Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Re­port­ing from COP30, Brazil

Ja­maica’s Wa­ter, En­vi­ron­ment and Cli­mate Change Min­is­ter Matthew Samu­da took a swing at the new­ly es­tab­lished Loss and Dam­age Fund dur­ing COP30 this week, crit­i­cis­ing what he con­sid­ered its in­ad­e­qua­cy.

Samu­da warned that the mech­a­nism—in­tend­ed to sup­port vul­ner­a­ble na­tions—fell far short of re­al-world needs in the face of es­ca­lat­ing cli­mate dis­as­ters.

Samu­da stressed that the fund’s ini­tial US$800 mil­lion in glob­al com­mit­ments was be­ing over­whelmed. He point­ed to Ja­maica’s es­ti­mat­ed US$10 bil­lion dam­age bill from Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa alone, not­ing the “very clear pic­ture that the Loss and Dam­age Fund is not go­ing to be suf­fi­cient for Ja­maica’s needs.”

Sci­en­tists in­volved in a World Weath­er At­tri­bu­tion study have al­ready de­ter­mined that Melis­sa was six times more like­ly be­cause of cli­mate change, plac­ing Ja­maica among the na­tions most ur­gent­ly in need of sup­port. Yet, de­spite this, the fund­ing gap re­mains vast.

Against this back­drop of in­ad­e­quate fi­nanc­ing, Samu­da al­so high­light­ed what he called an “im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit” with­in the glob­al cli­mate process. While del­e­gates de­bate fu­ture emis­sions tar­gets, Ja­maica is still grap­pling with the cat­a­stroph­ic af­ter­math of the Cat­e­go­ry 5 storm, which rav­aged a third of the is­land.

“We would have seen dam­age to 192,000 build­ings. That means over 100,000 fam­i­lies are im­pact­ed, mean­ing no roof, se­vere dam­age to build­ings—a lot are home­less,” Samu­da stat­ed.

Re­lief ef­forts, in­clud­ing sup­port from T&T, have been cru­cial, but the min­is­ter em­pha­sised the need for long-term re­con­struc­tion sup­plies as the coun­try re­builds.

He added that those who have al­ready made cli­mate com­mit­ments must ho­n­our them. “One point five (de­grees Cel­sius tar­get) is vir­tu­al­ly non-ex­is­tent at this point. We’re very close to that thresh­old. And with the emis­sions still ris­ing, it’s un­like­ly that we will meet that tar­get. We be­lieve that a mas­sive re­ver­sal on some of the im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit is re­quired.”

For Samu­da, the road­block is not a lack of promis­es but a lack of ac­tion, dri­ven by “a lack of po­lit­i­cal will to im­ple­ment the changes that will bring about the emis­sions re­duc­tions.” Melis­sa, he said, ex­posed the true cost of glob­al in­ac­tion.

He ul­ti­mate­ly hoped the hur­ri­cane would serve as a glob­al warn­ing, link­ing its dev­as­ta­tion to a broad­er pat­tern of se­vere weath­er—from ty­phoons in the West Pa­cif­ic to an un­prece­dent­ed tor­na­do in Brazil ear­li­er this month.

To help pro­pel change, Samu­da called for clos­ing the “pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion deficit glob­al­ly”, urg­ing cit­i­zens to un­der­stand how ris­ing sea lev­els and cli­mate change will af­fect their lives. On­ly then, he be­lieves, will the largest emit­ters feel the pub­lic pres­sure need­ed to fi­nal­ly meet their oblig­a­tions.