A warn­ing by se­nior Caribbean in­ter­na­tion­al diplo­mat Sir Ronald Sanders, push­es the re­gion, its lead­ers, in­sti­tu­tions and peo­ple to come to terms with the re­al­i­ty that they alone are pri­mar­i­ly re­spon­si­ble for their con­tin­ued and vi­able ex­is­tence on plan­et Earth.

“The time for plead­ing with the in­dus­tri­al world has passed, col­lec­tive ac­tion must de­fine the re­gion’s re­sponse to the cli­mate change cri­sis,” states Sir Ronald in an opin­ion col­umn car­ried in yes­ter­day’s Busi­ness Guardian.

De­vel­op­ing coun­tries fac­ing the cli­mate cri­sis must recog­nise that notwith­stand­ing many grandiose promis­es made by the in­dus­tri­al world at in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences to sup­port in quan­ti­ty, qual­i­ty and tim­ing an­ti-cli­mate change mea­sures in the de­vel­op­ing world, those promis­es have not been forth­com­ing af­ter the del­e­gates walk out of the con­fer­ences.

The re­al­i­ty of the Caribbean is­land-na­tions, even con­ti­nen­tal Guyana with low shore­lines, is the ex­po­sure which ex­ists to in­un­da­tion by ris­ing flood­wa­ters, hur­ri­canes, droughts and ex­treme­ly high tem­per­a­tures amongst oth­er cli­mate-en­gen­dered dis­as­ters. Many are bio­di­ver­si­ty hotspots and ex­pe­ri­ence a dis­pro­por­tion­ate im­pact of nat­ur­al haz­ards as­so­ci­at­ed with cli­mate change, warns the UN.

Fur­ther, and to com­pli­cate the dan­gers posed by ge­og­ra­phy, “small na­tions such as those in the re­gion have nar­row re­source bases, are heav­i­ly de­pen­dent on ex­ter­nal trade in which they are dis­ad­van­taged by the na­ture and rules of trade, ex­oge­nous eco­nom­ic shocks, eco­nom­ic volatil­i­ty, and lim­it­ed ac­cess to de­vel­op­ment fi­nance,” states the Sixth Re­port of the In­ter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change of the Unit­ed Na­tions.

Sir Ronald’s en­cour­age­ment is based on his at­ten­dance at in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences and the ex­pe­ri­ence of du­plic­i­ty be­tween what was com­mit­ted to by the in­dus­tri­al world and their reneg­ing on those agree­ments post-con­fer­ence.

At its core, the chal­lenge laid out be­fore the Caribbean and oth­er small is­land states by the se­nior re­gion­al diplo­mat is one for the group­ing and the in­di­vid­ual coun­tries to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty which came with po­lit­i­cal in­de­pen­dence. Yes, the re­al­i­ty is that no small is­land state, even con­ti­nen­tal na­tions, can ex­ist in iso­la­tion from the rest of the world. In­evitably though, there are spe­cial civil­i­sa­tion­al prob­lems which can­not be left to the do­ing of oth­er coun­tries.

Ac­ces­sion to in­de­pen­dence re­quires that the bur­dens of de­vel­op­ment and in the in­stance of cli­mate change, must be shoul­dered by the cit­i­zens of in­di­vid­ual coun­tries.

Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley has emerged as spokesper­son at in­ter­na­tion­al are­nas for Cari­com; and has in­deed been do­ing a good job of say­ing frankly to the pow­er­ful na­tions what has to be said. How­ev­er, even if em­bar­rassed for a mo­ment, they soon re­gain equi­lib­ri­um and reen­gage in dam­ag­ing prac­tices and ig­nore com­mit­ments made to as­sist those coun­tries af­fect­ed by their harm­ful en­vi­ron­men­tal prac­tices.

In T&T, the an­nu­al flood­ing dis­as­ters must be coun­tered through pro­grammes of in­for­ma­tion to re­duce and even elim­i­nate clog­ging of wa­ter­ways, greater ef­forts at col­lec­tion, pu­rifi­ca­tion and stor­age of wa­ter and the util­i­sa­tion of nat­ur­al sources of en­er­gy. Our gross delin­quen­cy, which is re­spon­si­ble for the set­ting and en­cour­ag­ing of for­est fires that burn away flo­ra, with the en­su­ing ex­po­sure of valu­able top­soil to dis­in­te­gra­tion and con­se­quent low­er lev­els of agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, al­so needs to be pre­vent­ed. These cli­mate dis­as­ters can all be pre­vent­ed by a con­scious ef­fort at ac­knowl­edg­ing that we are on our own with­out mean­ing­ful as­sis­tance from the rich, de­vel­oped in­dus­tri­al world.