Caribbean na­tions are be­ing urged to join oth­er re­gions of the world in Earth Hour, a glob­al ac­tiv­i­ty in­tend­ed to raise aware­ness of cli­mate change.The con­cept is sim­ple. On March 23, in­di­vid­u­als and or­gan­i­sa­tions in par­tic­i­pat­ing na­tions will turn off their non-es­sen­tial lights for one hour.In 2012, of­fi­cial Earth Hour ac­tiv­i­ties took place in more than 7,000 cities and towns across 152 coun­tries.

Heather Pin­nock, Caribbean sus­tain­abil­i­ty ad­vo­cate and project man­ag­er for Earth Hour, said, "Caribbean na­tions are in­her­ent­ly cli­mate sen­si­tive, with our lives and liveli­hoods in­ex­tri­ca­bly con­nect­ed to our en­vi­ron­ment and there­fore af­fect­ed by cli­mate change."It is im­por­tant for us to join in in­ter­na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tions and ac­tiv­i­ties which ad­dress these is­sues which are crit­i­cal to our sur­vival and pros­per­i­ty," she added.

The Caribbean re­gion is com­prised of two dozen ter­ri­to­ries, most of which are small is­land de­vel­op­ing states.Earth Hour is or­gan­ised by the World Wildlife Fund and be­gan in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia in 2007. "The event is a sym­bol­ic ac­tion, not a mea­sur­able en­er­gy sav­ing or car­bon re­duc­tion ex­er­cise," Pin­nock said.

"It is an ini­tia­tive to en­cour­age in­di­vid­u­als, busi­ness­es and gov­ern­ments around the world, to take ac­count­abil­i­ty for their eco­log­i­cal foot­print and en­gage in di­a­logue and re­source ex­change, that pro­vides re­al so­lu­tions to our en­vi­ron­men­tal chal­lenges."Par­tic­i­pa­tion in Earth Hour sym­bol­is­es a com­mit­ment to change be­yond the hour."

She is sad­dened that de­spite the sol­id re­search and dis­sem­i­na­tion work of agen­cies such as the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Change Cen­tre and groups such as the Cli­mate Stud­ies Group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, pub­lic aware­ness does not seem to have in­creased.Since 2012, Earth Hour has added the on­line "I Will If You Will" cam­paign, us­ing the hash­tag #IWIYW on Twit­ter, to ex­tend its glob­al com­mu­ni­ty ac­tion be­yond the hour and to take ad­van­tage of the easy dis­sem­i­na­tion of its mes­sage through so­cial me­dia.

IWIYW asks Earth Hour's dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ty to in­spire peo­ple from all cor­ners of the globe to take sus­tain­abil­i­ty ac­tions, and to share their com­mit­ment to the en­vi­ron­ment with their own so­cial me­dia net­works.Pin­nock said Earth Hour pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for "us to come to­geth­er as a re­gion to dis­cuss and de­vel­op cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion, adap­ta­tion and re­silience... Aru­ba and Be­lize have al­ready joined the Earth Hour move­ment," she said.