Jamaica- Second National Communication

Water Resources

• Increasing and maintaining investment in hydrological monitoring and water use through a national database. This will result in improved data collection and storage on a national scale.
•  Funding research into adopting a water resources and water supply planning method under climate change. With appropriate methods in place, consistent regional and national planning can take place under a changing climate.
•  Developing appropriate modelling tools to assist strategic planning of water resources. There is an urgent need to develop a consistent set of appropriate modelling approaches and tools.
•  Investigate shifting focus from ground water to surface water storage for water supply. Reducing the reliance on vulnerable coastal aquifers, in terms of quality and quantity with the increased use of surface water reservoirs to maintain supplies.

Agriculture and food security

• Raise awareness of the potential impact of climate change on the agricultural sector. Climate change is not mentioned in the Agricultural Development Strategy 2005‐2008.
•  Develop modelling approaches and tools to allow assessment of impacts of climate change on export and domestic crops and meat production. Detailed crop/country/climate specific assessments are required to inform an adaptation programme and policy development.
• Develop regional links to fund and promote plant breeding programmes for common crops. Adaptation strategies include the development of crop varieties with increased temperature, drought and pest resistance.
• Review approaches to integrated pest management under climate change. Existing pest management strategies may require modification under climate change. Care must be taken that any changes to these strategies do not have negative impacts on the environment, for example, from increased pesticide use.

Public Health

Short‐term adaptation strategies for addressing vector‐borne diseases include:

•  Public education aimed at encouraging individuals to identify and eliminate current breeding sites and the symptoms of dengue;
•  Surveillance in outbreak communities for the purpose of environmental sanitisation; and
•  Adult mosquito control through the use of appropriate insecticide.

Priority should be given to:

•  Better water monitoring and management through improvements at the National Water Commission and Water Resources Authority;
• Improving the capabilities of ODPEM to warn of hazards;
•  Improving data gathering ability and technical support staff of the Meteorological Office for monitoring and warning of air‐boned type diseases;
•  More collaboration between research institutions involved in pollution control;
•  All available climate data from sources are to be used to validate regional models and calibrate statistical models;
• Support should be given to research institutions involved in environmental related health risks to run as many regional and statistical downscaling models as possible for calibration and intercomparison purposes

Costal Resources and Human Settlement

• The most important measure for adapting to sea‐level rise involves a thorough revision of the present published setback guidelines. Instead of being based on slope angles, these should be related to the local risk of inundation from present and future storm events (i.e., site specific).
• The vulnerability of communities such as Portmore to extreme weather events and the susceptibility of escape roads to flooding require a major effort to re‐engineer the Mandela Highway and other arterial roads at low elevation as all‐weather highways.
• There will be an increasing need for beach nourishment projects for carbonate beaches.
• Future research needs include an island‐wide estimation of vulnerability to storms and sea‐level rise (i.e., a modified CVI) to provide the technical background for decision making for coastal development proposals.

Tourism

• Raise stakeholder awareness of the workings of both tourism and environment;
• Stakeholder identification of detailed programme and projects;
• Set up a comprehensive performance framework with targets;
•  Provide more varied visitor attractions to a) put less pressure on existing natural resources and b) stimulate more visitors;
•  Reflect social and environmental costs in the price of tourism products;
•  Improve environmental lobbying;
•  Implement infrastructural changes to protect the environment, e.g., groynes and levees, reforestation, and coastal zone management;
•  Implement education and sensitisation programmes;
•  Intensify community tourism activities; and
•  Increase urban tourism.