Fresh impetus in fight against climate emergency in the Caribbean

Jan 05, 2020 News

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By Nelson A. King

UNITED NATIONS (CMC) –The United Nations has hailed what it describes as “fresh impetus” in the fight against the climate emergency that has had disproportionate, negative effect on the Caribbean as well as other countries.
The COP25 climate conference in Madrid, in December, was regarded as the next milestone on the long journey to a sustainable global economy and many commentators and activists “saw the conference as a disappointment, as no overall consensus was reached on the key issue of increased climate change.”
But UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres refused to see COP25 (The United Nations Climate Change Conference) as a defeat, vowing that “we must not give up, and I will not give up.” He said there were several signs of progress, and growing momentum for change.
The European Union, for example, committed to carbon neutrality by 2050, and that 73 nations announced that they will submit an enhanced climate action plan, or Nationally Determined Contribution.
“A groundswell of ambition for a cleaner economy was also evident at a regional and local level,” the “Decade in Review said, stating that 14 regions, 398 cities, 786 businesses and 16 investors are working towards achieving net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050.
At COP25, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) described Latin America and the Caribbean as “a laboratory for climate action.
“From hurricanes pounding islands to drought destroying crops across Central America, and erratic rain patterns affecting the livelihoods of indigenous communities living on Andean slopes, climate-related challenges in Latin America and the Caribbean are as diverse as are the region’s landscapes,” the UN said.
“Climate change is exacerbating many of these, with higher temperatures, delayed rainy seasons, rainfall irregularity, and increasingly frequent and extreme weather events,” it added.
But it is not just about problems, according to Kathryn Milliken, WFP’s Climate Change Advisor.
“The Latin American and Caribbean region offers exciting opportunities to test and scale up a wide range of solutions to address climate-related issues. With many countries having middle-income status and greater public-private capacities than in most of the places where we work, this region can be a laboratory for a new way for WFP and partners to work,” she said.
WFP said one such way is promoting the integration of climate-risk financing into governments’ social-protection systems.
“Climate-risk finance tools are critical in ensuring that when a climatic event is either forecast or triggered by reliable weather information, vulnerable people can receive rapid support to withstand or recover from the shock,” it said.
In the Caribbean, Milliken said recent events, including Category 5 Hurricane Dorian, which hovered over parts of Grand Bahama for two days, “have shown how climate change is increasing the threats to the lives and livelihoods of poor and vulnerable people.
“Here, making national social-protection mechanisms more shock-responsive and adaptive can help get emergency assistance to large populations more quickly, reducing the impact of disasters and protecting against loss to development gains,” she said.
WFP said its strategy to achieve this includes advocating with the governments of Caribbean small island states to adopt a mix of risk financing that respond to the frequency and magnitude of climate-related disasters and other risks.
It also involves testing how certain risk-finance tools can be connected to national social-protection schemes, “so that rapid response funds can be provided to vulnerable people in the event of a disaster,” WFP said.
Working with communities and authorities at the national and local level, WFP said it has been strengthening adaptive capacities to this changing climate.
“The climate emergency is here, and vulnerable people in Latin American and the Caribbean are feeling the brunt of the impacts of climate variability and change. WFP is looking to address the urgency in this region, finding solutions that will get support to these populations at the scale needed,” Milliken said.
Stating that it should be no surprise to anyone that Climate Change and its catastrophic consequences are foremost on his mind, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne, in late September, told the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly Debate that his country was still suffering the damaging consequences of Hurricane Irma two years on.
“We know and live the terrible reality of Climate Change,” Browne said. “Those who continue to deny its existence, cannot gainsay the massive destruction to property and loss of life that so glaringly stare them in the face year after year.
“No one can repudiate the awful scenes – flashed globally, across television screens and social media – of the decimation of the Abaco Islands and Grand Bahama, in The Bahamas Island chain,” he added. “The lament of the people of The Bahamas, as the entire nation suffered in hopelessness, should echo in the ears of all who feel any compassion for their fellow man.”
Browne said the consequences of Climate Change have become “our annual Hiroshima – the effects, are as horrific as any battle ground and as devastating and long-lasting as an atomic bomb.
“But in this war that we did not start, that we do not wage, and that we do not want, the peoples of small island states have no means to defend themselves, and little means to recover,” he said. “We are simply the hapless victims of those governments whose destructive climate policies are killing small island states, with brutal storm, after brutal storm; each more destructive than the last.”
During September’s General Assembly Debate, St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph E. Gonsalves also blamed the rapid acceleration of Climate Change on the “menacing manifestation of a failed multilateralism.”
“Faced with a common threat, ample warning, and overwhelming scientific consensus on the past causes, future impacts and present solutions, the international community has dithered endlessly, and impotently,” Gonsalves said. “As emissions continue to increase, legally-binding limits are recast as voluntary targets, and the worst offenders hypocritically highlight the specks of pollution in others’ eyes, to distract from the beam in their own.
“At the same time, many more needlessly suffer and die while indisputably urgent global action is intentionally thwarted by selfish short-termists and convenient climate-deniers,” he added.
Gonsalves said the Debate was being conducted in the wake of “indescribable horror” in the Bahamas, “whose citizens and residents were terrorized by Hurricane Dorian.”
He noted that weeks after the storm, hundreds remained missing.
“In recent UN gatherings, this tale has become sickeningly familiar. Only the names and locations have changed. Yet, we cannot allow the steady drumbeat of climate catastrophes to become background noise to our annual gatherings.
“We must remain attuned to the urgency of vulnerable states in the path of cataclysmic storm. Every year, the ferocity of these hurricanes increases. Every year, island states wait with bated breath, and hope against hope that increasingly frequent storms will thread their way between our countries without incident.
“And every year that we are spared, we grimly acknowledge that our luck will not hold indefinitely,” Gonsalves added.
Guterres said “injecting new momentum into the fight against the climate crisis, as a host of hard-hitting reports from several authoritative sources – including the UN Environment Program, World Meteorological Organization, UN climate change body UNFCCC, and Intergovernmental Planet on Climate Change – drove home the stark message that the world is facing a global environmental catastrophe, unless significant cuts are made to global greenhouse gas emissions.”
Guterres’s “steady drumbeat of pressure” culminated is his Climate Action Summit at UN Headquarters in New York in September, which he trailed earlier in the year by warning world leaders that he expected them to arrive with concrete plans for cutting emissions, rather than “beautiful speeches”.
The UN in its “Decade in Review,” said that the conference could be deemed a success, with many countries announcing increased action to deal with the climate crisis, above and beyond commitments made in the key Paris climate agreement in 2015.
Several nations signalled a move away from fossil fuels and made financial pledges to help developing countries, such as those in the Caribbean, deal with the effects of climate change. Major businesses announced climate targets across their operations, and that over 2,000 cities committed to placing climate risk at the center of their decision-making.
However, that attention was dominated by “the furious and impassioned” speech of 16-year-old activist Greta Thunberg, who blasted world leaders: “You are failing us, but the young people are starting to understand your betrayal. The eyes of all future generations are upon you; and, if you choose to fail us, I say, we will never forgive you.”
Thunberg’s anger was welcomed by the Secretary-General, who closed the conference by acknowledging the “boost in momentum, cooperation and ambition”, but also warning that “we have a long way to go”.

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