Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

While it is the opin­ion of many that the an­nu­al Con­fer­ence of the Par­ties is just idle talk, it still serves as a plat­form for the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS) to voice their con­cerns and de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty for the cli­mate cri­sis. Yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia spoke with Una­May Gor­don, who func­tions in many roles in the re­gion—Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Change Cen­tre (CC­C­CC) Ad­vi­sor, a mem­ber of the Be­lize del­e­ga­tion for COP30, and co-fa­cil­i­ta­tor for the agri­cul­ture dis­cus­sions on be­half of Be­lize. She af­firmed, “I was at COP 6, which was my first COP, and I can say that progress has been made. Al­so, we can say old talk, but if we are not at the ta­ble fight­ing for what we are fight­ing for, then we al­low the de­ci­sions to be made for us, and the de­ci­sions are not al­ways in our favour.”

Gor­don as­sert­ed that the Caribbean, and Small Is­land States on the whole, must be present at these dis­cus­sions to shape the way for­ward. Al­so, the Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) may be the most hon­est doc­u­ments that we have in the process. Gor­don be­lieves that the 1.5-de­gree agree­ment is still rea­son­able and the Caribbean has to ‘hold the line’.

When asked if the Caribbean can ben­e­fit from Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa as a case study, Gor­don agreed, “Melis­sa pro­vides an ex­cep­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ty for the loss of dam­age funds to be­come im­me­di­ate­ly op­er­a­tionalised. We don’t need any­thing to say that there has been loss­es and dam­ages in Ja­maica. Melis­sa gave us a blue­print, and we (Small Is­land States) need to act on it.”

Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa has shown that decades of de­vel­op­ment can be de­mol­ished by one sig­nif­i­cant dis­as­ter, es­pe­cial­ly se­vere weath­er events. Gor­don said that some com­mu­ni­ties were de­stroyed by Beryl in 2024, and this year, they were wiped out again by Melis­sa. The so­lu­tion is to re­build with re­silience in mind, but it is cost­ly, and many Small Is­land States are al­ready in debt.

Ac­cord­ing to Gor­don, “It’s (Melis­sa) a clear ex­am­ple of a lack of mit­i­ga­tion on the part of the emit­ters (de­vel­oped coun­tries) and then the brunt of the im­pact is felt in SIDS. We need bal­ance here.”

While at­ten­tion on Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa and its af­ter­math grad­u­al­ly fades in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, it is the sub­ject of many dis­cus­sions at COP30 and a prime ex­am­ple of the dis­con­nect be­tween the top emit­ters and the coun­tries most vul­ner­a­ble to the ef­fects of cli­mate change.