Dis­cus­sions on cli­mate change, with an em­pha­sis on re­silience and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, will be a part of the agen­da for Car­ifes­ta XV.

This was con­firmed by Gra­ham Clarke, Di­rec­tor of Caribbean at Bar­ba­dos Tourism Mar­ket­ing In­cor­po­rat­ed (BT­MI), in an in­ter­view with Slam 100.5fm ear­li­er this week.

The event, which is set to be held in Bar­ba­dos, is the first Car­ifes­ta to be held since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Car­ifes­ta XIV was held in Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2019.

“We are cel­e­brat­ing our cul­ture, but we are al­so hav­ing some big con­ver­sa­tions around the fu­ture as well, linked to cli­mate change,” said Clarke.

He con­tin­ued, “Our Prime Min­is­ter, the Ho­n­ourable Mia Mot­ley, has been a strong ad­vo­cate. Has been a lead­ing voice on be­half of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states, and in­deed, on be­half of all coun­tries in the Glob­al South on this whole is­sue of cli­mate change. And this is go­ing to be in­te­grat­ed in­to the pro­gramme of Car­ifes­ta 15.

“We’ll be look­ing at is­sues not just in re­la­tion to adap­ta­tion, which is re­al­ly a re­sponse to stuff that is al­ready hap­pen­ing around us, but re­al­ly about mit­i­ga­tion, get­ting ahead of the curve, and en­sur­ing that we are prepar­ing our Caribbean peo­ple, our Caribbean spaces, for the fu­ture and en­sur­ing that there’s re­silience and that there’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty go­ing for­ward, so that will be a big part of it.”

The BT­MI di­rec­tor al­so stressed that it was im­por­tant to host the event af­ter the re­gion ex­pe­ri­enced the fall­out of COVID and con­tin­ued to be im­pact­ed by sub­se­quent geopo­lit­i­cal chal­lenges.

He said, “Com­ing out of COVID, when every­thing was locked down and the sup­pres­sion of emo­tions and feel­ings and pas­sion, and now we have an op­por­tu­ni­ty as Caribbean peo­ple to let that ex­plode, con­verg­ing in one place, one is­land in Bar­ba­dos. You’re go­ing to feel the en­er­gy and the pow­er of 25 na­tions from around the globe, in­clud­ing all of us here in the Caribbean, just con­verg­ing. And it’s go­ing to be a melt­ing pot of cul­ture, of fash­ion, of dance, of film, of the per­form­ing arts, of vi­su­al arts, of fine arts, of culi­nary arts and ex­pres­sion.”

Clarke ex­plained that the event helped cre­ate con­nec­tions not just with­in the Caribbean but world­wide, not­ing that the events have cre­at­ed link­ages with Chi­na while del­e­ga­tions from Ghana, Brazil and Colom­bia have con­firmed at­ten­dance.

Car­ifes­ta XV will be held from Au­gust 22 to Au­gust 31.