequent and you need to prepare for that,” he said.
In addition, they must also account for expected hazards from climate change such as a rise in sea levels which is already evident in the Caribbean; loss of drinking water wells as the sea water intrude into them – lack of water means a lack of development; bleaching of coral reefs as sea surface temperature increases, and stronger storms.
Trotz said the jury was still out on these hazards and would remain out until they could do a trends analysis of weather data sitting in meteorological offices across the Caribbean.
Until then, he said the wise thing would be for regional governments to adopt a “precautionary principle” approach.
“Let’s face it, even at this time the region is vulnerable to disasters as a result of climate extremes and variability and our position is that by making our countries more resilient to present-day climate variability and weather extremes we would have started on the road to making our countries and systems less vulnerable to less long-term climate change.”