Editorial | PM should attend COP30

It would be understandable if Prime Minister Andrew Holness wants to remain at home, to directly oversee his government’s response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Melissa a week ago.

Not only were dozens of people killed, but much of the western third of the island lies in ruin, from the hurricane’s furious winds and floods caused by its driving rain. Some preliminary estimates expect the cost of the hurricane, directly and indirectly, will be upwards of two-thirds of GDP. Recovery will require concentrated action.

But these reeling and compelling considerations, notwithstanding, The Gleaner believes it to be important that Dr Holness, in his capacities as prime minister of Jamaica and chairman of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), attend the November 10-21 COP30 climate conference in Belém, Brazil, to deliver to the world, from that important platform, the story of Jamaica’s devastation from the hurricane, and the fact that extreme weather events like last week’s hurricane, are not aberrations. They are the new normal, consequences of global warming and climate change, that pose existential threats to small island developing states (SIDS), like those in the Caribbean.

The prime minister, in this regard, must be uncompromising about the legal and moral obligation of developed countries – which did most to create the climate crisis – to provide adequate resources to help developing countries adapt to, and build resilience against, the threats of climate change, and to respond to climate-related catastrophes when they occur.

MOBILISE

Dr Holness, as chairman, should mobilise all CARICOM heads of government, including those of associated members, to attend the Belém conference and dramatically coordinate their interventions on the climate questions. They should also partner with the SIDS of the Pacific on this special intervention.

Dr Holness must speak in a manner, and with a clarity, that Jamaica’s and the Caribbean’s friend, the United States, doesn’t miss or mistake the message.

Melissa, which meandered westward along Jamaica’s south coast before bending north-eastward to make landfall near New Hope, St Elizabeth, was among the most intense hurricanes to enter the Caribbean Sea since scientific records of storms have been made. It hit Jamaica as a category five hurricane, packing winds of 185 miles an hour. It left via the north coast as a still power category four storm, with winds at 145 mph. The destruction it wrought was an emphatic tale.

Powerful hurricanes, unfortunately, parade in the Caribbean with increasing frequency. Hurricane Beryl was a category five storm when it moved along Jamaica’s south coast, substantially out at sea, last year. But Beryl’s outer bands were still sufficiently powerful to cause severe destruction in the island’s south-west, especially in the parish of St Elizabeth.

In the past six years, four category five hurricanes have been recorded in the Caribbean, including three in the last two years. The warmer currents in the Atlantic and the Caribbean Sea, the result of an increasingly hotter planet, provide the fuel that feeds these powerful storms.

UNPREDICTABLE WEATHER PATTERN

It isn’t only hurricanes with which SIDS, and other poor developing countries, have to contend. Another new normal is the unpredictable weather pattern – unseasonal and unusually heavy rainfall that causes destructive floods, as well as prolonged droughts.

Rising sea levels, another feature of climate change, are drowning small island states, or eroding coastlines where most of their populations live and the bulk of their economic activity takes place.

It is incontrovertibly good science that the hotter Earth is fundamentally the result of human action – the emission into the atmosphere of greenhouse gases, primarily from burning fossil fuels or released by animals raised for food.

This overwhelmingly happens in developed economies.

The crisis, however, can be reversed by countries becoming faithful to – and, having lost ground, accelerating – their obligations under the Paris climate agreement, aimed at keeping the rise in Earth’s temperature, by the end of the century, to below 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to the 1850s.

The United States – now twice under President Donald Trump – has exited the Paris accord. It has also withdrawn from commitments to developing countries’ climate resilience projects, which are already short of resources.

At Belém, developing countries will take note of whether developed countries are on track, or whether there is a feasible plan for them to deliver their promised US$300 billion a year climate financing (and US$1.3 trillion when private flows are included) by 2035, knowing well that those amounts are inadequate.

Indeed, by most calculations, developing countries will require US$2.5 trillion in climate investment annually by 2030, rising to US$3.3 trillion a year by 2035.

Last month, as they looked back at a decade of the Paris agreement and prepared for Belém, CARICOM leaders lamented the effects of climate change on their region and the inadequacy of resources with which to meet its challenges.

In Jamaica’s case, Hurricane Melissa is testament to the climate crisis and the failure of the countries, who did most to cause it, to fully embrace their obligations for its reversal and help its major victims to adapt to what they will inevitably have to endure.

“Climate change is an urgent crisis of justice, law, and survival,” the leaders said in a statement. “CARICOM pledges leadership but demands that the world meet its responsibilities.”

Prime Minister Holness ought to make that declaration as a leader whose country is a victim of a crisis not of its making.