Black Immigrant Daily News

Dickon Mitchell, Prime Minister of Grenada, will be joined by a lineup of international technology experts when he delivers the feature address at the opening of the Grenada ICT Week at the Grenada Trade Centre this month.

The highly anticipated event, which will be held from Monday 27th February to Friday 3rd March, is being organized by the Grenada Chamber of Commerce in collaboration with the Grenada National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (NTRC), the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG) and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN).

“The event will provide a platform for Grenadians to engage with experts from the regional and international tech industry to discuss how we can better leverage technology to create employment and accelerate economic growth,” said Prime Minister Mitchell. “The initiative aligns well with my government’s social and economic development agenda. I am honored to share the stage with renowned technology experts.”

Grenada ICT Week is a highly anticipated event that will bring some of the top minds in the regional Internet scene to Grenada. It is being held in conjunction with the twenty-fifth regional meeting of CaribNOG.

The event will also feature presentations by Bevil Wooding, Director of Caribbean Affairs at ARIN and one of the region’s leading technology innovators.

“Grenada ICT Week is a significant event for Grenada as well as the Caribbean. It will provide a valuable opportunity for companies operating in the ICT sector to network and exchange knowledge, experiences and best practices. This in turn promotes business growth and development in the region.”

Rodney Taylor, Secretary General of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union; David Huberman, Regional Technical Engagement Manager for North America and Europe, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN); and Stephen Lee, CEO of Arkitechs Inc. and co-founder of CaribNOG, are also listed to speak at the event.

“We are honored to host our twenty-fifth CaribNOG regional meeting as part of the Grenada ICT Week and are delighted the Grenadian government will be supporting our Youth Forum, which provides career guidance and hands-on training for students and young ICT professionals.”

Event co-organizer Kennie John, CEO of the Antillean Group, underscored the importance of event to Grenada.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the Grenada ICT Week and to engage with the Grenadian community. This event is part of a larger initiative to ensure that Grenada has the human resource capacity as well as the technology infrastructure necessary to build a successful and sustainable digital economy. I am confident that it will be a great success,” said John.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

With Internet technology playing an increasing role in every aspect of Caribbean life, the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is working with its Caribbean partners to promote its importance in the region.

Bevil Wooding, ARIN’s Director of Caribbean Affairs, was in Grenada last week to advance plans for ARIN’s participation in Grenada ICT Week.

The 2023 Grenada ICT Week will take place at the Grenada Trade Centre from February 25 to March 3. It aims to bring together local, regional and international experts to discuss the increasing role of technology in business, government, and society.

Wooding met with officials from the local technical community, as well as senior public sector and business officials, including Kennie John, President of the Grenada Chamber of Commerce (GCC), and Vincent Roberts, Chairman of the Grenada National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (NTRC).

“ARIN has a strong track record of supporting Internet development in Grenada and we are pleased to be in Grenada again to collaborate with our local and regional stakeholders in support of the 2023 Grenada ICT Week,” Wooding said.

“This event will provide a platform for attendees to explore key facets of the internet economy and the implications of global trends for regional and national development, including digital innovation, internet governance, and public policy. It will also showcase successful local and Caribbean models for Internet-enabled development and how they can be applied to accelerate economic growth and development,” he added.

“The Grenada Chamber of Commerce is pleased to partner with ARIN, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union and their partners to bring the 2023 Grenada ICT Week to the country,” said Mr. John. “This event will provide a great opportunity for the business community to discuss how technology can be leveraged to drive economic growth and development in Grenada.”

Grenada ICT Week activities will include the twenty-fifth regional gathering of the Caribbean Network Operators Group (CaribNOG) and a special one-day workshop for computer engineers and students facilitated by the Internet Cooperation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the North America Network Operators Group (NANOG).

Vincent Roberts, Chairman of the Grenada NTRC, added, “The National Telecommunications Regulatory Commission is proud to partner with ARIN, the Caribbean Telecommunications Union and CaribNOG on the 2023 Grenada ICT Week. We are looking forward to highlighting important issues such as network resilience and security. We are also pleased that international groups such as ICANN and NANOG will be sharing their knowledge and expertise with our local technical community.”

The ICT Week is being organized by the Caribbean Telecommunications Union and ARIN in collaboration with the Government of Grenada, ICANN, the Internet Registry for Latin America and the Caribbean (LACNIC), the Internet Society, NANOG, and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission.

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Black Immigrant Daily News

A new examination of ancient and current species of reptiles conducted by a University of Texas at Austin paleobiologist reveals the serious impact of the disappearance of even a few species of reptiles in some island areas.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has startling conclusions about how, on smaller islands in the Caribbean where human impact was greatest, extinctions have led to the loss of up to two-thirds of the supports for the ecosystem that native reptile species once provided there.

Although similar studies have looked at the role of large mammals or other types of animals in ecosystems over time, this is the first to do so with reptiles–a key component of many island ecosystems.

Exploring what’s known as functional diversity, the study goes beyond cataloging different living things in a place over time, in this case, 418 Caribbean reptile species. Instead, the study maps out the functions that those species offer that support a thriving natural environment. The 418 species can be collapsed into 123 functional entities: groupings of species that share the same suite of traits and may perform similar ecosystem services.

“Functional diversity is a really important measure of the health of an ecosystem,” said Melissa Kemp, an assistant professor of integrative biology at UT Austin. “It’s important to understand the number of species in a given system, but it’s equally, if not more, important to understand the roles those species play. That’s the measure of functional diversity.”

For example, when the giant tortoises of the Caribbean were hunted to extinction, the island region lost not only the tortoises but a core service the reptiles provided. Giant tortoises are important vehicles to spread plant seeds. That function was lost in the Caribbean, and the situation was made worse by the extinction of other large-bodied herbivores such as sloths, leading to certain plants having limited dispersal agents and restricted ranges.

Species introduced by humans also contribute to shifts in functional diversity over time, with sometimes mixed results. One of the clearcut invasive species villains of the study is the mongoose. The small weasel-like mammal preys on reptiles and was brought to the islands by European colonizers.

“In the historical record, you can see when Europeans arrived and the mongoose was introduced, reptile species disappeared on these islands,” Kemp said.

However, the opposite was true when green iguanas were introduced to islands that had lost reptile-related functional diversity. The green iguana filled the gaps. In fact, the species helped return functional diversity to prehistoric levels in some cases.

“While the green iguana is functionally similar to some of the native iguanas, there is concern about how it interacts with native iguanas and its long-term impacts on functional diversity,” Kemp said. “In some places where they co-occur, the invasive green iguanas are interbreeding with native iguanas.”

Kemp found that smaller islands, in particular, lack the buffer that larger islands have when they lose a set of reptile species that help to keep an ecosystem intact to an event like the introduction of the mongoose. For example, the largest islands, Cuba, Jamaica, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, retain 80%-98% of their native functional entities. The study found that smaller islands that had limited human impact retained much of their functional diversity, too: Mona and Sombrero, two islands that are no longer inhabited, were used for limited mining after European colonization but had no large-scale agriculture, dense human population or mongoose introduced and retain 75% of their native functional entities.

The islands of the Caribbean are some of the most biodiverse places on Earth, home to delicate ecosystems and teeming with species that exist nowhere else on the planet. Without functional diversity that includes various reptiles, however, more ecosystems are susceptible to collapse, making the topic a vital one for conservation.

“It’s becoming readily apparent that we’re not going to be able to save every single species. Some are already extinct or functionally extinct in the wild,” Kemp said. “Trying to conserve the functions that organisms provide to an ecosystem might be a bigger focus moving forward.”

Funding for the research was provided by the National Science Foundation.

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