Editorial | Looking for climate change action from Mr Charles

In a speech to a virtual climate summit last Saturday, Barbados’ Prime Minister, Mia Mottley, framed the threat of global warming to countries like her own as potential genocide by the world’s big carbon emitters.

“I would like to believe that the major emitters are not capable of what would, in essence, be close to climate genocide,” she told the Climate Ambition Summit hosted by Britain, the United Nations, and France. “I would like to believe that we are visible and indispensable for them.”

Ms Mottley’s characterisation, though dramatic, was hardly hyperbolic. Indeed, it is a narrative with which Jamaica’s Government should not only be in sympathy, but easily embrace if and when the new minister for climate matters, Pearnel Charles Jr, gets around to articulating policies for that portfolio. The crisis is real.

Last week’s summit, ahead of next year’s rescheduled COP26 (UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties), was for world leaders to outline their countries’ plans to accelerate the reduction of the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere so as to keep the Earth’s temperature from rising by the end of the century by less than two degrees Celsius – and preferably to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius – above pre-industrial levels as was promised under the Paris Agreement. But the specific commitments made by countries in Paris five years ago were considered insufficiently robust to meet the targets. The situation is now being compounded, experts say, by significant new spending on high-carbon projects in advanced economies as part of their COVID-19 recovery programmes.

Unacceptable Spending

Indeed, G20 countries, according to United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, are spending 50 per cent more stimulus money on fossil fuels and carbon-heavy sectors than on greener initiatives. “This is unacceptable,” Mr Guterres said. “The trillions of dollars needed for COVID recovery is money we are borrowing from future generations ... . We cannot use these resources to lock in politics that burden future generations with a mountain of debt on a broken planet.”

That broken planet will mean a hotter climate, prolonged droughts, rising sea levels, more violent storms, and generally unpredictable weather patterns. For small island states like Barbados and Jamaica, and others in the Caribbean, rising seas pose grave threats to their coastal regions, which are the hubs of their heavily tourism-dependent economies. Further, these countries with limited land space are already plagued by seasonal hurricanes, the prospect of more frequent and violent storms, and long droughts that exacerbate their vulnerability.

Such concerns would have formed the backdrop against which Prime Minister Andrew Holness, after the September 3 general election, specially named climate change in the environment portfolio he assigned to Mr Charles. Thus far, it is the segment of the job of which the least has been heard from the minister except for a plan to extend the barrier along the Palisadoes strip leading to the Norman Manley International Airport to mitigate against storm surges, especially during hurricanes.

To be fair to Mr Charles, the major policy focus during the election campaign was his party’s promise to deliver 70,000 homes during his term of office. That is a political priority, which, no doubt, commands a big chunk of the minister’s attention. Further, while there is a bifurcation of the environment portfolio, with the critical regulatory agency, the National Environmental and Planning Authority, still resident with the prime minister, Mr Charles will also have been distracted by the several controversies over the Government’s approval of licences for mining and quarrying in ecologically vulnerable areas.

Nonetheless, the climate change issues are urgent. Jamaica must be at the table, literally and figuratively, adding its voice to those articulating the dangers faced by itself and other climate-vulnerable states. While Jamaica is not a major emitter of greenhouse gases, we, too, have an obligation to contribute to a lessening of the CO2 released into the atmosphere.

For instance, the Government’s goal is, by 2030, to produce 30 per cent of the country’s energy from renewable sources. There still, however, needs to be a broader conversation on issues such as the potential for a greener economy, and if, and when, Jamaica might achieve carbon neutral, or net-zero, emissions and the benefits therefrom. We appreciate that Minister Charles is burdened, that the demands are great, and that the issues are complex. But having accepted it, the portfolio is Mr Charles’. He has to deliver – and not only on mitigation projects.