THE GLEANER, MONDAY, MARCH 7, 2022 | www.jamaica-gleaner.com | NEWS B10 Mr. Richard Barriffe is not an employee of Portmore LPG Supplies and is not authorized to transact business on the behalf of the company. NOTICE Judana Murphy/Gleaner Writer NADINE ATK INSONFLOWERS, who was born and raised in Olympic Gardens, knew very early in life that she wanted to be a lawyer. Though that reality did not manifest in the way she imagined, the St AndrewHigh School for Girls alumna is now an attorney/author, and celebrates 15 years in the legal profession this year. The eldest of nine children, Atkinson-Flowers said her time at high school opened a “whole new world of opportunities”and earned her lifelong friends. She told The Gleaner that she was not offered a place in the law programme atTheUniversity of the West Indies, Mona, and opted to study history at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She then went on to work at the National Environment andPlanning Agency, theNational HeritageTrust, and even taught atWaterford High School in St Catherine. The former educator also authored threebooks onCaribbean history, which are used across high schools in Jamaica, but she was still searching for fulfilment. “I started studying law in my 30s. I did a programme with the University of London. I completed the bachelor of laws and then theBar examat Norman Manley Law School. It was rough, academically and financially, but I had good grounding. I am a ghetto girl and there were lots of gems in our neighbourhood, as there continues to be today. I also had good family principles, and my parents instilled in me the importance of education,” she recalled, adding that shewas called to the Bar in 2006. Atkinson-Flowers landed a job as a prosecutor at the Half-Way Tree Resident Magistrate’s Court, now Parish Court. In 2015 she migrated to the United States, but it took three years before she got back into legal practice. “Life happened, and I had to take care of all the things that were coming at me. I was working in a nonprofit where they did immigration law, and I was able to assist in a lot of the cases, but not as an attorney,”she explained. During that time, she sat the Bar exam and was admitted in 2018, while holding another full-time job andmaintaining her practice in Jamaica. “My Jamai can practice is something that I cannever giveup,”she said. Her United States practice is in the area of immigration – family visas, work permits and employment-based visas, while her Jamaican practice areas include criminal law, immigration, estate matters, and general legal consultancy. “The life of a clerk of the court is extremely difficult. I always have a soft spot for clerks because I have been in their shoes, so I knowexactly what they go through on a daily basis.That actually ledme to the title of the book that I wrote, called On Your Feet: Criminal Law Practice, because when I went to the parish court, I literally had to learnwhat to do in court and I couldn’t find any resource that would tell me what todo,”she said, adding that shehad to lean on the guidance of fellow attorneys, clerical staff and police officers. On Your Feet: Criminal Law Practice in the Parish Courts in Jamaica was published in June 2021. Atkinson-Flowers explained that it is an ideal legal text for the parish court judge, clerk of the court, defence counsel, civil practitioners, new practitioners, paralegals and law students. She added that journalists, police officers andmembers of thepublic can also learnabout howthe courts function. Thebook is availableat IanRandle Publishers and on Amazon. Atkinson-Flowers is married and themother of a 19-year-old sonand 10-year-old twin girls. She admitted that sometimes the law takes over, especially when she has deadlines tomeet. “I try to balance a little bit more now. Since COVID-19, clients are not coming to the office as much because we are doing a lot of video and telephone meetings, so I can close the office not only physically, but also in my mind, a little earlier,” she explained. The attorney has also ventured on to YouTube, where she uploads videos focused on US immigration laws and the Caribbean. To aspiring attorneys, she said: “I want our young people to think of becominganattorneybecause they want to serve. Oneof the things that I dohereandat home is volunteer. By volunteering, I have learnt a lot, and you can actually learn more about an area of lawbesides your primary focus.” judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com ‘Ghetto girl’ pens book to demystify court proceedings Christopher Serju/ Senior GleanerWriter KEEPING GLOBAL warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees Celsius over the next decade may be convenient for the rest of theglobe but for theCaribbeanthatobjective is mandatory, according to chief executive officer of the Caribbean ClimateSmart Accelerator, Racquel Moses. Respondingtoquestions from The Gleaner about the recently released findings of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), titled‘ClimateChange2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability’, she said the region has no other option but tomeet that target. “It’s not optional for us. We don’t have another path to survival. There will be mass migration and most of thepeople in the regionwill have to leave ifwedon’t limit globalwarming to 1.5 degrees,”she explained. These are things that markets, as well as insurance companies and global citizens need topay attention to. Greater focus needs tobepaidas well to the work being done in the region, the difference this ismaking and the kind of solutions being pioneered. “We typically don’t get a lot of press about the leadership role that we have, whether it is in producing the report or in comingupwithnew solutions,”according toMoses, who pointed out that the report wasn’t all negative. Oneof thepositives she referenced was the partnerships between governments, civil society and the sector, which have been making a significant difference, especially in increasing the adaptive capacity of vulnerable people. “We have fewer degrees of separation and so we have more of anability tomake those connections and have them make a difference for us. Some of the good news is about funding for adaptation, which is adapting to the changes we are already seeing. That is making a difference and so what we need to do is ramp up that effort as we go along.” CLIMATE ADAPTATION On the question, for example, of climate adaptation, she pointed to the fact that Bermuda has already achievedwater security, eventhough they have no national network for pipedwater anddependentirelyon rain water. “They don’t have pipes that connect the country, but they collect their rainwater and so every house is an independent water collection unit. In Barbados, they have the most intense solar water heating infrastructureanywhereandTrinidad is moving towards being a net exporter of green hydrogen. Costa Rica is oneof only sevencountries on the planet that can run for 300 days on renewable energy and so there are a lot of things that we can learn fromeach other within the region. “There is also a lot that the world can learn from us and because we are small, we do not necessarily get that press about the things that we are doing right.” The flipside of the coin, as Moses pointed out, is that with the region shooting for 1.5 degrees Celsius in global warming, the outlook is not good. “We arenot going tohit thatmark on our current trajectory and the impact in terms of livelihoods, the impact on biodiversity, on themost vulnerable – all of those things are being exacerbated by our failure to meet the targets that we have set.” christopher.serju@gleanerjm.com Global warming objective not optional for us – Moses Racquel Moses CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS ATKINSONFLOWERS
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