Mona Lions doing more for the environment through public education
PROTECTION OF the natural environment and the challenges posed by climate change are sources of anxiety around the world, and no less so in Jamaica.
With this in mind, the Lions Club of Mona is doing its bit to help the cause, with its recent hosting of a climate change forum at the University of the West Indies (UWI) to help boost public awareness of what is at stake.
Titled ‘Climate Change – the implications for Jamaica and our Response’, the forum was hosted on November 26, in association with Mona Social Services, the UWI and the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica.
“Lions Club of Mona is committed to doing our part to halting the negative impacts of climate change in Jamaica,” noted club president, Dr Olivene Burke.
Leslie Ephraim, district governor, District 60B, who was visiting Jamaica, commended the Lions Club of Mona for their “determination to be a part of the solution for environmental protection”.
The forum, meanwhile, represents the continuation of a journey begun in 2004 with the club’s reforestation project.
Past president Denise Forrest, under whose watch the reforestation project started, noted the work with the Forestry Department, funded through the Environmental Foundation of Jamaica and the Forest Conservation Fund, which saw the reforestation of degraded forests in the Wallenford area of the Blue Mountain Forest Reserve, the Yallahs Watershed and the Cinchona Premontaine Wet Forest Zone.
Thanking the club for their partnership with the Forestry Department, Conservator of Forests Marilyn Headley said “the contributions of the Lions Club of Mona are invaluable as we all strive to protect Jamaica’s natural environment.
“The club should be commended for this responsible approach to national development,” Headley added.
Professor Dale Webber, principal of the UWI, Mona, concurred.
“All Jamaicans have a stake in ensuring a healthy, natural environment. The evidence of climate change is all around us, but it’s not too late for us to arrest the decline,” he noted.
The forum, meanwhile, saw Professor Michael Taylor, physicist and dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at the UWI, doing the guest address.
Taylor presented on the findings from the special report on 1.5 degrees of global warming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change.
The report, which Taylor coauthored, detailed the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development and efforts to eradicate poverty.