Barbados says the Caribbean is highly vulnerable to climate-related hazards and building climate resilience must be seen as a vehicle through which the region might pursue and achieve much of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
“The Caribbean region is highly vulnerable to climate-related hazards such as tropical storms and hurricanes, floods, droughts and heat waves. Climate change exacerbates these pre-existing hazards and is already affecting all facets of life in our respective countries,” Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Minister Dr. Jerome Walcott, told delegates attending the Climate Resilience Group/Network of the Marrakech Partnership on Global Climate Action.
The event is part of the Katowice Climate Change Conference that includes the 24th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 24) that ends on December 14.
Walcott said the effects of climate change are wreaking havoc on Caribbean economies, by increasing the risks to human health and social welfare, food security, ecosystems and natural resources.
“Climate change significantly endangers the prospect of our achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and targets adopted by the global community in 2015. It is therefore absolutely necessary that we address the matter of resilience to the sequelae of climate change in planning for our future,” Walcott said.
Walcott said resilience is “the ability of people, households, communities, countries and systems to mitigate, adapt to and recover from shocks in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth” adding it is critical for small island developing states to have climate resilient plans in place.
He told the conference that in December 2017, regional leaders launched the Caribbean Climate-smart Coalition.
“One of the critical priorities of this public-private initiative is strengthening the capacity of Caribbean countries to plan and implement long-term resilience strategies, with the aim of transforming the Caribbean region into the world’s first ‘climate-smart’ zone.”
Citing the recent special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which speaks about the possible impacts of global warming reaching 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, Walcott said weather events such as Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 were becoming the new normal, and as a result no one was safe.
He said most small island developing states did not “have the latitude to retreat to higher ground, or possess the wherewithal to respond and recover with the required level of urgency in the aftermath of a catastrophic event.
“As a consequence of our known vulnerabilities, enhancing resilience to climate change features prominently in the Nationally Determined Contributions, which outline efforts to decarbonize our economies in the pursuit of the objective of climate change of developing countries.”
Walcott told the conference that developing countries are in need of strengthened capacity to anticipate climate risks, to absorb them, “and to reshape our development pathways so that economic growth can be maintained.
“Ultimately, sustainable development for developing countries will be near impossible without addressing climate change and bolstering climate resilience,” he added.
