TWENTY-SEVEN-YEAR OLD BARBADIAN Jamilla Sealy of the Caribbean Youth Environment Network (CYEN) has been selected by the Global Youth Biodiversity Network (GYBN) to be one of only six young scientists from around the world to participate in the United Nations negotiations for the Convention on Biological Diversity (UN-CBD).
The talks will take place from April 25 to May 6 2016 in Montreal, Canada.
During her mission to Canada, Sealy will be participate in two intensive working sessions, the Twentieth Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA-20) and the First Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI-1). These activities are technical negotiating sessions in preparation for the Thirteenth Conference of the Parties of the UN-CBD (COP-13), to be held in Mexico.
Sealy is the current regional chairperson of the CYEN and the project coordinator of the Barbados Chapter. Her participation will contribute to discussions around global threats to biodiversity. These include pollution, climate change and the impact of invasive species, among others. The hope is that scientists will formulate strategies that countries worldwide can implement to rectify these issues.
The Caribbean is a known for its wide array of plants and animals, both on land and in the oceans. However, contaminated water runoff, overfishing, improper land management and rising ocean temperatures, along with overfishing and the impact of invasive species such as the Lionfish and Giant African Snail have led to species endangerment.
Sealy said it was a “a great honour to be representing the youth constituency of the Caribbean”.
“Young people from developing countries rarely get such an opportunity. Being the only youth representative from the Caribbean, it will be up to me to represent the region well. It will be lots of hard work but I will make my organisation, country and region proud,” she said. (PR/NB)
