Passage of Hurricane Beryl underscores vulnerability of Caribbean to climate change, say UN officials

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC – Two senior United Nations officials Friday said that the passage of Hurricane Beryl through the Caribbean this week underscores the concerns of small island developing states (SIDS) that 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. 

“Dennis and I were both fortunate to attend the …conference held in Antigua and Barbuda at the end of May and clearly 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 are not able to 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 obviously a challenge.

“If you have as we are anticipating this year a minimum of 20 hurricanes coming this lead 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 of the international architecture to be able to take into consideration the vulnerabilities of Caribbean states in their accessing of concessional grants 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 given 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 in support of 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.

Following the passage of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, Grenada had advocated and successfully campaigned for a debt suspension to be included in all new loan agreements.

The clause is triggered whenever the country is experiencing hazards from natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes or a health pandemic. The last time Grenada requested a triggering of that clause was in 2020 when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic.

Mitchell said that the passage of hurricane Beryl is having both fiscal and social impacts on the economy and right now the country will need significant resources.

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. In fact, Hurricane Beryl was the earliest ever category 4 storm to develop. The increasing number of hurricanes and their increasing ferocity do not just cause fear, damage, destruction and loss of life, but they are also making life more expensive.

“My message to you is this: the Caribbean urgently needs climate financing reforms. We need resources that will not just help us rebuild after storms, but resources that will allow our communities to build more resilient infrastructure, roads, electricity, water and homes.”

Skerrit said that this financing must also be used to address the insurance concerns that are causing the cost of living to go up.

He said as the Prime Minister of Dominica,” 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 on behalf of ourselves and our Caribbean neighbours, who are on the frontlines of the climate change crisis”.

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