Opposition leader wants Jamaica to pursue climate compensation for Hurricane Melissa damage

Opposition leader Mark Golding has suggested that Jamaica should assemble a team of the most experienced legal experts to prepare a legal brief on the prospect of recovering compensation from major contributors to climate change for the huge loss and damage inflicted on the island by Hurricane Melissa.

He said Jamaica has a duty to lead in its advocacy for fair and just compensation from those states that have put the country and other nations in this position of extreme vulnerability.

In his contribution to the Budget Debate in Gordon House on Tuesday, Golding said the legal brief should consider the prospects of a case being taken to the International Court of Justice, relying on the responsibility of certain countries for the global temperature increases that resulted in the damage wrought by Hurricane Melissa, which cost Jamaica US$12.2 billion.

A decision of the International Court of Justice on this issue, said Golding, would be binding on the States found to be liable for the overheating that triggered the powerful hurricane.

Golding told his parliamentary colleagues earlier today that the Category Five storm struck Jamaica about four months after the International Court of Justice issued a unanimous Advisory Judgment that States can be held liable for damages caused by climate change.

He argued that Jamaica, like many other small developing states, has been a minimal emitter of greenhouse gases that have caused global warming, yet these countries bear the pain from the irresponsible and selfish actions of others.

“This is fundamentally unjust and unprincipled,” he said.

“As a major victim of the effects of climate disasters, Jamaica cannot remain docile and just passively assume a mountain of additional climate-related debt that will fetter and postpone our national development for decades to come,” he said.

The opposition leader is also urging the Government to assume a leadership position to encourage the United Nations General Assembly to seek the international court’s opinion on the levels of compensation that major contributors to global overheating may be called upon to pay for loss and damage caused to individual countries by changing weather patterns.

In the matter of loss and damage caused by the climatic effects of global warming, Golding expressed the view that the law and equity are on the side of small, developing states that have not contributed in any significant way to this phenomenon.

“It is the states which are responsible for major fossil fuel emissions who are causing loss and damage from monster hurricanes such as Melissa. As these major states of emission have caused the damage, it is fitting that they should make reparation for it,” Golding said.

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