United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday pledged to make sure that the international community fully recognize that the intensity and multiplications of hurricanes in the Caribbean this season is not an accident.
“It is the result of climate change,” Guterres said at a press conference in Dominica.
“I see sometimes people saying, well, we always have hurricanes, we always had storms, or we always had droughts. It is true. But what we never had is this intensity, this frequency and these devastating impacts. According to the research done by the World Meteorological Organization in the last 30 years, we have seen triple the number of natural disasters and five times more the economic damage caused by them. And obviously, it’s climate change that is behind that,” the UN Secretary-General added.
Gueterres, who visited Barbuda a day earlier, said the destruction of Dominica was much worse.
“In Barbuda, I could see also most of the houses destroyed, Barbuda is a small island linked to Antigua and Antigua can support Barbuda. But your country is the whole country that’s been decimated and it’s been in every community I see,” he said.
“Today there is the scientific proof of the link between climate change and the intensity of these hurricanes, and it is linked to the increased temperature of the water in the oceans. When a hurricane moves through the ocean, as the water is warmer, there is more evaporation, there is more vapor in the air, rains in general, rainstorms tend to be much heavier, but the hurricane, instead of dissipating, is fueled by moving over the ocean because of the increase in the temperature of the water and that is why we see hurricanes starting with one level and going up to level 5 and that’s why we see such devastating impacts.”
“Today, there is a scientific proof that climate change is largely responsible for this dramatic increase in the intensity and devastation caused by the hurricanes in the Caribbean and by many other phenomena around the world,” he added.
Gueterres praised the wisdom with which Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has claimed that, not only he wants the country to be reconstructed, but he wants the country to become the first entirely climate resilient country in the world.
“I would say the first green climate resilient country in the world because that is what I heard in the different meetings we had. In whatever we will be able to do, the United Nations is entirely at your side,” he said.
“I am proud that my colleagues are doing their best but our voice will be together with your voice claiming for the world to assume its responsibilities in relation to climate change for the Paris Agreement to be implemented and for increased ambition to be put in place and at the same time for the adequate financial instruments to be created and with easy access in order for your reconstruction.”
