Two se­nior Unit­ed Na­tions of­fi­cials, Fri­day, said that the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Beryl through the Caribbean this week, un­der­scores the con­cerns of small is­land de­vel­op­ing states (SIDS) that have con­tin­u­ous­ly blamed de­vel­oped coun­tries for the se­vere im­pacts as­so­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change.

The UN Res­i­dent Co­or­di­na­tor for Ja­maica, The Ba­hamas, Bermu­da, The Cay­man Is­lands and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands, Den­nis Zu­lu; and Si­mon Springett, the UN Res­i­dent Co­or­di­na­tor for Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, told re­porters that they were both in at­ten­dance at the fourth in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on SIDS, where the de­vel­op­ing coun­tries raised the is­sue as they have done at oth­er in­ter­na­tion­al gath­er­ings be­fore.

“Den­nis and I were both for­tu­nate to at­tend the …con­fer­ence held in An­tigua and Bar­bu­da at the end of May and clear­ly these were the mes­sages that were com­ing out, a re­al call and de­mand for cli­mate jus­tice,” Springett told a vir­tu­al news con­fer­ence.

He told re­porters that “when we say cli­mate jus­tice, it links to …fi­nanc­ing for both adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion,” adding that the Grena­da gov­ern­ment “has been try­ing for a very long time …to build some re­silience and now this gets wipe out.

“These coun­tries all have a very high GDP (gross do­mes­tic prod­uct) to debt ra­tio and re­con­struc­tion…quite frankly does not get done on grant based fi­nanc­ing and these gov­ern­ments are not able to take loans at con­ces­sion­al rates”.

Springett said events like Hur­ri­cane Beryl that left a trail of death and dev­as­ta­tion put the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of these Caribbean coun­tries “back by decades.

‘It has such a ma­jor im­pact on their eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment,” he said, not­ing that a new sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment goal (SDG) re­port re­leased re­cent­ly showed “lim­it­ed progress and there is a lot of work to be done”.

For his part, Zu­lu told re­porters that the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the small is­land states had been re­in­forced at the SIDS con­fer­ence in An­tigua, adding “the fact that most of them are deemed to be high in­come coun­tries …deal­ing with re­con­struc­tion is ob­vi­ous­ly a chal­lenge.

“If you have as we are an­tic­i­pat­ting this year,a min­i­mum of 20 hur­ri­canes com­ing and this lead to huge dev­as­ta­tion of in­fra­struc­ture, the re­sources, I mean the …fis­cal space these coun­tries have is lim­it­ed” in terms of be­ing able to re­spond and re­act.

‘So as some coun­tries…like Bar­ba­dos, where the Prime Min­is­ter (Mia Mottey) is re­quest­ing a relook of the in­ter­na­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture to be able to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of Caribbean states in their ac­cess­ing of con­ces­sion­al grants is very im­por­tant.

“But al­so when you look at the fact that these (hur­ri­canes) hap­pen of­ten and a lot of these coun­tries are ba­si­cal­ly in debt be­cause they have to pay for the same bridge many times over, the fact you con­struct one day and it is de­stroyed the next year or the next month…this brings a huge bur­den on their fi­nan­cial abil­i­ty to do that.”

Zu­lu said what the SIDS con­fer­ence high­light­ed was that “ these were is­sues in cli­mate change that im­pacts this part of the world very sig­nif­i­cant­ly and there­fore it is a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for all to be able to take care in what we do giv­en the im­pact to this re­gion which may not be ev­i­dent in oth­er parts of the world”.

The Grena­da gov­ern­ment has es­tab­lished a Hur­ri­cane Beryl Dis­as­ter Re­lief Fund to re­ceive fi­nan­cial do­na­tions in sup­port of re­lief and re­cov­ery ef­forts.

Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell said ear­li­er this week that Grena­da had writ­ten to fi­nan­cial agen­cies and mul­ti­lat­er­al part­ners re­quest­ing that the debt pay­ment sus­pen­sion clause in sev­er­al loan agree­ments be trig­gered be­cause of the dev­as­ta­tion on the coun­try by Hur­ri­cane Beryl ear­li­er this week.

In 2022, the na­tion­al debt of Grena­da amount­ed to an es­ti­mat­ed US$0.77 bil­lion.

“The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance has al­ready writ­ten to some of our mul­ti­lat­er­al part­ners to in­di­cate to them that this cat­a­stroph­ic event has hap­pened and to trig­ger our debt sus­pen­sion clause in some of these agree­ments,” Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell told a news con­fer­ence.

Fol­low­ing the pas­sage of Hur­ri­cane Ivan in 2004, Grena­da had ad­vo­cat­ed and suc­cess­ful­ly cam­paigned for a debt sus­pen­sion to be in­clud­ed in all new loan agree­ments.

The clause is trig­gered when­ev­er the coun­try is ex­pe­ri­enc­ing haz­ards from nat­ur­al dis­as­ters such as hur­ri­canes, earth­quakes or a health pan­dem­ic. The last time Grena­da re­quest­ed a trig­ger­ing of that clause was in 2020 when COVID-19 was de­clared a pan­dem­ic.

Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell said that the pas­sage of hur­ri­cane Beryl is hav­ing both fis­cal and so­cial im­pacts on the econ­o­my and right now the coun­try will need sig­nif­i­cant re­sources.

He told re­porters that the clean up ex­er­cise alone will run in­to the “tens of mil­lions of dol­lars,” while an­nounc­ing there will be a na­tion­al clean up on the week­end.

Mitchell ac­knowl­edged that “it is go­ing to be a mam­moth task to re­build Grena­da, Car­ri­a­cou and Pe­tite Mar­tinique”.

On Thurs­day night as he ad­dressed the na­tion, Do­mini­ca’s Prime Min­is­ter Roo­sevelt Sker­rit said the truth of the mat­ter is, giv­en the changes in glob­al cli­mate, it is not a mat­ter of ‘if’ a storm of that mag­ni­tude hits us again, but, when”.

“We are just at the be­gin­ning of this hur­ri­cane sea­son. In fact, hur­ri­cane Beryl was the ear­li­est ever cat­e­go­ry 4 storm to de­vel­op. The in­creas­ing num­ber of hur­ri­canes and their in­creas­ing fe­roc­i­ty do not just cause fear, dam­age, de­struc­tion and loss of life, but, they are al­so mak­ing life more ex­pen­sive.

“My mes­sage to you is this: the Caribbean ur­gent­ly needs cli­mate fi­nanc­ing re­forms. We need re­sources that will not just help us re­build af­ter storms, but, re­sources that will al­low our com­mu­ni­ties to build more re­silient in­fra­struc­ture, roads, elec­tric­i­ty, wa­ter and homes. “

Sker­rit said that this fi­nanc­ing must al­so be used to ad­dress the in­sur­ance con­cerns that are caus­ing the cost of liv­ing to go up.

He said as the Prime Min­is­ter of Do­mini­ca,” I will con­tin­ue to push for the coun­tries that are sig­na­to­ries to glob­al agree­ments like the Paris Ac­cord to demon­strate a col­lec­tive will to ad­dress cli­mate change.

“Cli­mate change is a glob­al prob­lem that re­quires co­or­di­nat­ed in­ter­na­tion­al ef­forts to ad­dress its dis­pro­por­tion­ate im­pact on the world’s most vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties. Do­mini­ca will per­sist in ad­vo­cat­ing on be­half of our­selves and our Caribbean neigh­bors, who are on the front­lines of the cli­mate change cri­sis”.

Both Springett and Zu­lu spoke of the emo­tion­al and fi­nan­cial toll the hur­ri­cane has had on the lives of the peo­ple in the coun­tries that have so far been af­fect­ed.

“For Ja­maica, the fact that we have not a hur­ri­cane in a while now, hav­ing one so ear­ly in the sea­son has a lot of ef­fect on the emo­tion­al parts of the in­di­vid­u­als in the coun­try. But I think what we see again is this spir­it of re­silience among the pop­u­la­tion of Ja­maica and be­ing able to over­come scuh tragedy,” said Zu­lu.

He said the spir­it of uni­ty and be­ing able to help each oth­er out has al­so helped “be­cause you are see­ing the spir­it of com­raderie among neigh­bours and help­ing each oth­er out.

“But in terms of tourism , tourism was hit es­pe­cial­ly with the clos­ing of the air­ports and Ja­maicans quick­ly moved to­wards open­ing up their air­ports….and the ma­jor one in Mon­tego Bay which ac­counts for a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of ar­rivals, it is up and run­ning.”

He said pre­lim­i­nary re­ports sug­gest that not much dam­age was done to the ho­tel and re­sort plans on the is­land “so that is re­al­ly a pos­i­tive.

‘The air­lines are com­ing in …Ja­maica is up and run­ning if I may say that,” Zu­lu told re­porters.

Springett said the na­ture of hur­ri­canes is that they de­vel­op over the “course of days and some­times weeks” and this could have an emo­tion­al toll on peo­ple.

“Some of the is­land…Car­ri­a­cou has not been hit by a ma­jor storm, I be­lieve since 1955,” he said, adding “ we need to al­ways con­tin­ue to work dili­gent­ly to re­al­ly push the im­por­tance of hav­ing the evac­u­a­tions…

‘These are tru­ly trau­mat­ic events, even when these events hit a por­tion of a na­tion, it re­al­ly af­fects deeply in­to the soul of the pop­u­la­tion. It is dif­fi­cult to get sup­port out, it is dif­fi­cult to help and even non af­fect­ed coun­tries feel help­less …

“For tourism clear­ly, this is go­ing to be a ma­jor im­pact par­tic­u­lar­ly on those small­er is­lands in the Grenadines and the north of Grena­da. For­tu­nate­ly, the ma­jor in­fra­struc­tures like air­ports and ports were not huge­ly dam­age and hope­ful­ly tourist wont give up on vis­it­ing the is­lands,” he added.

Mean­while, the UN As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al and UNDP Re­gion­al Di­rec­tor for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, Michelle Muschett, said “we are deeply sad­dened by the dev­as­tat­ing loss of life, the im­pact on liveli­hood and

in­fra­struc­tures as well as the suf­fer­ing caused to com­mu­ni­ties by this hur­ri­cane.

“UNDP re­mains in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Caribbean peo­ple, and we stand ready to sup­port the gov­ern­ments and com­mu­ni­ties with im­me­di­ate crit­i­cal needs as they be­gin to re­cov­er from this event.

“The UNDP Mul­ti Coun­try Of­fice (MCO) in Ja­maica re­mains in touch with na­tion­al au­thor­i­ties to as­cer­tain im­me­di­ate needs and to de­ploy tech­ni­cal, fi­nan­cial and in-kind re­sources for dis­as­ter re­sponse and re­cov­ery in co­op­er­a­tion with our sis­ter UN agen­cies and oth­er re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners,” she said.

UNDP Res­i­dent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive for Ja­maica, Bermu­da, Be­lize, Cay­man Is­lands, The Ba­hamas and Turks and Caicos Is­lands, Kis­han Kho­day, said be­yond im­me­di­ate needs, UNDP re­mains avail­able to help ad­vance cli­mate adap­ta­tion pro­gram­ming and dis­as­ter risk and re­silience in­ter­ven­tions in an era of in­creas­ing­ly fre­quent and in­tense storm sys­tems.

He said al­so stands ready to de­ploy per­son­nel to sup­port na­tion­al and re­gion­al emer­gency man­age­ment au­thor­i­ties in launch­ing re­lief and re­cov­ery ef­forts and to this end, con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the path of the hur­ri­cane as it ap­pears on track to im­pact Be­lize.

Pre­lim­i­nary re­ports from Ja­maica in­di­cate that two per­sons are dead, with wide­spread dam­age to build­ings and in­fra­struc­ture, es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al ar­eas. Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions and elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply have al­so been sig­nif­i­cant­ly im­pact­ed, af­fect­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands. In the Cay­man Is­lands, as­sess­ments are still un­der­way to de­ter­mine the scale of the im­pact.

Beryl is the sec­ond named storm of the 2024 At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son – which was fore­cast to be a very ac­tive one. Ocean tem­per­a­tures, al­ready el­e­vat­ed due to cli­mate vari­abil­i­ty and change, have been fur­ther in­creased by the 2023-24 El Niño phe­nom­e­non.

The UNDP said it will con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the re­gion in pre­ven­tion, pre­pared­ness, and re­cov­ery. UNDP’s mis­sion glob­al­ly and in the Caribbean is to end pover­ty, in­equal­i­ty and ex­clu­sion, and scale up ac­tion on cli­mate change and ecosys­tems, while build­ing re­silience to cri­sis, it added.