BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - SEVERAL representatives from various international organizations currently in St. Kitts and Nevis for the CYEN’s 12th Biennial Congress and Caribbean Youth Environmental Summit are seeking to highlight the importance of a healthy lifestyle to the youths in attendance.
The Summit, which wraps up tomorrow (Nov. 4) at the Department of Agriculture’s Conference Room, would see youths discussing healthy lifestyle choices and initiatives that could be implemented to guide such decisions.
According to Sustainable Lifestyles Programme Officer at the UN Environment Department, Garrette Clark, nearly 40% of monies individuals receive on a monthly basis is expended on the necessities of life, including meeting basic needs, and that creative changes need to be found.
Speaking with media representatives, Clarke explained that her organization is a conscious group about environmental issues and it has been involved in setting mandates on global action around lifestyle changes.
Clarke pointed out that for the first time sustainable lifestyles is now being mentioned as part of the Sustainable Development Goals, an initiative of which she is very proud.
“How can we get youths in their daily decisions in which they spend their funds to make their decisions around food more sustainable? How do they make it more organic? Do they buy more fast food? Do they cook at home?” the UN officer questioned.
Health officials in St. Kitts and Nevis, and by extension the region, have been calling for persons to take their lifestyle habits, including eating, more seriously as more persons have been developing non-communicable diseases such as hypertension, diabetes and cancer.
Non-communicable diseases have been a longstanding problem that health officials in the Federation have placed a keen eye on as they seek to roll out their new National Health Insurance Policy in 2017.
The UN officer urged persons “to eat more organic food, more local food “and to find new ways on “how we can find different behaviour changes around that to make life more sustainable”.
Clarke opined that if persons are more aware of what the implications are pertaining to food and lifestyle options they choose today, they would understand the larger context they would play in the long run.
She pointed out that today’s youths are tomorrow’s leaders of society and businesses in the private sector, and that “raising awareness and understanding the implications, it would allow people to have a more informed choice and perhaps make better decisions pertaining to sustainability to society”.
