 Welcome to Nation Beat. I am Genelle Novel bringing you this brief on the pulse of our nation and highlights around the heart of St. Lucia. The Ministry of Agriculture implements a new program to build resilience against the impact of tropical cyclones. Government to spend 300 million EC dollars on roads over the next three years and the youth of Grosjele commit to national service. The vulnerability of St. Lucia and the rest of the Caribbean to natural disasters and climate change is a focus of a high-level conference at the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund, IMF, in Washington DC. St. Lucia's Prime Minister, the Honourable Alan Shasne, who holds responsibility for sustainable development, environment, disaster management, and water in the quasi-carbonate of the Caribbean community, CARICUM, addressed what needs to be done as the IMF commits to becoming a more integral partner in building resilience in the region. The Caribbean region's already high vulnerability to natural disasters is likely to be exacerbated as the frequency and severity of disasters increase from the effects of climate change. International Monetary Fund's managing director, Christine Lagarde, indicated for more than one reason countries in the region invest little in building resilience and rely heavily on ex-post-external assistance to recover from such disasters. She added that the human and economic cause of natural disasters and climate risks require a greater shift in policy focus towards ex-anti-resilience building and a broad disaster risk management strategy. As we see it, building resilience to disasters and climate change rests on three complementary pillars. The first is securing structural protection through resilient infrastructure, adequate land use, zoning rules and building codes, and early warning systems. The second is financial protection through insurance and other risk sharing and blended finance mechanisms in order to reduce the cost of damage done by disasters when they occur. And the final pillar is emergency response by ensuring rapid access to financing and the contingency plans that have been tested beforehand in order to help with recovery after the disaster has struck. The managing director highlighted that a new approach is required based on an alliance of stakeholders domestic and international to mobilize the needed resources based on credible strategies. She advised countries to take the lead and develop an umbrella disaster resilience strategy with input and support from the international financial institutions. The strategy will elaborate measures to get fiscal houses in order and to create fiscal space. It would also lay out a well-designed and fully-costed resilience building plan, including forest transfer, which would be embedded in a sustainable multi-year macro-fiscal framework. My hope is that this kind of strategy will generate the credibility needed to entice low costs and grant financing from development partners, climate funds and international financial institutions. But it has to take those two steps one after the other in order to actually reach that credibility level that will bring this particular concessional funding together in order to form enough of a blended finance that it helps in sufficient quantities. To operationalize this idea, we propose using two pilot countries for which supporting work is already underway, including a climate change policy assessment that we conduct jointly with the World Bank. The conference brings together key stakeholders, including senior policymakers, public, private and multilateral development partners to explore incentives to shift the focus of policies towards building resilience and innovative disaster risk financing policies and instruments that would help in this regard. Meantime, the Ministry of Agriculture has implemented a tree crop planting program to help build resilience against the impact of tropical storms and hurricanes. The Ministry of Agriculture, with the financial support of the government of China-Taiwan, through the Taiwanese technical mission, recently embarked on a windbreak project. Speaking at the official launch in Poale, field officer attached to the Banana Productivity Improvement Project, Stephen Mosheri said, the intercropping strategy will reduce the losses of farmers following the passage of a storm or hurricane. After tropical storms could, we saw it necessary to have these barrier plants, the windbreaks, because we saw in estates like Linge Feverier of Mini where the mango trees protected the farm and the damages was not as much as we have down here. So we said, okay, we went to the Taiwanese mission and agreed to sponsor this tree crop planting. I'm using mangoes for two reasons, mango, if you plant, we can put forestry tools too, but if you put mango, mango you can have a double effect. You can have the windbreak and plus it's a full crop, the farmers can have it as a cash crop. Approximately 5,000 tree crops will be purchased with the aid of the Taiwanese technical mission. Farmers from Region 4 will be provided with the knowledge of where and how the tree crops should be planted. Taiwanese technical mission representative Mario Cheng underscored the importance of the project to farmers in St. Lucia. We try to engage the farmers to provide a better assistance in the agriculture area and today we have an idea to provide the trees become to the barrier to protect our banana fields to prevent maybe in the futures do not get so much serious snippets in the banana fields. The intention of the Ministry of Agriculture is to implement this initiative across the island in the future. From the communications unit in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Physical Planning, Natural Resources and Cooperatives, Miguel Morris said reporting. And the Government of St. Lucia is continuing efforts at strengthening the island's infrastructure in the face of climate change. Government is to spend 300 million EC dollars on roads over the next three years. A 50 million US dollar loan has been secured from the Government of the Republic of China Taiwan via the Ministry of Infrastructure, Ports, Energy and Labor for major road rehabilitation works. Prime Minister Hon. Alan Chastney says local revenue is also being used to finance the projects. In addition to the 50 million US, the gasoline tax has been collecting approximately 30 million EC dollars a year and so that money is also going to be used over the first five years in order to complement that spending. So the money, the first 14 million dollars we collected last year has been used primarily to do some pot-holding around the country as well as refurbishment of some projects, of some roads. So all in all, we're looking to spend around 300 million EC dollars in the next three years on major road redevelopments in St. Lucia. The cul-de-sac bridge is also earmarked for rehabilitation with financing from the Government of Japan. In fact, it originally had included the Ravin Poisson Bridge as well as the cul-de-sac bridge. The bid that was done recently, the estimates were much higher than what they were expecting. So we've agreed to take out the Ravin Poisson Bridge and we will finance that through a different mechanism and focus the funds which is the 40 million dollars that the Japanese are bringing to be able to commence that project. My understanding in speaking to the Ambassador of Japan today is that we're hoping that by February that that will be completed and that we can commence works pretty soon afterwards. A grant provided by the UK Government through the Department for International Development, DEFID, has been allocated for reconstruction of the West Coast Road. This is nation-beat, up next the youth of Grozile commit to national service. The world's climate is changing and that affects all of us. Storms are becoming increasingly intense, periods of intense drought and heavy rain, stress farm animals and destroy our crops. Higher average ocean temperatures kill our coral reefs and change the migratory patterns of fish. St Lucia contributes only 0.0015% of global greenhouse gas emissions but is doing its part along with countries around the world to reduce the emissions that are warming our world and changing our climate. These efforts are called mitigation but decades of emissions have already changed the climate and the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today will increase average global temperatures even more. We need to adapt, that is, do everything we can to prepare for and respond to the actual and expected negative effects of climate change and everyone has a role to play. We need to protect our crops, build homes that withstand storms and keep our drains and waterways free of garbage to help us recover or bounce back from climatic events. Learn more about the Government of St Lucia's National Adaptation Plan and the steps you can take to protect yourself and your fellow St Lucians. Business establishments have been warned against misleading the public as the holiday season approaches. At this time of year, consumers shop around for the best deals and store service providers slash prices for the low. However, the Consumer Affairs Division in the Ministry of Commerce has called on the business community and the public to be guided by the Protection of Unfair Competition Act which ensures that consumers are not taken advantage of and other businesses are not discredited. Gailom Simon is the Director of the Consumer Affairs Division. That any act of practice in the course of industrial or commercial activities that misleads or is likely to mislead the public with respect to an enterprise or its activities, in particular the products or the services offered by such enterprise constitutes an act of unfair competition. Now misleading may arise out of an advertisement or promoting or may in particular occur with respect to any of the following and I will cite F which is the price of the products or the manner in which it is calculated. Mr. Simon says the Protection of Unfair Competition Act is designed to ensure a viable business environment. When he says an article 9, any person who is prejudiced or is likely to be prejudiced by an act of unfair competition shall be entitled to remedies obtained under the civil laws of St. Lucia. Director of the Consumer Affairs Division, Gillom Simon. The youth of Grozile have committed themselves to national service through volunteerism and Isiah Antoine explains. Volunteer St. Lucia is a non-profit organization operating under the patronage of the Governor General of St. Lucia which embodies civic responsibility and patriotism through charitable service. The organization formed in 2007 is currently rebranding and refocusing its resources towards working with communities at risk. To achieve this goal, the organization has been training young individuals in the areas of leadership and ethics. Governor General of St. Lucia, his Excellency Sir Emanuel Neville Snuck, expressed his contentment with the youth showing interest in the volunteer St. Lucia organization. I'm so proud of it and I'm proud to be the patron of Volunteer St. Lucia. I take all institutions seriously and I can tell you never mind you see many young people are going astray. We are concerned about that but there are lots of young people who are volunteering their time to do good. Can you imagine, I can't even imagine, that all the towns and villages with volunteers like you, what type of society it would be? Christ himself, such a good man, only had 12 disciples and you are many more than 12. Currently, Volunteer St. Lucia has five active branches, namely Viewfort, Schuizel, Castries, Soufere and newly instituted Gruselay. Diane Felicia, consultant for the National Volunteer Programme, shared some words of encouragement with the volunteers of the Gruselay branch. Volunteerism is service above self. All you need is passion, commitment, discipline and patience. And the sky is the limit. The Volunteer St. Lucia Gruselay branch was launched on Saturday, November 24th, 2018. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. That's nation. We join us next time on NTN at 7.30pm with a repeat at 7.30am and on this station as we fill the pulse and heart of our community. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am Janelle Norvell.