Basseterre, St. Kitts, July 1, 2021 (SKNIS): Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Sharon Rattan, said that the new Climate and Ocean Risk Vulnerability Index (CORVI) project to be implemented will help the Government of St. Kitts and Nevis in the future planning of Basseterre.
During her June 30 appearance on ‘Working for You’ she explained that in this project, “We are going to be investigating what data there are so that we can build a risk profile of Basseterre.”
The permanent secretary said that it is important that the Federation understands the risk that is associated with the capital city.
She said with the information collected by the CORVI project, “We hope to look at exactly what are the different risks and how we are going to use that information for the future planning of Basseterre.”
Ms. Rattan said that the project is not a project where there will be physical changes but she explains that the data would help the policy makers within the Federation make better decisions regarding any future planning of Basseterre.
Additionally, she said the project “brings together the key stakeholders in the country so that you don’t have public works just focusing on coastal erosion and fixing that problem and then there is another ministry focusing on the fisheries.”
“We are taking it in a wholesome way so that we can understand the synergies between the different risks and using it as a holistic assessment to leverage financing,” said Ms. Rattan.
“We access these funds by having the information about our country so that we know how to better invest and how to better make climate-resilient decisions,” she said.
“We are beginning with Basseterre and the capacity that we would build would help us to replicate these studies and perhaps the next one we could do is Charlestown, and even more communities in St. Kitts because we are one coastal community because we have many communities around the island who depend on fishing and we can look at the risks of those communities as we advance,” she added.
“We are going to begin with Basseterre and we hope to have that information so we could have better investments in terms of our response to this climate change phenomena,” she said.
