(left to right) Professor Avelino Suarez, Professor John Agard, Ambassador Luis Fernando Andrade Falla, and Professor Anthony Chen

Port of Spain (September 29, 2008) - The Secretary General of the Association of Caribbean States (ACS), Ambassador Luis Fernando Andrade Falla met on Friday, 26 September with three members of the International Panel on Climate Change (all Nobel Laureates) and the Executive Director of the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI), Ms. Sarah McIntosh at the Normandie Hotel in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, to discuss possible ACS initiatives in the area of climate change as these relate to its impact on natural disasters.

The members of the panel present were Professor John Agard of Trinidad and Tobago, Professor Anthony Chen of Jamaica and Dr. Avelino Suarez of Cuba. Dr.Ulric Trotz of the Caribbean Community Centre on Climate Change was unavoidably absent.

The meeting was held in the context of a Conference on Climate Change and Biodiversity in the Caribbean (CCBC) and the meeting of the Steering Committee on a CCBC project being funded by the Mac Arthur Foundation and which is being coordinated by CANARI.

The Secretary General and the IPCC members agreed that it would be more than useful to convene a meeting of regional experts in an attempt to fashion a regional climate change agenda. This is to be viewed in the context of forecasts that natural phenomena such as tropical storms, cyclones and hurricanes are anticipated to increase in numbers as well as in intensity, thereby potentially causing greater damage, as already evidenced this year in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, the Bahamas and other countries to a lesser extent.

The ACS Secretary General proposed the participation of CANARI in this dialogue and undertook to maintain contact with the IPCC members.

.