BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC—St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada urged the international community to provide assistance at little or no cost as the Caribbean countries continue their rehabilitation efforts after a category four storm that left several people dead and millions of US dollars in damages.
Hurricane Beryl barreled through the Caribbean on July 1 and became the season’s earliest category-five hurricane in the Atlantic. It struck Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines as a category four hurricane, causing death, severe damage and destruction to homes and infrastructure, and massive loss of services and livelihoods.
Speaking at the launch of the United Nations and its partners’ “Regional Response Plan for Grenada and St. Vincent and the Grenadines,” Prime Ministers Dickon Mitchell of Grenada and Dr. Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines acknowledged that their countries cannot afford to deal with another hurricane.
“We simply cannot afford another hurricane. Our islands are too vulnerable at this point. Even near heavy rainfall will cause major disruptions in terms of flooding and landslides and will cause significant inconvenience to many of our citizens who are now homeless,’ Mitchell told regional and international media representatives at the virtual launch.
“We need significant capital investment to clean up and rebuild our communities. This is where the developmental conversation needs the input of our global family,” he said, adding that our ask….is that we need grant resources as our economies and our societies cannot afford more debt.
The UN plan, which seeks to address the urgent needs of some 24,000 people in Grenada and 19,000 in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, is based on preliminary estimates and funding projections, which will be reassessed in the short term.
The authorities say the exact numbers remain a challenge, as assessments are ongoing amid damage to logistics, power, and communications services and power cuts.
The goal is to raise at least nine million US dollars, five million of which will go to Grenada and the remainder to St. Vincent and the Grenadines, to assist approximately 43,000 people urgently needing humanitarian aid.
“The reality is that we need funds with a quick disbursement, period post-hurricane,” Mitchell said, adding that “in the ideal situation, and we make this call now, we should have had funding in place even before the event so that we could respond immediately.”
Mitchell said that the conversation on sustainable development calls for the creation of new facilities that will give small island developing states (SIDS) like those in the Caribbean, which are at the forefront of the climate crisis, “the flexibility to have faster access to grant funds.
“In the normal scheme of things, disbursement periods, the best case scenario, is four to eight weeks. This is simply too long,” Mitchell said, adding that in the case of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Grenada, “we need the funds now.
“It has only been ten days since the passage of Hurricane Beryl, and our needs and the needs of our citizens are immediate. We must secure our nations. We have to do so. In Grenada’s case, we demonstrated fiscal resilience in legislation and enormous responsibility in ensuring that we set aside funds for rainy days and disastrous days such as July 1…”
Mitchell said that was due to the National Transformation Fund, which set aside 10 percent of the revenue collected under the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) program, through which Grenada provides citizenship to foreign investors in return for making a substantial investment in the country’s socio-economic development.
He said some utility companies are oftentimes unable to get insurance coverage for external distribution and transmission systems. Mitchell said that the country has also maintained “sometimes at significant costs” parametric insurance policies through the Caribbean Catastrophic Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF).
“But the payout from all these funds is a drop to rebuild Carriacou and Petite Martinique and our northern parishes,” Mitchell said, adding that the cost of living on the front line of the climate crisis “is too high for us alone to pay or to bear the brunt of.
“Our people, our societies, our islands want to stay alive. We deserve to stay alive, so we need your help and assistance in making this happen,” Mitchell said.
For his part, Prime Minister Gonsalves told reporters that he concurred with every word spoken by his colleague and said that it would take millions of dollars to restore the communities affected by the storm.
“We don’t have the material or technical resources. To be sure, we are resilient people. We have done a lot relying on our own efforts, and we have faith, fresh hope, and love.
“But we require the solidarity of our regional and international families. In the region, CARICOM (Caribbean Community) has been organizing and advocating, and we are working together in the Caribbean Community, and our friends and allies globally have come to our aid.
“But the truth is this that the resources required are beyond what has been proffered so far. We are grateful for whatever assistance we have received thus far. Still, this relief effort would require substantial resources because people are going to have to be kept with income support and production support for a significant period of time while we clean up and seek to rebuild,” Gonsalves said.
He told reporters, “I think we are seeing what can happen in just a few hours. Entire islands, small islands, have been decimated, and we have been talking about this.”
Gonsalves said the situation played out in Dominica, Barbuda, and other parts of the world and that “the major emitters” of climate change “are not listening as carefully as they should.
“If they have been listening, they have not been summoning the requisite political will to address the existential question of climate change,” Gonsalves said.
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