Editorial | Welcoming climate envoys

The Gleaner welcomes the appointment of Dale Webber as Jamaica’s climate envoy, assuming that the assignment isn’t window dressing and that Professor Webber is appropriately mandated to do the job.

The announcement of Professor Webber’s assignment, notably, follows closely on the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) appointment of Dr James Fletcher, a former St Lucian science and technology minister, to a similar position in the regional organisation.

These developments, on their face, suggest that the region is seized not only by the existential threat of the climate crisis, but that recent developments, especially

Donald Trump’s return to the presidency in the United States, exacerbate these dangers.

Jamaica, like most of the rest of CARICOM, is a small island developing state (SIDS). Those members that are not islands are, indeed, developing countries.

Combined, they contribute less than two per cent of the greenhouse gases that human beings spew into the atmosphere, causing Earth’s rapid heating over the last century-and-a-half. Yet, this region, like most SIDS and developing countries, is paying a disproportionate price for the consequences of global warming.

Most of the Caribbean’s populations live in coastal regions. Most economic activity is centred on the coast, including, for many countries, their pivotal tourism industries.

Yet, warming global temperatures and ice melts are causing oceans to rise, eroding coasts and swallowing beaches that are critical to a tourism product built around the idea of visitors enjoying warm sunshine, pristine beaches and lapping. On most islands, there is not much space for an inland retreat of populations.

UNPREDICTABLE WEATHER PATTERNS

Additionally, the region is faced with changing and unpredictable weather patterns, with certainty only the fact that storms are more frequent and often more ferocious; the likelihood of rainfall being more intense, triggering extreme flooding; and droughts being longer.

And it is definitely hotter.

Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, countries agreed to take action to limit rise in Earth’s temperature to below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century, compared to the 1850s, the start of the new industrial era. Countries would have to take action to reduce their emission of greenhouse gases, particularly the burning of fossil fuels.

However, in 2024, the global benchmark temperature had already been breached, a half a decade ahead of time scientists had only a few years ago warned would be the breakout period, unless the world was more aggressive in containing greenhouse gases. The bleak assessment now is that, by 2100, Earth will be 3.7 degrees hotter than the start of the industrial period.

Not only have developed countries failed to meet commitments on the emissions front, they have been reluctant to provide the financing to help developing countries prepare for, and adapt to, climate change.

At last November’s COP climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, developing countries committed by 2035 to providing US$300 billion to developing countries in climate financing. The real need is at least US$1.3 trillion.

Given the struggle to reach, in 2022 - two years later than the initial deadline - the original target of US$100 billion a year, climate experts are not overly optimistic that the new benchmark, as modest as it is compared to need, will be met.

This pessimism, and the large cloud over the climate crisis, has worsened with Mr Trump’s decision to pull America out of the Paris accords.

DIFFICULT

The emerging environment will make the jobs of Professor Webber and Dr Fletcher more difficult, especially if Jamaica and CARICOM are serious about roles. In which event, the Jamaican government and the CARICOM secretariats should publish their respective terms of reference. Indeed, Prime Minister Andrew Holness, to whom Professor Webber will report, should coordinate closely on this issue with Mia Mottley, the Barbadian prime minister, who has emerged as a leading voice from the Global South on climate change and reform of the international financial architecture, so as to free resources to developing countries.

Sensibly, therefore, both men should work closely together, coordinating their initiatives and leveraging each other’s strengths.

While Professor Webber has served as principal of the Mona, Jamaica campus of The University of the West Indies (UWI), he is primarily a highly environmental scientist, who is likely to be more comfortable with the technical issues relating to climate change. Having served in the political arena, we expect Dr Fletcher, technical skill, notwithstanding, will, of the two, have greater affinity with the rough and tumble of climate politics, which, as the COP conferences have shown, is often no less intense than the partisan hustings. In other words, Professor Webber and Dr Fletcher may well complement each other.

Indeed, this approach would be in keeping with what this newspaper has suggested should be CARICOM’s posture in dealing with the United States in the time of Trump: collaboration and coordination.

As the saying goes, it is either the region hangs together or hang separately – in climate change or anything else.