Politics
Caribbean Forced to choose between climate change impact and MDGs
Black-Layne went on to state, “Starting in 2016, just to get prepared to adapt to climate change, we will need to spend 40 to 50 million East Caribbean dollars a year.” She also said, “Political will is not what we lack here in Antigua and Barbuda. We lack financing and low cost financing which is something that we are now working on aggressively.”
Antigua and Barbuda’s Prime Minister, Baldwin Spencer, who is the present chairman of OECS, boats of an outstanding record on recognizing the importance and taking action on climate change. But he said Antigua and other SIDS face challenges originating from their small size and economies, geographical location, limited infrastructure and high vulnerability to environmental disasters.
Spencer said these challenges are exacerbated by the projected impacts of global climate change coupled with increasing competition for limited resources, which combine to erode the ability of member states to meet their development aspirations on a sustainable basis.
Spencer went on to say, “This reality was manifested between the evening of Dec. 24 and the morning of the Dec. 25, 2013 when severe rains and high winds impacted significantly on the islands of St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and to a lesser extent Dominica, resulting in dozens of lives lost.”
The government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines declared a national level two disaster. In its rapid damage and loss assessment of Jan. 16, it reported total damages and losses of at least 279.3 million East Caribbean dollars, equivalent to 15 percent of the country’s GDP. Most of the damage sustained was in the infrastructure sector, placed at some 97 percent; followed by the social sector, three percent.
St. Lucia’s post disaster needs assessment estimated that the total impact on the economy was at 224.7 million East Caribbean dollars in damage and losses to physical assets. Spencer also said, “While this represents a moderate 6.3 percent of GDP, the severe infrastructure, environmental and social fallout, coupled with the cumulative effect from the recent 2010 battering by hurricane Tomas means that in reality the impact was significant.”
In its most recent fifth assessment report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that it has long been recognized that greenhouse gas emissions from small islands are negligible in relation to global emissions but that the threats of climate change and rising sea levels are very real to small islands.
