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Sunday, July 20, 2025

Hurricane Beryl leaves not only a trail of death and destruction

by

Peter Richards
366 days ago
20240718

Hur­ri­cane Beryl not on­ly left a trail of death and de­struc­tion in the Caribbean, but has force­ful­ly reignit­ed the de­bate as to the role de­vel­oped coun­tries have and con­tin­ue to play in warm­ing the earth, re­sult­ing in se­vere storms like Beryl that took less than a week to be­come a cat­e­go­ry 5 hur­ri­cane.

The Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al of the 15-mem­ber re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion group­ing, Cari­com, Dr. Car­la Bar­nett, said it has been a “fright­en­ing start” to what is fore­cast to be a very ac­tive hur­ri­cane sea­son.

“The dev­as­ta­tion to our re­gion has brought sad­ness to every­one,” she said, ac­knowl­edg­ing that “the im­me­di­ate fo­cus has to be on restor­ing nor­mal­cy to our peo­ple and com­mu­ni­ties, and build­ing re­silience as we face the rest of this hur­ri­cane sea­son, and be­yond.”

In Feb­ru­ary this year, glob­al tem­per­a­tures sur­passed 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius and pri­or to the start of the 2024 At­lantic Hur­ri­cane sea­son, the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­gan­i­sa­tion (WTO) warned that this record could be smashed again this year, which will lead to the loss of more lives and liveli­hoods and place na­tion­al sys­tems and ser­vices un­der in­tense pres­sure.

“This pres­sure is dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly borne by Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS). De­spite mak­ing up on­ly three per cent of the world’s land area, SIDS are vi­tal for the whole of hu­man­i­ty and the plan­et we share,” said the Do­mini­can-born, Com­mon­wealth Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al, Pa­tri­cia Scot­land

“They safe­guard 11.5 per cent of the ocean’s ex­clu­sive eco­nom­ic zones, which in­clude sev­en out of 10 coral hotspots and 20 per cent of all ter­res­tri­al bird, plant, and rep­tile species,” she added.

St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines Prime Min­is­ter Dr Ralph Gon­salves, whose Grena­dine is­land of Union took a sev­er bat­ter­ing from the storm, said his mes­sage was sim­ple.

“For the ma­jor emit­ters of green­house gas­es, those who con­tribute most to glob­al warn­ing, you are get­ting a lot of talk­ing, but you are not see­ing a lot of ac­tion – as in mak­ing mon­ey avail­able to small-is­land de­vel­op­ing states and oth­er vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries,” he said, de­scrib­ing the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ences (COP) as mere talk shops.

An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, which was one of nine coun­tries, in­clud­ing Van­u­atu and Tu­valu, that suc­cess­ful­ly brought an ac­tion be­fore the In­ter­na­tion­al Tri­bunal for the Law of the Sea last Sep­tem­ber, was pleased with the “his­toric opin­ion” ren­dered by the court, as the coun­try pre­pared to host the fourth in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence on SIDS to­wards the end of May.

The court said emis­sions from fos­sil fu­els and oth­er plan­et-warm­ing gas­es ab­sorbed by the oceans count as ma­rine pol­lu­tion and that coun­tries have an oblig­a­tion to mit­i­gate their ef­fects on oceans.

The coun­tries had asked the Ham­burg-based court to is­sue an opin­ion on whether car­bon diox­ide emis­sions ab­sorbed by the oceans could be con­sid­ered pol­lu­tion, and if so, what oblig­a­tions coun­tries had to ad­dress the prob­lem.

The court ruled in an ex­pert opin­ion that “an­thro­pogenic GHG emis­sions in­to the at­mos­phere con­sti­tute pol­lu­tion of the ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment” un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­ven­tion on the Law of the Sea (UN­C­LOS).

“It is cer­tain­ly a his­toric opin­ion, one that will in­form fu­ture ac­tion by SIDS and oth­er coun­tries that are con­cerned about cli­mate change and the im­pact of cli­mate change,” Prime Min­is­ter Gas­ton Browne told the Caribbean Me­dia Cor­po­ra­tion (CMC).

The se­nior at­tor­ney at the Cen­ter for In­ter­na­tion­al En­vi­ron­men­tal Law (CIEL), Joie Chowd­hury said, “For the first time, an in­ter­na­tion­al court has recog­nised that the fates of two glob­al com­mons — the oceans and the at­mos­phere —are in­ter­twined and im­per­iled by the cli­mate cri­sis.”

Ocean ecosys­tems cre­ate half the oxy­gen hu­mans breathe and lim­it glob­al warm­ing by ab­sorb­ing much of the car­bon diox­ide emit­ted by hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties. How­ev­er, in­creas­ing emis­sions can warm and acid­i­fy sea wa­ters, harm­ing ma­rine life and ecosys­tems.

But even as the SIDS were bask­ing in the court’s rul­ing, Beryl, which was de­scribed on some oc­ca­sions as a “dan­ger­ous and mon­strous” storm brought the Caribbean re­gion back to re­al­i­ty.

The UN Res­i­dent Co­or­di­na­tor for Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, Si­mon Springett, said the mes­sage com­ing out of the SIDS con­fer­ence in An­tigua was a de­mand for cli­mate jus­tice.

“When we say cli­mate jus­tice, it links to …fi­nanc­ing for both adap­ta­tion and mit­i­ga­tion,” he said, 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”.

The UN Res­i­dent Co-or­di­na­tor for Ja­maica, The Ba­hamas, Bermu­da, The Cay­man Is­lands and the Turks and Caicos Is­lands, Den­nis Zu­lu; said that the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of the small is­land states had been re­in­forced at the SIDS con­fer­ence , 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 an­tic­i­pat­ing 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 is re­quest­ing a re-look 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.

Bar­ba­dos has since 2022, been push­ing for the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to adopt the so-called Bridgetown Ini­tia­tive that tar­gets the fi­nanc­ing prob­lem by cre­at­ing more sources from which de­vel­op­ing coun­tries can bor­row to mit­i­gate and re­cov­er from the cli­mate cri­sis.

Led by the is­land’s Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, the Bridgetown Ini­tia­tive out­lines a set of pro­pos­als aim­ing to ad­dress the spe­cif­ic chal­lenges that coun­tries vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change face and that the in­ter­na­tion­al fi­nan­cial sys­tem is cur­rent­ly fail­ing to solve.”

The ini­tia­tive has opened space for de­bate about the glob­al eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial gov­er­nance in the con­text of the cli­mate emer­gency and an ac­knowl­edge­ment that ma­jor sys­temic changes are re­quired for coun­tries to es­cape their debt, de­vel­op­ment, and cli­mate crises.

The spe­cif­ic mech­a­nism of a dis­as­ter clause rep­re­sents a suc­cess­ful in­no­va­tion on the part of Bar­ba­dos and oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, build­ing on the in­tro­duc­tion of a “hur­ri­cane clause” by Grena­da in 2015 and an out­come of its own skil­ful ne­go­ti­a­tion with the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund (IMF).

Bridgetown pro­pos­es that an au­to­mat­ic debt sus­pen­sion in the case of an emer­gency be in­clud­ed in all lend­ing go­ing for­ward, but this needs to be ap­plied to all debt, retroac­tive­ly and across the board, in or­der to make a re­al dif­fer­ence.

Mot­t­ley has said re­peat­ed­ly that the cli­mate fund­ing avail­able to SIDS amount­ed to just “a drop com­pared to the rest of the fi­nanc­ing go­ing for man made prob­lems like war.

“The prob­lem is that there is a se­ri­ous dis­par­i­ty in the pric­ing of cap­i­tal be­tween the glob­al north and the glob­al south. We there­fore have to start where we can make mean­ing­ful progress and we be­lieve that is in the area of fi­nance,” she added.

St Lu­cia’s Prime Min­is­ter Phillip J Pierre, whose is­land was not as se­vere­ly dev­as­tat­ed by the storm, like his oth­er Wind­ward Is­lands coun­ter­parts, told his cit­i­zens, while they had been spared the “worst for now…you nev­er know when our turn will come”

His Do­mini­can coun­ter­part, Roo­sevelt Sker­rt said the truth of the mat­ter is, many Caribbean peo­ple do not study cli­mate change or think it im­pacts their lives.

“They think it is some­thing politi­cians talk about at in­ter­na­tion­al gath­er­ings that has no im­pact on them.

“Our lamen­ta­tions and our ad­vo­ca­cy to the de­vel­oped world with re­spect to cli­mate change, the fre­quen­cy and the fe­roc­i­ty of these storms are man­i­fest­ing them­selves,” Sker­rit said, adding “cli­mate change is in­deed an ex­is­ten­tial threat to our sur­vival.

“We are just spend­ing mon­ey in the Caribbean re­spond­ing to dis­as­ters. Mon­ey that should be spent on de­vel­op­ment, health and ed­u­ca­tion and in­fra­struc­ture, we ba­si­cal­ly have to keep re­plac­ing in­fra­struc­ture and if you just keep re­plac­ing you will nev­er get to the point that you want to get.

Sker­rit said at a time when every sin­gle coun­try has its own unique chal­lenges, he tries not to get “up­set…or an­gry at the de­vel­oped world, but this is re­al­ly un­fair to us in this part of the world”.

He said com­mit­ments had been made in terms of com­pen­sa­tion by the de­vel­oped coun­tries have not borne fruit and that the sit­u­a­tion now is that re­gion­al coun­tries are forced to spend scarce re­sources every month in deal­ing with cli­mate change events, in­clud­ing droughts, and that “we are no longer wait­ing for every year too pre­pare…for the hur­ri­cane sea­son.

Chair of the Al­liance of Small Is­land States (AO­SIS), Am­bas­sador Fa­tu­mana­va Dr Pa’Olelei Luteru, said, “for decades we have been strain­ing to en­sure the world hears our calls for ur­gent, in­creased am­bi­tion on cli­mate ac­tion.

“We have warned and warned that cli­mate change im­pacts will on­ly get worse. We have plead­ed with big­ger coun­tries to com­mit to the es­sen­tial path­ways so our world can lim­it glob­al warm­ing to 1.5C and avoid the most se­vere im­pacts of cli­mate change.

“Yet, we con­tin­ue to be sac­ri­ficed on the front­lines of a cli­mate cri­sis we did not cause. Our sea tem­per­a­tures grow warmer, en­cour­ag­ing storms to strength­en at alarm­ing speed and in­creas­ing the dire threat to our de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. The in­creased dan­ger is ev­i­dent for the world to see,” he added.

The group­ing of 39 small is­land and low-ly­ing coastal de­vel­op­ing states said it re­fus­es to be the sac­ri­fi­cial lambs pay­ing the price for in­dus­tri­alised coun­tries’ ob­ses­sion with fos­sil fu­el pro­lif­er­a­tion.

“If the world does not stand with SIDS now, it is on­ly a mat­ter of time be­fore we are all lost,” AO­SIS has warned.

The Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) has ac­ti­vat­ed its Re­gion­al Re­sponse Mech­a­nism (RRM), mo­bil­is­ing re­sources such as per­son­nel, equip­ment, and fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance for ter­ri­to­ries most se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the storm.

Through the RRM, which is be­ing op­er­a­tional­ly spear­head­ed by the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA), per­son­nel are now on the ground in im­pact­ed ter­ri­to­ries car­ry­ing out the nec­es­sary phys­i­cal and so­cial needs as­sess­ments to ef­fec­tive­ly sup­port co­or­di­na­tion of the first line re­sponse.

“We are com­mit­ted to pro­vid­ing im­me­di­ate and ef­fec­tive sup­port to the com­mu­ni­ties af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Beryl,” said CDB’s act­ing pres­i­dent, Isaac Solomon.

The An­tigua and Bar­bu­da gov­ern­ment said it would be mak­ing a case at the up­com­ing meet­ing of the COP 29 con­fer­ence to be held in No­vem­ber in Azer­bai­jan, for the Loss and Dam­age Fund to be put in­to im­me­di­ate ef­fect in light of the dev­as­ta­tion caused by Hur­ri­cane Beryl to mul­ti­ple Caribbean coun­tries.

“When we go to Azer­bai­jan in No­vem­ber for the next COP meet­ing, we will be push­ing hard for the cap­i­tal­iza­tion and the op­er­a­tional­iza­tion of the Loss and Dam­age Fund.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, one of the rec­om­men­da­tions that we will be mak­ing to all SIDS is for them to set up a Dis­as­ter Con­tin­gency Fund to be cap­i­talised by pro­ceeds of the Loss and Dam­age Fund to be re­plen­ished from time to time. We should not be in the sit­u­a­tion where we have to have these pledg­ing con­fer­ences and try­ing to de­ter­mine where we are go­ing to get re­sources from to re­cov­er,” Prime Min­is­ter Browne added.

The Loss and Dam­age Fund was de­signed to pro­vide cru­cial sup­port to vul­ner­a­ble na­tions fac­ing the brunt of cli­mate-re­lat­ed chal­lenges. Its scope in­cludes hu­man mo­bil­i­ty, which means coun­tries, com­mu­ni­ties and or­ga­ni­za­tions will be able to ap­ply for mon­ey un­der the Fund to ad­dress hu­man mo­bil­i­ty needs.

For ex­am­ple, in the decade be­tween 2012 and 2022, 5.3 mil­lion new in­ter­nal dis­place­ments caused by dis­as­ters were reg­is­tered in the Caribbean.

Sev­er­al coun­tries have al­ready an­nounced pledges to the Loss and Dam­age Fund, in­clud­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union, Japan, Nor­way, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, the Unit­ed King­dom and the Unit­ed States dur­ing COP 28.

As of Jan­u­ary this year, to­tal com­mit­ments have al­ready amount­ed to US$661 mil­lion.

On Sun­day, the out­go­ing Cari­com chair­man, and Guyana’s Pres­i­dent, Dr. Ir­faan Ali said Hur­ri­cane Beryl had al­so se­vere­ly im­pact­ed the re­gion’s agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor and could af­fect the re­gion­al plan to re­duce the food im­port by by 25 per cent by 2025.

“The ini­tial as­sess­ment is heart-wrench­ing to our farm­ers, the gov­ern­ment and to the peo­ple of these coun­tries. It is heart-wrench­ing be­cause of the tremen­dous in­vest­ment, tremen­dous pol­i­cy com­mit­ment and bud­get sup­port that has been placed on the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor since 2020.

“The in­vest­ment in in­fra­struc­ture, wa­ter sys­tems, tech­nol­o­gy, crop va­ri­ety, farm sup­port, and farm-to-mar­ket in­fra­struc­ture, many of these coun­tries would have lost all of these in­vest­ments.”

Ali said that the ini­tial as­sess­ment of the im­pact of Beryl on the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in­clud­ing the aqua­cul­ture sec­tor “not on­ly shows that we have lost years of hard work and in­vest­ment but the im­me­di­ate dam­ages to in­fra­struc­ture, corps and liveli­hoods from the agri­cul­tur­al and fish­eries sec­tors, is in the tens of mil­lions of dol­lars, that’s a desk­top ini­tial re­view.

He said Grena­da, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, Ja­maica, St Lu­cia, and Bar­ba­dos that were all af­fect­ed by the storm “were on track most­ly in achiev­ing the 25 by 2025 tar­gets set by them­selves.”

He said an ini­tial as­sess­ment is “sad” and that Hur­ri­cane Beryl in some in­stances would have dam­aged or com­plete­ly wiped out the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor.

“So not on­ly is the ini­tial in­vest­ment and cost of dam­age is con­cern­ing to me as lead head in agri­cul­ture but to me it is al­so the long-term in­vest­ment cost to re­build, the in­fra­struc­ture, to find re­sources, to re­cap­i­talise the farm­ers….

“As you know most the farm­ers and fish­er­folk are not in­sured, a lot of the crops dam­aged are long term crops al­so, sev­en years du­ra­tion to ma­tu­ri­ty, to get high yield­ing va­ri­ety, to get in­ter­crop­ping in place whilst rein­vest­ment is placed in those long term crops.”

Ali said that there are a lot of short-medi­um and long-term is­sues in the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in the re­gion that must be ad­dressed in the re­gion and be ad­dressed in a com­pre­hen­sive way.

He said as­sis­tance would be sought from the UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­ga­ni­za­tion (FAO) as well as the In­ter-Amer­i­can In­sti­tute for Co­op­er­a­tion on Agri­cul­ture and and oth­er in­sti­tu­tions.

“I am very con­cerned al­so that this is on­ly the be­gin­ning of this hur­ri­cane sea­son and we have al­ready seen such a ma­jor set­back. This set­back in the to­tal­i­ty of the economies of these coun­tries but I am speak­ing specif­i­cal­ly on the area I have re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for… “I know the tremen­dous im­prove­ment, tremen­dous in­vest­ment and the tremen­dous good­will that this sec­tor has re­ceived from the gov­ern­ment and farm­ers, as a re­sult of ac­tivism and the strong work by dif­fer­ent gov­ern­ment and min­istries and farm­ers, there has been a re­newed vigour in the in­creas­ing the agri­cul­tur­al out­put in all of these is­lands,” Ali lament­ed.


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