The Bahamas has joined the global strike advocating for more to be done by the government to end climate change.

The recent fires in the Amazon, scorching summer temperatures across Europe and closer to home, deadly hurricanes with a record breaking six additional named storms active in the Atlantic and Pacific, all signs that more must be done to address climate change.

Leading a global strike is a 16-year-old Swedish girl Greta Thunberg, who has the full support of The Bahamas. 

Citing the climate crisis declaration last Friday, were young representatives of the Cat Island Conservative Institute, who called for immediate, bold action be taken by The Bahamas, other small island developing states and the international community to address this crisis. 

Minister of the Environment and Housing Romauld Ferreira agreed.

“The success of this is not really going to be measure in how many homes are destroyed. It’s actually the opposite,” he said. 

“It’s going be measured in how many homes are not destroyed, how many homes are not ruined, how many lives are not lost.”

Founder and Executive Director of the Young Marine Explorers and the Cat Island Conservative Institute Nikita Shiel-Rolle issued a call to action for everyone to join the cause.

“It is through harnessing the collective powers that we will be able to combat climate change and rebuild our island nation capable of surviving the changes in our climate and ensuring that the people of The Bahamas and every small island developing state thrives, as this is our inherent human right,” she said. 

In addition, to the 2020 plastic ban, Minister Ferreira said the government will soon bring environmental legislation to parliament to make The Bahamas more environmentally friendly by year’s end.

“The attorney general promised, I don’t know if you remember sometime back, a sweep of environmental legislation and he has delivered a lot of them in draft that we are reviewing,” he said.

“One of the two fundamental things that we want to do in addition to the plastics ban legislation is to amend the Bahamas National Trust Act, amend the Bahamas Protective areas fund.   We want to introduce an act to establish the Ministry of Environment which is very important and we also want to introduce an act to establish the Department of Planning and Protection which is also very important.

“These are things that will put into bear and take us down the road of better environmental stewardship and give us the ability to levy the kinds of fines that should be proportionate with the sort of event that we generate and cause the fine to occur.”  

Further, what’s next in addressing this crisis is for the prime minister to make a declaration on an international level. 

Additionally, he said he would suggest the speaker of the House of Assembly declare that The Bahamas is in a climate crisis once parliament resumes.