Caribbean leaders work on keeping the ozone layer in tact
Environmental officers and other key stakeholders in the upkeep of the ozone layer from Caribbean states are in Belize to discuss alternatives for the use of Hydro Cloro Floro Carbons in the refrigeration industry. News Five spoke with one organizers who is instrumental in the three-day event.
Artie Dubri, Policy & Enforcement Officer, UN Environmental Program
“Each member of this network—it’s a network of Caribbean ozone officers which also includes Haiti—is party to the Montreal Protocols with the responsibility for the phasing out of ozone depleting substances. Now the approach of meeting that obligation, is giving capacities a knowhow at the national level so that they can work with their national communities in the phasing out of these harmful substances. In particular, the one substance that we are focusing on in this meeting is the substance that we call the Hydro Cloro Floro Carbons or the HCFCs and for the Caribbean region that substance is used principally in air condition and refrigeration.”
Martin Alegria, Chief Environmental Officer
Martin Alegria
“We are here to share our experiences of our success and even our failures; where and how we did it so as to let the Caribbean brothers and sister avoid those pitfalls and take what we can do jointly as a region and move forward successfully in the commitments that we made in the Montreal Protocol. We are working with Customs Department, we are working with the industry themselves through the various government industries in order to inform, sensitize the investment community that if they’re going to bring in equipment or air conditioning for example in these big buildings, that it be non-ozone depleting substances that are used and the equipment used is ozone friendly as we call it. And we have been successful to date because working with Customs has been very Key.”
The representatives from the department as well as the visiting environmentalists will appear on Wednesday morning on Open Your Eyes.
