Caribbean Hotel and Tourism Association (CHTA), a federation of 32 private sector-led organizations throughout the Caribbean basin, reiterates its previous position to join with the nations throughout the Caribbean in supporting the adoption of the Paris climate change agreement.

Climate change is the result of human activity. That activity is, for the most part, work or work-related. It is only logical then that the world of work has a key role to play in finding a solution to this pressing issue. The power of climate change to damage infrastructure, disrupt businesses and destroy jobs and livelihoods has been well-demonstrated. We are confronted with these challenges on an unprecedented scale and on a daily basis.

Both businesses and workers are being affected. This is particularly the case for the working poor, the self-employed, and those in informal, seasonal and casual work, who often lack adequate social protection and who have limited alternative income opportunities. They are also highly dependent on climate-sensitive resources, such as local water and food supplies.

But the world does not have to choose between job creation and preserving the environment. Environmental sustainability is a must, including from a labour market perspective.

Challenges and opportunities

True, on the way to a more sustainable economy many types of jobs that exist today – especially in highly-polluting or energy-intensive activities – will disappear. Others will be replaced or adapted. But new jobs will be created as well.

Greener economies can be engines of growth, both in advanced and developing economies. They can generate decent green jobs that contribute significantly to climate mitigation and adaptation, but also to poverty eradication and social inclusion.

This trend is already underway. The International Renewable Energy Agency says that in 2015 employment in renewable energy reached 8.1 million, a 5-per-cent increase over the previous year. Sectors like forestry, energy, recycling, transport and agriculture are likely to gain a lot from the transition to a green economy.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, a shift to more sustainable practices in agriculture – which includes a high proportion of the global workforce and where decent work deficits are widespread and severe – has the potential to create over 200 million more full-time jobs by 2050.

But the challenge is not just about creating more jobs. It’s the quality of those jobs that counts too. Sustainable development must be pursued in full regard to its social and economic dimensions, not only its environmental consequences. Otherwise the transition to a green economy will be anything but just.

How do we get there?

If our aim is a successful and just transition to a green economy, then we need predictable and appropriate regulation. Governments must work closely with employers’ and workers’ organizations to ensure this happens. In fact, this will be one of the main issues under discussion at the International Labour Conference, which begins on June 5th.

Skills development and social protection are two further ingredients for a just transition, as they have a proven record in facilitating socially-acceptable and beneficial change at work.

Finally, climate change does not respect borders or institutional silos. We need governments and the different organizations of the multilateral system working together coherently for common objectives. This is necessary not only to achieve a just transition, but most importantly to achieve all 17 inter-related goals of the UN 2030 Development Agenda.

The cost of inaction

Ignoring climate change will eventually damage economic growth. That was the stark warning issued by the UK’s Stern Review over a decade ago. Since then, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has found incontrovertible evidence that human-induced climate change is well underway, and warned of the consequences of failing to limit global temperature rise to at most 2° Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

This bleak outlook is confirmed by many other studies, including the ILO’s Global Linkages model, which predicts a drop in productivity levels of 2.4 per cent by 2030, and 7.2 per cent by 2050 under the business as usual scenario.

The positive news is that we know where we want to go and how to get there. The Paris Agreement (in which the international community agreed to keep the global temperature rise this century well below 2° Celsius over pre-industrial levels) and the 2030 Development Agenda have defined the intended destination, and a just transition towards environmentally-sustainable economies and societies have been accepted as a key reference point for the route to be taken.

But, knowing the destination and the road to follow is not enough. We need the political will to keep us going. A greener future will not be decent by default, but by design. So let’s not just mark World Environment Day. Let’s make it a reason to put our political will into action. The future of our jobs, and of our children, relies on it.

Guy Ryder

Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO)

(Curaçao Chronicle)

The climate change discussion is about changes in long-term averages of daily weather. To add to the confusion “global warming” and “climate change” are also used as interchangeable terms. Global warming describes the average global surface temperature increase from human emissions of greenhouse gases; only one measurable element is used, temperature.

The first use of the term “global warming” was in a 1975 – Science article by geochemist Wallace Broecker of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory: “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” Earlier studies of human impact on climate had called the phenomena “inadvertent climate modification.”

Many scientists accepted that human activities could cause climate change. Whether the change would be a cooling off, as was predicted in the 1990s, or a warming up (2003), was unclear. Industrial emissions of tiny airborne particles called “aerosols” might cause cooling, while greenhouse gas emissions would cause warming. Nobody knew which effect would dominate.

So the term “inadvertent climate modification” was used. It was an accurate reflection of the state of knowledge. The first decisive National Academy of Science study of carbon dioxide’s impact on climate called the Charney Report, published in 1979, abandoned the term “inadvertent climate modification.”

“If carbon dioxide continues to increase,” Charney concluded, “no reason to doubt that climate changes will result and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible.” In place of “inadvertent climate modification,” Charney adopted Broecker’s usage of “global warming,” when referring to surface temperature change while continuing for the many other changes the term, “climate change.”

Scientists have done a tremendous disservice to themselves and the world with this whirlwind of confusing terminology, giving birth to a growing constituency of so-called climate skeptics. The Paris Agreement of 2016, signed by 197 countries, is trying to limit global warming by curtailing CO2 exhaust.

In his most recent reply, US President Trump is talking about the changing weather as natural phenomena. His referral in the global warming debate is nonsense. The President of the United States and does not seem to understand the differences in terminology.

By Jacob Gelt Dekker

Dear Editor,

Are Government and Parliament waiting until the next election comes around or until the next ship jumper presents him or herself in Parliament to start working on electoral reform again?

Any electoral change involving the constitution requires the input and blessing from the Kingdom Government which includes the Governments of the Netherlands, Aruba and Curaçao. On the other hand, according to our constitution, amendments to election-related ordinances such as the Election Ordinance, the National Ordinance Registration and Finances of Political Parties only require “a majority of at least two thirds of the votes cast by the serving members” (art. 129 sub. 2).

In both cases the progression from reform-proposals to the final approval by Parliament, is a very long and tedious one and would require that Government and Parliament begin the process immediately if they want these reforms in place before the next election in 2020.

We have enough experience to know that initiative laws such as the tourism authority ordinance, the ban on import and the sale of plastic bags and the integrity chamber law can take years before a draft law reaches Parliament for final approval.

Let us take for example electoral reform pertaining to the curtailing of ship-jumping. On October 28, 2015, Parliament called an urgent meeting to oust the Gumbs Government, citing that “if the Gumbs cabinet was serious about addressing the matter of ‘ship-jumping,’ efforts to do so would have been evident, which is not the case.”

A motion of no-confidence was then signed by a majority of eight parliamentarians, among whom were Members of Parliament (MPs) Sarah Wescot-Williams, William Marlin, and Frans Richardson, who happen now to be the leaders of the current Red, White and Blue coalition Government. Hence, one would expect that the matter of ship-jumping would be high on the United Democratic Alliance (UDA) priority list.

Unfortunately, this is not the case. According to page 30 of the governing programme, the current UDA Government is only concerned about “finalising the process to enable students abroad to vote and about legislating voting day procedures.” This means that our current Government and the majority in Parliament are no longer interested in the matter of ship-jumping, an issue for which they even threw down the Government in 2015.

It appears that to appease the voters at that time, a Commission for Electoral Reform was established in December 2015 with the task to come up with recommendations and proposals on how to deal with the phenomenon of ship jumping. The Committee issued a public survey after which we, the people, never heard anything more about the survey or from the committee.

All matters concerning electoral reform were conveyed to the public by the Honourable Prime Minister, William Marlin. It seems as if the phenomenon ship-jumping has now become a non-issue; that is, until it raises its ugly head again and then our Government and Parliament will find themselves in a reactive mode once again.

Perhaps we can learn something from our neighbouring island Anguilla that seems to be much more serious, diligent and willing to deal with major electoral reforms. In September 2015 the Government of Anguilla established a combined Constitutional and Electoral Committee to research and come up with proposals for constitutional and electoral reform. On March 31, 2017, eighteen months later, the committee was able to present an extensive reform proposal to Government.

I acknowledge that ship-jumping is a universal, parliamentary phenomenon and has been and still is the subject of much research, public discussion and parliamentary debates. Officially, it is called “crossing the floor,” but I really like the Dutch terminology “seat robber.”

Being fed up with this phenomenon, the Dutch have attempted to ground seat robbers by amending the parliamentary rules of order. In December 2017, the second chamber of the Dutch Parliament approved that a seat robber can no longer be considered a fraction and as such will not be entitled to the financial benefits and perks that come with being a fraction. In addition, the seat robbers’ speaking time in Parliament has also been reduced.

Of course, there were parties in the second chamber that would have liked to impose more drastic measures, but these would have required amending the constitution which would have been a long and drawn out process. Parliamentarians, therefore settled for the amendment of the rules of order.

In order to begin to restrict future ship-jumpers, I am of the opinion that our Parliament could start by amending article 19 of the Rules of Order for the Parliament of St. Maarten. The amendment would restrict a ship-jumper from becoming a full-fledged fraction. This means that a ship-jumper would not be rewarded with a fraction office, equipment and fraction-support staff. He or she would also not be able to participate in the Assembly of Seniors. In other words, the ship-jumper can remain an independent Member of Parliament but will not be able to claim any of the rights pertaining to a fraction.

Are our parliamentarians willing and ready to review article 19 and subsequent articles of the Rules of Order and strip ship-jumpers from their right to become a fraction?

Wycliffe Smith

Leader of the St. Maarten Christian Party