Editorial | Europe’s taste of Caribbean’s climate reality

Nearly two months in, the Atlantic hurricane season has not yet churned up a killer storm to wreak the Caribbean. And so far, the region has not suffered the scorching summer temperatures and prolonged droughts that have occurred in recent decades, which in the age of climate change, is the new normal.

That is good. However, it is no cause for complacency. There are still more than three months to go in the hurricane season. Moreover, global warming and its effects on the world’s climate have not receded. Which is why vulnerable countries like Jamaica have to become more aggressive in adapting to the change and build coalitions in holding industrial countries to their obligation – and pledges – to provide financing for these efforts.

Indeed, the member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), which accounts for no more than two per cent of global carbon emissions, must accelerate the coordination of the region’s efforts at breaking the logjam in global financing for climate resilience. It is urgent, too, that CARICOM rolls out its strategy, as was proposed by the Persaud Commission last year, to raise capital in the region’s markets for investment in climate resilience projects.

If there are still climate change holdouts, events in Europe this week offered powerful and persuasive arguments against their scepticism and in favour of global warming. An unprecedented heatwave across the continent accounted for an estimated 1,500 deaths in Portugal and Spain as temperatures, like elsewhere on the continent, reached record levels.

For example, in Britain the average daytime temperature in summer is 21°C. At night it falls to 12°C. However, on Tuesday, the temperature soared to an unprecedented 40.3°C, causing the British government to advise people to stay in the shade or at home. Rail services were also suspended for fear of the tracks warping, leading to derailments. In Portugal, the temperature reached as high as 47°C, while in Italy it spiked to 42°C. In Germany and Belgium, too, temperatures were over 40 degrees.

HEATWAVES

This week might have been hotter, but several European countries also experienced heatwaves in May and June. While the immediate cause of this week’s heatwaves were caused by high pressure in the atmosphere moving in and pushing warm air towards the ground, or similar systems drawing hot air from North Africa, there is a twist to these phenomena. The world is hotter today – by 1.1°C – compared to the 1850s. So, the starting points of today’s heatwaves are higher, in line with higher average global temperatures. That is the result of humans pumping huge amounts of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the last century and a half. Already, a warmer Earth has led to rising seas, unseasonal and prolonged droughts, unpredictable and more violent storms and worsening floods. For low-lying coastal areas and small island developing states (SIDS), such as those in the Caribbean, further rises in sea levels – which is inevitable if the current global trajectory persists – would be devastating. The region’s major cities and most of its economic activity are on low-lying coasts.

The world has proposed major strategies for confronting the crisis: keeping in rise in Earth’s temperature to below 1.5°C by the end of the century, and investing in climate mitigation and adaptation projects. The former requires pumping less CO2 into the atmosphere, of which the major contributor is the burning of fossil fuels. As a sector, transportation is the largest single emitter, with 27 per cent of global CO2 output. But factories and electricity-generating turbines are also major emitters, which adds to the logic of producing more of its energy from renewable sources.

But transitioning from fossil fuels and building new resilient infrastructure and hardening old ones are not inexpensive ventures, especially for poor and vulnerable countries. Jamaica has, in the early 2000s, several experiences of hurricanes and floods causing severe damage to roads, bridges and other infrastructure. But Jamaica’s experience pales in comparison to the blows dealt to another CARICOM member, Dominica.

LOSSES

In 2011, that country suffered losses equivalent to 40 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP) from Tropical Storm Ophelia. In 2015, Tropical Storm Erika cost 90 per cent of its GDP. In 2017, Hurricane Maria left damage worth 220 per cent of GDP. In other words, over six years, storms wiped out the equivalent of 350 per cent of Dominica’s GDP.

CARICOM’s members would, in the circumstances, expect to call on the several mitigation and adaptation funds established under climate agreements, including the promise by developed countries at Paris in 2015 to provide US$100 billion a year to less wealthy economies for mitigation and adaptation. The pledged amount was deemed, by many, to be inadequate for what is to be done. The target was not met. However, developed countries recommitted to the amount at the COP26 last year, and the G7 leaders, the world’s richest nations, at their summit this month, largely restated the pledge.

However, CARICOM leaders say that the existing regimes for accessing the funds are not “responsive to the urgent climate resilience requirements of CARICOM SIDS”. They, said the community, are “in immediate need of reform”, including the “simplification and streamlining of access criteria across donors and multilateral funds”. The region should urge other developing, vulnerable countries, especially SIDS, to join it in this campaign.

The Caribbean Development Bank had developed a model for evaluating the broad impact of disasters on countries like those in the Caribbean, the requirements for, and timing and cost of recovery, and potential financing arrangements, including resilience bonds. We are usually slow at getting things done. This matter is urgent. CARICOM, therefore, should go with what is ready.