Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

The Unit­ed Na­tions has launched a mil­lion-dol­lar re­sponse plan in the wake of Hur­ri­cane Beryl’s de­struc­tive path through Grena­da and St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

The Re­gion­al Overview and Re­sponse Plan seeks $5 mil­lion for Grena­da and $4 mil­lion for St Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Beryl bat­tered the Caribbean and beamed a light on cli­mate change. High sea sur­face tem­per­a­tures are now be­lieved to be among the rea­sons why the hur­ri­cane was un­prece­dent­ed and dev­as­tat­ing.

How­ev­er, for the Prime Min­is­ter of St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Dr Ralph Gon­salves, cli­mate change dri­ven by burn­ing fos­sil fu­els could be the be­gin­ning of the end.

“Hu­man­i­ty as we know it will not be there for our chil­dren, our grand­chil­dren, and our great-grand­chil­dren. This is a sober­ing mo­ment,” he said.

Dur­ing a me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, for the launch of the Unit­ed Na­tion’s $9 mil­lion re­sponse plan, Dr Gon­salves said pick­ing up the pieces will not be easy.

“The dam­age that Beryl has caused to St Vin­cent and the Grenadines will run in­to hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars.”

Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell stat­ed that over 10,000 cit­i­zens in the tri-is­land state were ei­ther home­less or had their homes dam­aged. He said that while there was an ur­gent need for funds, food sup­plies ap­peared more crit­i­cal.

“In the case of Car­ri­a­cou and Pe­tite Mar­tinique, make no doubt about it. We are go­ing to have to feed the pop­u­la­tion for the next six months. There is no econ­o­my. The pic­tures don’t tell you the words. If you go on the is­land, there is ab­solute­ly no veg­e­ta­tion; every­thing has been de­stroyed, so even the an­i­mals that are there are dy­ing be­cause there is no grass for them to graze and there is no an­i­mal feed.”

Mitchell al­so en­cour­aged lenders to re­lax fi­nanc­ing reg­u­la­tions as is­land lead­ers seek to re­cov­er from Beryl’s im­pact.

“We are here ask­ing for grants and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance, not on a loan ba­sis, be­cause what we see hap­pen­ing here is no fault of ours. You may say that in the best-case sce­nario, it is no fault of any­one or be ac­cept­ing of re­al­i­ty, and we are say­ing it is the fault of the cli­mate cri­sis and those who en­gi­neered the cli­mate cri­sis be­cause of how their economies are built.”

Both lead­ers con­tend­ed that their na­tions could not bear the blow of an­oth­er nat­ur­al dis­as­ter with sev­er­al more months of the hur­ri­cane sea­son still to go.