BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC—Two senior United Nations officials said Friday that Hurricane Beryl’s passage through the Caribbean this week underscores the concerns of small island developing states (SIDS), which have continuously blamed developed countries for the severe impacts associated with climate change.
The UN Resident Coordinator for Jamaica, The Bahamas, Bermuda, The Cayman Islands, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, Dennis Zulu, and Simon Springett, the UN Resident Coordinator for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, told reporters that they were both in attendance at the fourth international conference on SIDS, where the developing countries raised the issue as they have done at other international gatherings before. Watch video
“Dennis and I were both fortunate to attend the …conference held in Antigua and Barbuda at the end of May, and these were the messages that were coming out, a real call and demand for climate justice,” Springett told a virtual news conference.
He told reporters that “when we say climate justice, it links to …financing for both adaptation and mitigation,” adding that the Grenada government “has been trying for a very long time …to build some resilience, and now this gets wiped out.
“These countries all have a very high GDP (gross domestic product) to debt ratio and reconstruction…quite frankly does not get done on grant-based financing, and these governments cannot take loans at concessional rates”.
Springett said events like Hurricane Beryl that left a trail of death and devastation put the sustainable development of these Caribbean countries “back by decades.
‘It has such a major impact on their economic development,” he said, noting that a new sustainable development goal (SDG) report released recently showed “limited progress and there is a lot of work to be done.”
For his part, Zulu told reporters that the vulnerability of the small island states had been reinforced at the SIDS conference in Antigua, adding, “The fact that most of them are deemed to be high-income countries …dealing with reconstruction is a challenge.
“If you have, as we are anticipating this year, a minimum of 20 hurricanes coming, and this leads to huge devastation of infrastructure, the resources, I mean the …fiscal space these countries have is limited” in terms of being able to respond and react.
‘So, as some countries…like Barbados, where the Prime Minister (Mia Mottey) is requesting a relook at the international architecture to take into consideration the vulnerabilities of Caribbean states in their access to concessional grants—it is very important.
“But also when you look at the fact that these (hurricanes) happen often and a lot of these countries are basically in debt because they have to pay for the same bridge many times over, the fact you construct one day and it is destroyed the next year or the next month…this brings a huge burden on their financial ability to do that.”
Zulu said what the SIDS conference highlighted was that “these were issues in climate change that impacts this part of the world very significantly and therefore it is a responsibility for all to be able to take care in what we do give the impact to this region which may not be evident in other parts of the world.”
The Grenada government has established a Hurricane Beryl Disaster Relief Fund to receive financial donations supporting relief and recovery efforts.
Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell said earlier this week that Grenada had written to financial agencies and multilateral partners requesting that the debt payment suspension clause in several loan agreements be triggered because of the devastation on the country by Hurricane Beryl earlier this week.
In 2022, the national debt of Grenada amounted to an estimated US$0.77 billion.
“The Minister of Finance has already written to some of our multilateral partners to indicate to them that this catastrophic event has happened and to trigger our debt suspension clause in some of these agreements,” Prime Minister Mitchell told a news conference.
Following Hurricane Ivan’s passage in 2004, Grenada advocated and successfully campaigned for a debt suspension to be included in all new loan agreements.
The clause is triggered whenever the country experiences hazards from natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, or a health pandemic. Grenada last requested that the clause be triggered in 2020 when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.
Prime Minister Mitchell said that Hurricane Beryl’s passage is having both fiscal and social impacts on the economy, and right now, the country will need significant resources.
He told reporters that the clean-up exercise alone would cost “tens of millions of dollars,” and he announced a national clean-up on the weekend.
Mitchell acknowledged that “it is going to be a mammoth task to rebuild Grenada, Carriacou, and Petite Martinique.”
On Thursday night as he addressed the nation, Dominica’s Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said the truth of the matter is, given the changes in global climate, it is not a matter of ‘if’ a storm of that magnitude hits us again, but, when”.
“We are just at the beginning of this hurricane season. Hurricane Beryl was the earliest ever category four storm to develop. The increasing number of hurricanes and their increasing ferocity do not just cause fear, damage, destruction, and loss of life but also make life more expensive.
“My message to you is this: the Caribbean urgently needs climate financing reforms. We need resources that will help us rebuild after storms and allow our communities to build more resilient infrastructure, roads, electricity, water, and homes. “
Skerrit said that this financing must also address the insurance concerns that are increasing the cost of living.
As the Prime Minister of Dominica said,” I will continue to push for the countries that are signatories to global agreements like the Paris Accord to demonstrate a collective will to address climate change.
“Climate change is a global problem that requires coordinated international efforts to address its disproportionate impact on the world’s most vulnerable communities. Dominica will persist in advocating for ourselves and our Caribbean neighbors, who are on the frontlines of the climate change crisis”.
Both Springett and Zulu spoke of the emotional and financial toll the hurricane has had on the lives of the people in the countries that have so far been affected.
“For Jamaica, the fact that we have not had a hurricane in a while now, having one so early in the season, has a lot of effect on the emotional parts of the individuals in the country. But I think what we see again is this spirit of resilience among the population of Jamaica and being able to overcome such tragedy,” said Zulu.
He said the spirit of unity and being able to help each other out has also helped “because you are seeing the spirit of camaraderie among neighbors and helping each other out.
“But in terms of tourism, tourism was hit especially with the closing of the airports and Jamaicans quickly moved towards opening up their airports….and the major one in Montego Bay, which accounts for a significant number of arrivals, it is up and running.”
He said preliminary reports suggest that not much damage was done to the hotel and resort plans on the island, “so that is a positive.
‘The airlines are coming in …Jamaica is up and running, if I may say that,” Zulu told reporters.
Springett said hurricanes develop over “days and sometimes weeks,” which could take an emotional toll on people.
“Some of the island…A major storm has not hit Carriacou, I believe, since 1955,” he said, adding, “We always need to continue to work diligently to push the importance of having the evacuations…
‘These are genuinely traumatic events, and even when they hit a portion of a nation, they profoundly affect the population’s soul. It is difficult to get support and help, and even nonaffected countries feel helpless …
“For tourism, this will have a major impact, particularly on those smaller islands in the Grenadines and the north of Grenada. Fortunately, the major infrastructures like airports and ports were not hugely damaged, and hopefully, tourists won’t give up on visiting the islands,” he added.
Meanwhile, the UN Assistant Secretary-General and UNDP Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean, Michelle Muschett, said, “The devastating loss of life profoundly saddens us, the impact on livelihood, and
infrastructures, as well as the suffering caused to communities by this hurricane.
“UNDP remains in solidarity with the Caribbean people, and we stand ready to support the governments and communities with immediate critical needs as they recover from this event.
“The UNDP Multi-Country Office (MCO) in Jamaica remains in touch with national authorities to ascertain immediate needs and to deploy technical, financial, and in-kind resources for disaster response and recovery in cooperation with our sister UN agencies and other regional and international partners,” she said.
UNDP Resident Representative for Jamaica, Bermuda, Belize, Cayman Islands, The Bahamas, and Turks and Caicos Islands, Kishan Khoday, said beyond immediate needs, UNDP remains available to help advance climate adaptation programming and disaster risk and resilience interventions in an era of increasing frequent and intense storm systems.
He said he also stands ready to deploy personnel to support national and regional emergency management authorities in launching relief and recovery efforts and, to this end, continues to monitor the path of the hurricane as it appears on track to impact Belize.
Preliminary reports from Jamaica indicate that two persons are dead, with widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure, especially in rural areas. Telecommunications and electricity supply have also been significantly impacted, affecting hundreds of thousands. In the Cayman Islands, assessments are still underway to determine the scale of the impact.
Beryl is the second named storm of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, which was forecast to be very active. Ocean temperatures, already elevated due to climate variability and change, have been further increased by the 2023-24 El Niño phenomenon.
The UNDP said it will continue supporting the region in prevention, preparedness, and recovery. It added that the UNDP’s mission globally and in the Caribbean is to end poverty, inequality, and exclusion and scale up action on climate change and ecosystems while building resilience to crisis.
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