REMARKS BY PREMIER AND MINISTER OF FINANCE, ENVIRONMENT, NATURAL RESOURCES AND CLIMATE CHANGE

HONOURABLE DR. NATALIO D. WHEATLEY

ON THE OCCASION OF THE

WELCOME AND COCKTAIL RECEPTION

ON THE ORGANISATION OF THE EASTERN CARIBBEAN STATES (OECS) 11^TH COUNCIL OF MINISTERS: ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

WEDNESDAY, JULY 24TH, 2024

Good evening!

What an excellent Virgin Islands’ evening to be here in the company of colleagues from around the Eastern Caribbean, local partners and development partners in the shared spirit of focused action for the environment and sustainability.

Let me recognise the protocol which has already been established but certainly allow me to greet my Ministerial colleagues, the Leader of the Opposition, senior civil servants and your spouses.

I also want to extend greetings to the heads of delegations present, and your teams and certainly, we are pleased to have you along with your technical teams, and I am also elated to be joined by various development partners.

Let me also extend a hearty welcome to Mr. Chamberlaine Emmanuel who spoke excellently, Head of the Environmental Sustainability Division from the OECS commission and his team.

I further extend my greetings Dr. Didacus Jules, Director General of the OECS, who unfortunately could not join us in person.

The OECS Commission has my deepest appreciation for your hard work in coordinating the 11^th Meeting of the Council of Ministers: Environmental Sustainability (COM:ES), in collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change, the Premier’s Office and our International Affairs Secretariat. Permanent Secretary Smith-Berkeley, even in his absence I will publicly recognise him in particular for the hard work him and his team in the Ministry have done successfully hosts this year’s COMES, especially Deputy Secretary Ms. Louaan Hodge, Assistant Secretaries Mrs. Tessa Smith-Claxton and Ms. Lynda Varlack and Environmental Officers Ms. Angela Burnett Penn and Ms. Pearline George.

 I also extend my appreciation to my teams at the Premier’s Office and International Affairs Secretariat for the excellent work that they have been doing as well.

This evening would not be possible without the genuine partnership of the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College which has made its campus and facilities not only available to host this evening’s Welcome Ceremony and Cocktail Reception but has contributed the Atrium in-kind for the 2^nd public viewing of the COMES’ Exhibit. Dr. Richard Georges, President of the College, and members of your Board, I recognise your presence and thank you for appreciating the value of partnering with us. Please give HLSCC a round of applause.

I am also pleased to have among our midst representatives of our vibrant environmental NGO community in The Virgin Islands who is doing such great work alongside the Ministry to protect and enhance our environment. I am especially pleased to recognise the presence of and welcome several members of our private sector who have made a Green Pledge as part of our environment month celebrations in June and will be awarded their Green Pledge Seal this evening.

What rich company!

It would be remiss of me to pass this opportunity by without sharing some thoughts on how to transition the positive energy and will of tonight into improved realities on the ground across our islands through focused action.

Colleagues, there is no shortage of serious environmental and sustainability issues that confront us. We know these issues well. We live them every day and they form the COMES agenda that we can currently engrossed in - issues like climate change, pollution and waste management. We could pass the entire evening speaking about the existential threat of climate change alone to our small islands.

Within the OECS region of 11 member states, we now have a collection of six member states (55%) that have been hit and devastated by unprecedented, record-breaking hurricanes since Irma and Maria in 2017, including The Virgin Islands, Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica and now, less than a month ago, at the very start of the hurricane season, St Vincent & the Grenadines and Grenada with Beryl.

I take this opportunity to publicly offer The Virgin Islands’ sympathy and empathy for St Vincent & the Grenadines and Grenada. We understand what you are going through and that these are yet the early days of recovery with a long, hard road ahead with more risk awaiting along that path. The Government and people of The Virgin Islands remember well with great appreciation the outpouring of assistance that we received from the OECS family in the aftermath of Hurricanes Irma and Maria and are now happy to extend a helping hand to our brethren in your hour of need.

I am pleased to announce, a pledge to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Grenada

$200,000 each to St Vincent & the Grenadines and Grenada to contribute to your relief efforts.

Colleagues, we know well and we must remind our publics that we cannot burry our heads in the sand and comfort ourselves with false notions that these unprecedented hurricanes are freak events.

We must accept the reality of the colossal danger that climate change poses and muster focused, coordinated action to adapt to increase our resilience. As I said in my opening remarks this morning, “Despite the challenges we face, I remain optimistic about our future and enthusiastic about our prospects, for in every challenge, opportunity also abounds.”

I think of opportunities like:

• employing data-backed smart land use planning, resilient building design and new financing models to build Category 5-ready islands;
• the potential for mangrove reforestation and coral restoration initiatives to help secure our vulnerable coastlines from stronger storm surge, while bolstering the foundations of our Blue Economy; and
• the obvious opportunities like renewable energy and the wider Green economy.

We often think about our smallness as the basis for our vulnerability to climate change, but tonight, I challenge us to think about our smallness as an opportunity for building resilience! Our smallness makes the notion of Category 5-ready hurricane countries, 100% renewable powered grids, zero waste and sustainable, balanced development not crazy, aloof ideas, but feasible aspirations attainable with focused action. 

In thinking about the combination of actors that would be gathered here tonight and how we bring these exciting opportunities to life, three elements came to mind:  public awareness and education, 2 local partnerships and regional and international collaboration. I will take a simple example to quickly illustrate how these together can transform our capacity to adapt and truly turn our challenges into success stories.

At a side event of the recent SIDS4 Conference which many of your attended in Antigua, I noted the launch of our Solar Technology Energy Programme (STEP) to be administered by the BVI Electricity Corporation. STEP is a simple yet powerful model to make solar photovoltaic (PV) systems affordable to the average home and business owner. The BVI Electricity Corporation has designed grid-tied solar PV systems of different scales which can be acquired by their customers on contract and paid back over time through the equivalent of their electricity bills.

The BVIEC will bulk procure and supply the solar PV systems which would be installed and maintained by private sector companies. The number of houses and businesses reached can be scaled up with support from our development partners to purchase more solar PV systems and a regionalised approach to procurement to drive down costs.

So you see, the immediate launch and success of the STEP model and its scaling up directly rely on the three elements we discussed – on the awareness of customers of the advantages of solar PV systems and the training of local solar PV technicians through a continuation of the certification programme started right here at the H. Lavity Stoutt Community College, local partnerships between the BVIEC, Government and the private sector, and  regional and international collaboration.

The Green Pledge Programme, which you will hear more about this evening, and the We Recycle Programme, a partnership between Green VI and Government, are other great examples of what is possible when the private sector and the NGO-community band together with Government to achieve real change.

Colleagues, I invite you to enjoy the Exhibit and the Cocktail Reception and take the opportunity to fully engage with the rich and diverse company this evening to further discussions about how we can deepen public education and awareness, strengthen local partnerships and accelerate regional and international collaboration.

Let me close by saying how truly humbled I am to take up the Chairmanship of the OECS Council of Ministers of Environmental Sustainability and look forward to progressing the agenda during my tenure as Chair.