A panoramic view of the Castries Harbour, Castries, Saint Lucia: where smart borrowing and strategic reforms are reshaping the island’s economic future. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS

By Alison Kentish
CASTRIES, Saint Lucia, Aug 5 2025 (IPS)

The beauty of the majestic Piton mountains, vibrant culture, dazzling beaches and lush landscapes of Saint Lucia are invaluable assets. The country also takes pride in having two Nobel laureates, which is remarkable for a nation with a population of over 180,000.

However, as is true for many other small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean, the picture of economic stability is not as rosy.

These countries also face a complex web of challenges that include intensifying climate impacts, economic volatility, external shocks, and the vagaries of global markets. These challenges exacerbate the difficulties of finding ways to finance much-needed sustainable development projects and resilience-building.

In 2020, the country’s public debt-to-GDP ratio was over 90 percent, due in part to the deleterious effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and by 2024, this ratio was reduced to 74.5 percent. This dramatic reduction has freed up funds, which can now be invested in projects that spur growth and enrich the lives of Saint Lucians.

Strong recovery is on the horizon

For Saint Lucia, prudent debt management is proving to be a powerful catalyst for growth and shared prosperity. The island’s experience is demonstrating how tailored reforms, technology adoption and capacity building can reduce their debt burden and enable sustainable management of their public finances.

The government is taking even bolder steps for fiscal stability, with technical support from the Commonwealth Secretariat.

In March 2024, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the Ministry of Finance collaborated to develop a reform plan for the country, which started with a rigorous and comprehensive review of the public borrowing framework. Saint Lucia is now implementing this framework, which has recommended targeted and practical interventions.

Vera John-Emmanuel, Deputy Director of Finance in the Debt and Investment Management Unit in Saint Lucia’s Ministry of Finance, said, “The assessment helped pinpoint systemic strengths and weaknesses ranging from legislative gaps to coordination issues between debt management functions.

Modernising for sustainable growth

A significant outcome of the technical assistance provided by the Commonwealth team was the review of Saint Lucia’s Public Debt Management Act, which has now been passed. The revised legislation now provides a stronger legal framework for debt operations and has laid the groundwork for publishing a formal debt management strategy and annual debt reports, enhancing transparency and accountability.

Technology has also played a pivotal role in modernising Saint Lucia’s debt management practices with the adoption of the Commonwealth Meridian system. Launched in 2019, the Commonwealth Meridian debt management system is currently being used by 43 countries around the world.

John-Emmanuel said, “Meridian allows for real-time tracking of borrowing, automated reporting, and better analysis of liabilities. These upgrades have helped integrate technology into the core of Saint Lucia’s debt operations, improving both strategic planning and investor communications.”

Through technical workshops, mentoring, and regional training sessions, Saint Lucia’s debt management team has grown in both skill and confidence.

“The ongoing support has empowered our staff members to apply best practices and promote transparency,” the Deputy Director observed. “We’ve become more proactive and capable in managing our debt portfolio.”

Leveraging best practices from the Commonwealth

To mark 40 years of debt management support for member countries, this year is marked as the Commonwealth Year of Resilient, Innovative and Sustainable Debt. Initiatives, which will continue into 2026, will include sharing experiences and enhancing technical and policy solutions and support that can help governments with long-term public debt management, which will contribute to fiscal sustainability.

Dr Ruth Kattumuri, the Commonwealth Secretariat’s Senior Director of the Economic Development, Trade and Investment Directorate, noted, “The challenges for small and vulnerable states in the Commonwealth are multi-faceted. They face existential threats from frequent and extreme weather events, due to climate change, as well as economic shocks—both of which impede progress. Small island developing states also have limited potential to diversify their economies. So, maintaining a sustainable level of debt is critically important.”

Kattumuri added, “For countries like Saint Lucia, being able to tap into the experience and the knowledge base of the Secretariat means leveraging best practices from our 33 small states. We are also able to provide tailored technical assistance and capacity building to help transform public finance management, based on our long experience of supporting small states.”

Access to affordable finance is limited for Saint Lucia, which is classified as an upper-middle-income country, as are many other small island developing states (SIDS) in the Caribbean. For these countries, higher interest rates and limited funding options mean debt reform is not optional – it is essential.

Also critically important is the need to modernise governance practices in line with international standards.

These reforms have not gone unnoticed by the international financial community. Improved transparency and consistent reporting have boosted confidence among lenders and investors, enabling Saint Lucia access to concessional financing to fuel their sustainable and resilient development.

Strong partnerships for Caribbean growth

Saint Lucia’s story is not unique. Other Caribbean countries, such as The Bahamas, are also advancing sustainable debt management practices in the region. Since 2021, The Bahamas has partnered with the Commonwealth Secretariat to strengthen its public debt management framework and develop a government bond market, a project that has been supported by the India–UN Development Partnership Fund.

The experience of these Caribbean countries demonstrates that, with the right combination of thoughtful reforms, cooperation and prudent borrowing, even nations facing unique fiscal, geographic and environmental vulnerabilities can successfully manage their debt.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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Excerpt:

Jua Kali founder Laurah John. Jua Kali is a social enterprise tackling waste management and helping to reduce reliance on St. Lucia’s only landfill. Courtesy: Laurah John

By Alison Kentish
CASTRIES, Apr 12 2019 (IPS)

Jua Kali is a social enterprise tackling waste management and helping to reduce reliance on St. Lucia’s only landfill, which will reach the end of its lifespan in 2023. The company, with its slogan ‘Trashing the Idea of Waste,’ hosts waste collection drives through pop up depots that encourage residents to bring in glass, plastic and tin cans in exchange for supermarket shopping points.
This is happening as St. Lucia, like other small island states, faces climate resilience issues with freshwater quality and deterioration in marine and coastal ecosystems.
Jua Kali is the brainchild of Laurah John. She talks to IPS about why she established Jua Kali and the challenges that she has faced on the project.

Excerpts of the interview follow:

Inter Press Service (IPS): Tell me about your background.

Laurah John (LJ): I am a purpose driven, creative rebel and sustainability change agent or at the very least I try to embody those traits through my work with Jua Kali Ltd. – a profit-for-purpose, social enterprise that seeks to provide innovative and sustainable resource recovery solutions to address waste management issues in Small Island Developing States through strategic partnerships.

Before Jua Kali, I was a Social Development Practitioner/Short-term Consultant for the World Bank and Caribbean Local Economic Development project. I was also employed with the Ministry of Social Transformation.

IPS: What led you to establish Jua Kali Ltd.?

LJ: In 2012, I completed a Master’s in Urban Studies from the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada. My master’s thesis, “Wasted Lives: Determining the Feasibility of Establishing a Test Case Resource Recovery Programme in the Urban Poor Community of Faux-a-Chaud, Saint Lucia” sought to explore Resource Recovery as a tool for alleviating urban poverty, enhancing environmental sustainability and bettering communities. This research formed the basis of a business idea that led me and an eight person team to win the 8th [United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation] UNESCO Youth Forum Startup Weekend in 2013 and led to the creation of Jua Kali Ltd.  in August 2014.

IPS: Tell me about your slogan, ‘Trashing the Idea of Waste’.

LJ: We acknowledge waste as a design flaw in how we built our societies and do not see it as acceptable. We are challenging the public to re-think the concept of waste and question consumption patterns and how that contributes to the problem. We are empowering consumers to recognise that they have the right to leverage (their dollar) and demand that producers create better quality products that address the end-of-life reality of their goods.
Producers take limited resources to create goods that are bought then thrown out. If we no longer believe that waste is acceptable, it means that this product, once utilised, needs to feed into some other process for continuity – closing the loop!

IPS: How do you host collection drives and are you satisfied with public reception?

LJ: The collection drives are based on the Pop Up shop concept – hence the name Pop Up depots – where we set up shop with our tents, tables, chairs and army of volunteers, to create an area where the public may drop-off used household materials like plastic bottles and containers, glass jars and bottles, as well as cans and tins. In return, they receive points on their Massy Stores Loyalty Card. We set up twice a month.

We are very satisfied with the public’s reception! From our very first day back with the depots (Mar. 2, 2019), many people came up to us to say how happy they were that the depots had resumed, what a great initiative it is, and that they hoped it was coming back for good – encouraging words that reinforced that we are on the right path.

IPS: What are some of the challenges you face in this project?

LJ: Raising awareness is our biggest challenge. Airtime is expensive and although we have some sponsorship in this regard, much more is required to have a consistent presence to remind the public of the depots. Additionally, where people receive their information changes depending on what part of the island they reside. This requires a communications strategy that is both robust and multidimensional, pulling on a variety of platforms to target different audiences.

IPS: Where do you see Jua Kali in 5 years?

LJ: As a regional leader in socio-environmental stewardship.

IPS: Why is waste diversion and reduction so crucial to the climate change and environmental discussion?

LJ: To appreciate the importance of waste diversion and reduction activities and their contribution to the climate change and environmental discussion, we must first understand the severity of their impact. Typical disposal and treatment of waste in a landfill can produce emissions of several greenhouse gases (GHGs), most significantly methane, which contributes to global climate change. Other forms of waste disposal also produce GHGs though mainly in the form of carbon dioxide.

Additionally, improper waste disposal can create or exacerbate disasters, for example, by clogging waterways leading to flash flooding and creating hazardous public health conditions by contaminating water sources, creating breeding grounds for disease borne vectors such as mosquitoes. Furthermore, on a small island like Saint Lucia with a limited landmass, sending our trash to a landfill takes up valuable productive land. There has to be a better way!

IPS: Do you think the Caribbean is giving sustainable waste diversion and reduction due attention?

LJ: More and more, Caribbean countries are giving attention to the waste issue, primarily because of how visible it has become with the increased use of plastics, the international campaign against plastic pollution and the detrimental impact this can have on tourism based economies. There is also a growing awareness and research to highlight the negative impact of waste on water quality and fisheries. As such, this is driving action towards supporting initiatives like ours. Could it use more attention? Definitely, but we are making headway.

I would like to encourage the public to believe that small, individual actions to reduce or divert waste together will make a difference! #bethechange

Tropical Storm Erika, the deadliest natural disaster in Dominica since Hurricane David in 1979, extensively damaged the island’s main airport in August 2015. Saint Lucian Prime Minister Allen Chastanet says time is running out for small states such as those in the Caribbean as they struggle to develop infrastructure capable of withstanding changes in weather conditions. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CASTRIES, St Lucia, Aug 28 2017 (IPS)

A Caribbean Community (CARICOM) prime minister has reiterated the call for developed countries to assist Small Island Developing States (SIDS) in their quest to combat the effects of climate change.

The Saint Lucian leader, Allen Chastanet, said time is running out for small states such as those in the Caribbean as they struggle to develop infrastructure capable of withstanding changes in weather conditions.The momentum of progress on climate change has been stymied by recent decisions by the United States in relation to the Paris Agreement.

“I am going to keep pounding on the table and letting my voice be heard explaining that the SIDS cannot wait,” Chastanet said.

“There is no greater example of that than what took place in Haiti. Did we not know that Haiti was in a hurricane belt? Did we not know that there was clearly a trend of increasing storms? That all we needed was a trough? What took place last year, the world and all of us must bear responsibility for. The Haitian people were left to confront one of the strongest and most devastating hurricanes we have seen in a long time with cardboard boxes.”

On October 4 last year, Hurricane Matthew struck southwestern Haiti leaving widespread damage in the impoverished Caribbean nation. Matthew was a late-season Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, having formed in the southeastern Caribbean on September 28.

In addition to loss of life, the economic damage to the nation was truly staggering. The Haitian aid group CARE placed the damage done by Hurricane Matthew to Haiti at 1 billion dollars.

Haiti is of the world’s poorest countries and vulnerable to such natural disasters. The United Nations proclaiming Matthew to be the greatest humanitarian crisis to affect the country since a devastating earthquake six years ago. The country was essentially cut in half as the storm destroyed transport links. After slicing through Haiti and killing more than 800 people, Matthew also pounded Cuba and The Bahamas.

Chastanet, who was speaking at a ceremony for the exchange of notes for Japanese grant aid of EC$35 million to the government of St. Lucia for the reconstruction of two major bridges, said time is of the essence.

“Time is against us. I say all of this to underscore that point and for us not to take for granted the significance of today. It is very easy for us to continue to come to these signings of agreements and almost take it for granted what we are receiving. This project has the opportunity and potential to protect the lives and the assets of many people,” he said.

“In terms of upgrading the country’s already expensive infrastructure, time is against small states like Saint Lucia in their fight to develop the road network and bridges capable of withstanding weather changes.”

St Lucia was also hit by Matthew as a tropical storm. The island experienced the most severe effects among Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) nations, with damage to homes and businesses accompanied by blocked roads and flooding.

The prime minister repeatedly thanked the Japanese for the Grant for the bridges which are expected to commence in early 2018. He also pointed to the assistance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund as SIDS position themselves to combat the effects of climate change.

“I had the opportunity to attend World Bank meetings and IMF meetings and I am very grateful that both those organisations have chosen to have a setting for the small island developing states of the world,” Chastanet noted.

“That was followed by the COP meeting that took place in Marrakech. I want to also recognize the work that was done by our predecessors in supporting the climate change agreement at COP in Paris in which we formalized the recognition that climate change is real and a roadmap for how the world intends to be able to deal with the problem.  In the roadmap, the world gave itself a challenge to raise 100 billion dollars to go towards mitigation and funding adaptation.”

The prime minister explained that the momentum had been stymied by recent decisions by the United States in relation to the Paris Agreement.

But he said some of the SIDS, inclusive of Saint Lucia are proposing alternatives to get assistance for critical infrastructural projects that help with adaption.

“One is exactly what is taking place here today where the Government of Japan, through JICA, are making a bilateral contribution to Saint Lucia in a project that is a critical infrastructural project. What we would like to see is Japan being given a credit for that contribution,” explained the Prime Minister.

Although the United States remains part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in June this year President Donald Trump ceased all implementation of the non-binding Paris accord.

That includes contributions to the UN Green Climate Fund (to help poorer countries to adapt to climate change and expand clean energy) and reporting on carbon data (though that is required in the US by domestic regulations anyway).

Permanent Secretary in the Department of Infrastructure, Ports and Energy Ivor Daniel, who gave an overview, explained that the bridge repair project is in-keeping with the National Hazard Mitigation Policy, which aims to reduce the country’s vulnerability to natural hazards and the impact of climate change.

Ambassador of Japan to Saint Lucia Mitsuhiko Okada outlined Japan’s areas of cooperation with Saint Lucia which include disaster risk reduction, sustainable management of marine life and human security.

The assistance is being channelled through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and that organization’s director general for Latin America and the Caribbean Hajime Takeuchi also spoke about the significant contributions made to assist not just Saint Lucia but the region.

A poorly constructed house in Gelée, Les Cayes, Haiti is further damaged by trees that fell during the passage of Hurricane Matthew in October 2016. A senior Caribbean diplomat assigned to the European Union says climate change events are preventing many Caribbean countries from moving up the development ladder. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jul 14 2017 (IPS)

With Antigua and Barbuda joining St. Kitts and Nevis as the two eastern Caribbean nations to attain middle-income country status, a senior diplomat has identified climate change as a major factor preventing other nations in the grouping from taking the same step forward.

According to the World Bank, a middle-income economy is one with a gross national income per capita of between 1,026 and 12,475 dollars in 2016, calculated according to the Atlas method — a formula used by the World Bank to estimate the size of economies in terms of gross national income in U.S. dollars."Those who are indigent, they would enter...an avenue in Dante’s Hell which is indescribable. So that is the real story.” --Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves

“What I do want to say is that the other countries, the independent ones in the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) like Dominica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent, all of them are exposed to climate events annually and the climate events are devastating for us and you could have situations where 90 per cent of our GDP is wiped out in 22 hours, 23 hours, 15 hours, depending on how long a tropical storm sits on you,” says Sharlene Shillingford-McKlmon, chargé d’affaires at the Eastern Caribbean States Embassy to Belgium and Mission to the European Union

She was speaking to Caribbean journalists on a tour of the European Union Headquarters as part of activities to mark the 40th anniversary of the European Union Mission to Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.

Shillingford-McKlmon’s comments came as she spoke to some of the developmental challenges affecting OECS nations and the response options available to them.

Between Dec. 23 and 24, 2013, Dominica, Grenada, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia began reporting heavy rain with accumulations over that 12- to 24-hour period recorded at 406 mm in St. Lucia, 156 mm in Dominica, and 109 mm in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

The heavy rains were associated with a low-level trough system, and with the traditional hurricane having ended almost a month earlier, many residents had dismissed the rains as just another tropical downpour.

However, by the time the hours-long downpour subsided in St. Vincent and the Grenadines around 7 p.m. on Christmas Eve, nine people were confirmed dead, three were missing and presumed dead, and 37 were injured.

Over 500 people were affected, of which 222 had to be provided with emergency shelter, while 278 took refuge with family, friends and neighbours.

The Caribbean Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA) said that sectoral damage assessment estimated that 495 houses were damaged/destroyed; over 98 acres of crops damaged; 28 bridges damaged/destroyed; and the Milton Cato Memorial Hospital suffered major losses.

The total damage/losses and cost of clean-up operations were estimated at 58.44 million dollars — some 17 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product wiped out in a matter of hours.

In St. Lucia, there were six confirmed deaths related to the weather system and an estimated 1,050 persons were severely affected.

In Dominica, an estimated 106 households in approximately 12 communities were affected by the Christmas Eve weather system.

And, just over 18 months later, Dominica would be struck by yet another weather system, this time by Tropical Storm Erika on Aug. 24, 2015, which left at least 20 persons dead, and a number of other missing.

The storm also rendered 574 persons homeless and resulted in the evacuation of 1,034 others due to the unsafe conditions in their communities.

Damage and losses were estimated at EC$1.3 billion or 90 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product.

In noting the impact of these weather system on OECS nations, Shillingford-McKlmon pointed out that previously, it was only when a hurricane struck that the Caribbean saw such levels of destruction.

“Now, we have to be concerned about a tropical storm, because you really don’t know what is going to happen. And what has happened is that with respect to graduation from middle- to high-income status, if you do not retain your GDP per capita level for three years in a row, you can’t graduate — and it is really sad to say that some of our countries, the only reason they have not graduated to higher income status, where we receive less help, less official development assistance, less concessionary loans, is because of a storm or hurricane comes and devastates us.”

She said such a position puts Caribbean nations in a quagmire, because they want to be proud of the development they have achieved. However, at the same time, once they graduate to high-come countries status, one climate event can wipe out all those gains even as the countries would no longer qualify for official development assistance.

“You are going to lose financing and at the same time you don’t want to be hit by a hurricane, you don’t want to be in a situation where … if a hurricane comes and something happens, I may not graduate because I lose my GDP. Who wants to be in that position? What an awful place to be.”

Shillingford-McKlmon said that currently, OECS nations do not have an alternative with respect to the criteria for graduation but are having that conversation with the European Union and other development partners.

“A country will graduate when its GDP per capita remains at a certain level for a three-year period and then it will move from one category to another. And so what we are doing, we are arguing this at the European Commission level and they’ve begun to have discussion with us that give us the impression that they are willing to consider new criteria or alternate criteria for graduation,” she said.

The diplomat argued that with the severe impact of climate events on OECS economies, “GDP per capita is not a full and complete reflection of a country’s development.

“We have inherent vulnerabilities as small island developing states that make it very difficult for us to be graduated and not receive aid when we could be struck down by environmental and other exogenous shocks and be severely affected,” she said.

Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves has also spoken to the impact on climate change on national development – particularly the economic situation of individual families.

“Let us understand this. When we have a natural disaster, you go to bed at night middle class and after three hours of rainfall and landslides, torrential downpour, like we never used to have before the acceleration of man-made climate change, that person, in three hours, would move from middle class to poor,” he said in late June at Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum.

Gonsalves further said that after a few hours of intense rainfall, some persons who are poor become indigent.

“And those who are indigent, they would enter…an avenue in Dante’s Hell which is indescribable. So that is the real story.”

Cattle seek refuge from the searing heat among shrubbery in Union Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
CASTRIES, Jun 2 2015 (IPS)

St. Lucian farmer Anthony Herman was hoping that next year he’d manage to recoup some of the losses he sustained after 70 per cent of his cashew crop withered and died in the heat of the scorching southern Caribbean sun.

But on June 1, the beginning of the Atlantic hurricane season which coincides with the rainy season, the 63-year-old man, who has been farming for four decades, received “frightening” news about weather conditions in the region over the next year or so.“More than 50 per cent of our agriculture is rain-fed. … So it is going to affect agriculture, particularly small farmers, who are the ones who cannot afford irrigation at this time." -- Leslie Simpson

The 2015 wet season in the Caribbean, which runs from June to November, has been forecast to be drier than normal and a similar prediction has been issued for the 2016 dry season. This follows on a drier than normal dry season in 2015.

“It is frightening,” Herman tells IPS on the sidelines of the Regional Climate Outlook forum for the 2015 hurricane season being held here June 1-2.

Herman, who is board secretary and project coordinator at the Bellevue Farmers Cooperative in Choiseul, in southwestern St. Lucia, says he will summon directors to devise a response plan.

“When we hear of the threat of drought that’s going to be lengthened this year and going into next year, this to me, is frightening,” Herman tells IPS.

“Frightening in the sense that I don’t think that we, as a government, we as a people have created the resilience that is necessary to combat drought. The water infrastructure that is necessary is not available, or where it is available, it is in patches,” he says.

At the two-day forum, organised by the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), climatologist Cèdric Van Meerbeeck puts the forecast into perspective by referencing 2009, a year when extreme dry conditions triggered widespread water rationing across the region.

Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Barbados, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Guyana recorded their lowest six-month rainfall totals (October 2009 to March 2010).

“It doesn’t mean it is going to be the same like 2009 and 2010, but if it is going to be a year, it is going to be this year,” Van Meerbeeck said of the forecast dry spell.

“Temperatures are going to feel hotter than usual and that is pretty much throughout the Caribbean,” Van Meerbeeck told the gathering of meteorologists, natural disaster managers and other stakeholders from 25 Caribbean countries and territories.

Climatologist Cèdric Van Meerbeeck of the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), says drier than normal conditions in the Caribbean will continue through the 2015 wet season and into 2016. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

He said there is probably going to be less rainfall accumulating for much of the region, even as The Bahamas, Belize and The Guianas are expected to see higher rainfall as a result of El Nino.

“If we are going to get a wet season that is drier than usual, we are already starting to be worried about the next dry season,” Van Meerbeeck said.

“Why? The dry season is our tourism season. That is when most of our water is being used, not only by tourists but also extinguishing [bush] fires, also by the farmers if they want to irrigate.”

Herman shares Van Meerbeeck’s concern, telling IPS that the municipal provider of water for commercial and domestic consumers in St. Lucia is already “under pressure because, at the minute, a number of persons are using that water for farming purposes.

“It is expensive, but there’s not much choice. So it means that sitting here at this meeting and getting that information, it gives me a few months to go back, sit with my board about a risk reduction management plan as to how we, as a farmers organisation, can educate our members in the first instance, how best to deal with the issues of serious rain water shortages and what it is we can do with that information.”

Herman knows too well the importance of a risk reduction management plan, having been robbed by the dry conditions of almost three quarters of his cashew crop, some 5,500 dollars this year, a substantial amount for a small farmer.

“The flowers dried out and they were not able to be pollinated and even where they were actually pollinated, the small cashew literally burnt and that has caused me great economic loss,” he tells IPS.

The loss was not limited only to the cashew nut themselves, as the fruit is an important input on Herman farm, where he keeps about 40 goats.

“The cashew fruit is used for my goats as animal feed,” he tells IPS, adding, “It means I have to find the resources now, buy animal feed, whereas in previous years, between grass and cashew fruit, that sustained my livestock.”

St. Lucian farmer Anthony Herman lost 70 per cent of his cashew crop in 2015 as a result of a drought in his country. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

“I didn’t get to sell cashew so it is less resources, so I have to dip into my other sources of revenue, which is vegetables,” he lamented.

Leslie Simpson, natural resources management specialist at the Caribbean Agricultural Research & Development Institute, sees the forecast as “serious news” for agriculture in the region.

“More than 50 per cent of our agriculture is rain-fed. … So it is going to affect agriculture, particularly small farmers, who are the ones who cannot afford irrigation at this time,” he tells IPS of the forecast.

“I operate out of Jamaica and last year we had a really serious dry spell in the rainy season itself and it affected agriculture to the point where the overall effect was felt in the whole economy. So to hear that we are in for a similar situation is very heartrending at this point,” Simpson tells IPS.

In 2014, the Jamaican economy lost nearly one billion dollars as a result of drought and brush fires caused by extreme heat waves.

But like Van Meerbeeck, Herman sees the early warning as an opportunity to take steps to mitigate against the severe weather, which climatologists say is as a result of human-induced climate change.

“What we really want in the long term is to be able to mitigate the adverse impacts of climate change and use the benefits of climate change, because it is not all negative, but largely, we don’t know what the positive effects will be at this stage,” Van Meerbeeck tells IPS.

“When you build mitigation strategies on drought, on heat waves, on wet spells, etc., — those things that really impact us now — then we are automatically building the human capacity and the technological capacity to confront the challenges further down in time,” Van Meerbeeck says.

“Whether or not they are exacerbated by climate change, many of them will get worse with climate change, for instance, droughts will get more frequent by the end of the century. But if we already know how to respond to that now, it will be much, much easier and cost us much less to respond to them further down in time,” the climatologist says.

But with any cashew crops and a herd of goats at risk, Herman is already considering a short-term plan to process wastewater and use it for irrigation.

“I am not a pessimist, so I want to see this situation as an opportunity to do other creative things for the sector,” he tells IPS.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Workers use electricity and firewood to prepare cassava bread in Canaries, St. Lucia. The country’s government says renewable energy can help with value-added in the agricultural sector. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kenton X. Chance
CASTRIES, Feb 25 2015 (IPS)

At Plas Kassav, a roadside outlet in Canaries, a rural community in western St. Lucia, a busload of visitors from other Caribbean countries, along with tourists from North America and Europe, sample the 12 flavours of freshly baked cassava bread on sale.

In the back of the shop, employees busily sift the grated cassava and prepare it for baking. Next to them, an electric motor powers a device that turns grated cassava as it bakes into farine — a cereal made from cassava tubers — in a wood-fired cauldron.Caribbean nations, with their fossil fuel-dependant economies, “don't want to be caught in a situation where today the price of oil is less than 50 dollars a barrel and tomorrow, if the Saudis and the other players decide, that the price of oil could go up to 120 dollars a barrel.” -- Minister James Fletcher

This is one of the ways in which this eastern Caribbean nation of 180,000 people is marrying its tourism and agriculture sectors.

Tourism makes the largest contribution to St. Lucia’s 1.3-billion-dollar economy. And with oil prices expected to continue falling for some time, this 617-square-kilometre island is hoping for significant economic growth on the heels of the slim years since the global financial crisis struck in 2008.

The government says that the move toward renewable energy will see businesses and households paying less for energy and will also strengthen the nation’s argument at the international climate change negotiations.

A renewable energy expert with the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) tells IPS that falling oil prices present an excellent opportunity for small island developing states such as St. Lucia and its 14 other Caribbean Community (CARICOM) allies to accelerate their renewable energy programme.

“I think you can look at it as a windfall that buys you time for the transition,” Dolf Gielen says.

He tells IPS that falling oil prices will slow down but will not end the push towards clean energy.

“Oil prices will somewhat slow the acceleration but you will see a continued transition towards renewables,” he says. “Now you have a little more time to plan it and to make sure that it functions well.”

James Fletcher, St. Lucia’s Minister of Public Service, Sustainable Development, Energy, Science and Technology, tells IPS that he agrees that the region needs to accelerate its transition toward renewable energy, but is not certain whether lower fuel prices is really reason to exhale.

“I’m not sure about the breathing space. I think what it does, however, show is that this fuel price game is not one we want to be playing,” Fletcher tells IPS.

He notes that while the price of oil has fallen to 50 dollars a barrel — less than half of what it was half year ago — the decrease did not result from any advances in technology.

“The price of oil right now is being determined by the geopolitics of oil,” he says, noting that Saudi Arabia has increased its production in an effort to make production of shale oil in the United States and Canada less attractive.

Fletcher says that Caribbean nations, with their fossil fuel-dependant economies, “don’t want to be caught in a situation where today the price of oil is less than 50 dollars a barrel and tomorrow, if the Saudis and the other players decide, that the price of oil could go up to 120 dollars a barrel.”

Cruise in Castries Harbour, St. Lucia. The island is hoping to use renewable energy to fuel a greater part of its tourism sector. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

If the Caribbean is really serious about sustainable development and wants its economies to develop with some level of certainty, “we can’t be at the mercy of a widely fluctuating oil market,” Fletcher stresses.

“So, for me, what is happening in the oil market is reason why, as much as possible, we should get either out of it or insulate ourselves from it – and that’s why renewable energy makes so much sense to us.”

As opposed to dependence on oil, Fletcher says, if Caribbean countries are depending on renewable energy then there is “much more certainty” of what the price of energy will be.

“… With prices fluctuating so much not because of any huge difference in technology and any difference in supply in the Middle East or any glut in the supply market, I think that’s why we should be getting pursuing our renewable energies programme with more haste and more energy,” Fletcher tells IPS.

In St. Lucia, consumers pay 38 cents for one kilowatt-hour of electricity. The government hopes that its investments in renewable energy could see that price reduced to 30 cents.

St. Lucia is home to Sulphur Sprints, the “world’s only drive in volcano” — a smoking caldera located near Soufrière on the southwestern side of the island, where the natural heat boils the water and geysers shoot into the air at high tide and full moon.

St. Lucia hopes to generate up to 30 megawatts of electricity in Soufriere, home to Sulphur Springs, the “world’s only drive-in volcano”. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

It stands to reason that geothermal energy will be the nation’s focus as it pivots to renewable energy.

Fletcher tells IPS wind and solar PV are intermittent sources of energy “and we really can’t complete a transition away from fossil fuel based on intermittent sources, unless we invest heavily in storage, which we really don’t have the capacity to do right now.”

St. Lucia has received financial and technical support from the government of New Zealand, SIDS-DOCK, and the Global Environmental Facility to conduct the initial stage of exploration, which will start soon, Fletcher says.

LUCILEC, the state-owned power company in St. Lucia, will purchase the electricity from the power plant developer, ORMAK of Isreal, and resell it to consumers.

Fletcher tells IPS that the government is pleased with the pace of the negotiations but notes that developing geothermal potential takes time.

“But at least it puts us on track to developing what we believe is as much as 30 megawatts of geothermal energy in Soufriere,” he says.

And while geothermal energy has been identified as the booster that St. Lucia’s tourism industry has been longing for, exploiting that same renewable energy potential could deal a devastating blow to the nation’s tourism product.

“There is one little wrinkle in that, because the drive-in volcano is also located within the Piton Management Area, and the Piton Management Area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and it is located in one of the policy areas where we are restricted in the level of infrastructural development that can take place,” Fletcher explains.

“So what we will be doing is looking at drill sites outside of the immediate vicinity of the drive-in volcano, but we are quite confident that we will have quite productive wells outside of that immediate area.”

St. Lucia is also exploring the development of a 12-megawatt wind farm on the island’s east cost and has been having discussion with an entity in the United States in this regard.

The third element of the renewable energy push is solar PV, the first stage of which will be done by LUCILEC, which has invited responses to proposal for a 1.2-megawatt facility in the south of St. Lucia, the intention being that it will be scaled up to 3 megawatts in the near future.

In this regard, the government is working with the Carbon War Room and the Clinton Initiative, which have been supporting the renewable energy programme.

Fletcher tells IPS that the move toward renewable energy, coupled with energy saving initiatives — such reducing from 4.0 million dollars to 2.6 million annually the amount spent on street lighting by switching to LED bulbs — will have a “tremendous” impact on St. Lucia.

The government is moving to make its own buildings more energy efficient, and will take to Parliament legislation to provide home and land tax, income tax rebate for people who are retrofitting their homes with energy efficient devices or installing grid-tie solar PV.

“What that does is many-fold. First of all, it causes our economic sector to be much more competitive,” Fletcher says, adding that a large portion of spending in the tourism sector is on energy.

“When you now superimpose on that the work we are doing with renewables, that, hopefully, will cause a reduction in the price of electricity from what it is right now, which 38 US cents per hour, to something approaching 30 cents. Then the expenditure by our hotels, by our manufacturing sector, the expenditure by people who are interested in value-added in agriculture, that expenditure goes down and it makes those sectors more competitive,” Fletcher tells IPS.

“On the household side, any money that is not being spent on energy is money that can be spent on something else. And so our focus is not just on the commercial establishments but also to get our residential consumers to benefit from the reduction in the cost of electricity, but also by putting in energy saving measures in their homes and giving them concessions to do that, that they will realise significant savings where their energy expenditure is concerned.”

Fletcher is one of St. Lucia’s and CARICOM’s negotiator at the global climate change talks, where the nations of the worlds are slated to sign a binding deal for reducing global warming in Paris later this year.

He tells IPS that at the international climate change negotiations, St. Lucia has been saying to developed countries that they have to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to keep global warming to two degrees above pre-industrial levels, as proposed by experts.

“Now, it strengthens our case. It strengthens our moral argument if we can say that a country like St. Lucia that contributes … something like 0.00078 per cent of all green house gases, we recognise the importance of this being a global effort and we are still committing to reducing our carbon footprint by 30, 40, 50 per cent.

“Then we believe that the big emitters, like the United States, like the European countries, like China, like Russia, that they also should be doing more to reduce their greenhouse emissions. So, I think it strengthens our hand in the international negotiations where climate change is concerned,” Fletcher tells IPS.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at Kentonxtchance@gmail.com

Follow him on Twitter @KentonXChance

Saint Lucia’s best known species is the gorgeous but endangered Amazon parrot. Credit: Steve Wilson/cc by 2.0

By Desmond Brown
PYEONGCHANG, Republic of Korea, Oct 14 2014 (IPS)

The remarkable biodiversity of the countries of the Caribbean, already under stress from human impacts like land use, pollution, invasive species, and over-harvesting of commercially valuable species, now faces an additional threat from climate change.

On the sidelines of the 12th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 12) being held here from Oct. 6-17, Saint Lucia’s Biodiversity Coordinator Terrence Gilliard told IPS that his government understands that biodiversity and ecosystem services underpin sustainable development."Our biodiversity is important for our health, our status, our attractiveness as a country and it is important that we conserve it and use it in a sustainable manner that it is there for generations to come." -- Helena Brown

But he said climate change is having an impact on biodiversity of the island nation.

“There have been reports of coral bleaching occasioned by higher sea temperatures and there has been a lengthening in the productive season of some agricultural crops,” said Gilliard, who also serves as sustainable development and environment officer.

“The extreme weather events such as Hurricane Tomas [in 2010] and the [2013] Christmas Eve trough resulted in major landslides within forested areas and there is…loss of animal life during these events. Long periods of droughts limit water availability and affect agricultural production.”

Though less than 616 square kms in area, Saint Lucia is exceptionally rich in animals and plants. More than 200 species occur nowhere else, including seven percent of the resident birds and an incredible 53 percent of the reptiles.

The nation’s best known species is the gorgeous but endangered Saint Lucia amazon parrot. Other species of conservation concern include the pencil cedar, staghorn coral and Saint Lucia racer. The racer, confined to the 12-hectare Maria Major Island, is arguably the world’s most threatened snake following recent increases in numbers of its distant relative in Antigua and Barbuda.

The Antiguan racer, a small, harmless, lizard-eating snake, was once widespread throughout Antigua, but became almost extinct early this century, hunted relentlessly by predators such as mongooses and rats. As of 2013, the population size was 1,020.

Helena Brown, technical coordinator in the Environment Division of the Ministry of Health and the Environment, said there are at least two conservation programmes in Antigua where the racer and another critically endangered species, the hawksbill turtle, are being conserved.

“There is a lot of work being done there but that’s just two species out of many. Our biodiversity is important for our health, our status, our attractiveness as a country and it is important that we conserve it and use it in a sustainable manner that it is there for generations to come,” Brown told IPS.

According to Jamaica’s National Environment and Planning Agency (NEPA), ecosystems on that island most vulnerable to climate change impacts include coral reefs, highland forests, and coastal wetlands (mangroves).

With more than 8,000 species recorded, Jamaica is ranked fifth globally for endemic species. The Caribbean island has 98.2 percent of the 514 indigenous species of land snails and 100 percent of the 22 indigenous species of amphibians.

Jamaica’s rich marine species diversity include species of fish, sea anemones, black and stony corals, mollusks, turtles, whales, dolphin, and manatee. In addition, nearly 30.1 percent of the country is covered with forests and there are 10 hydrological basins containing over 100 streams and rivers, in addition to several subterranean waterways, ponds, springs, and blue holes.

For Saint Kitts and Nevis, where biodiversity is described as “very important to sustainable development,” the effects of climate change are not highly visible at this point.

“More time will be needed to observe some of the subtle changes that are observed. For instance, in some cases there seems to be longer periods of drought which are impacting on the natural cycles of some plants and also on agricultural crops,” the director of Physical Planning and Environment in the Ministry of Sustainable Development, Randolph Edmead, told IPS.

“The rainy season appears to be getting shorter and when there is rain the episodes are more intense thus leading to flash floods.”

Saint Kitts and Nevis is pursuing tourism development as its main economic activity, and many of the country’s tourism-related activities and attractions are based on biodiversity. These include marine biodiversity where coral reefs represent an important component.

Edmead said coral reefs also support fisheries which is an important source of food.

“The income generated from these activities not only supports development but also is important for sustaining livelihoods,” he explained.

Forest biodiversity also forms an important part of the tourism product of Saint Kitts and Nevis. Ecotourism activities which are based on organised hikes along established trails are engaged in regularly by tourists.

“Biodiversity also helps to protect soils from erosion which is not only important for agriculture but also in the protection of vital infrastructure,” he added.

Executive Director of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias told IPS climate change is a main threat to biodiversity and he urged progress at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP scheduled for Dec. 1-12 in Peru.

Executive Director of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

“The threats to biodiversity continue. But where do these threats come from? They come from public policies, corporate policies and other factors that come from the socio-economic sector. These are population increase, consumption increase, more pollution, climate change. These are some of the big drivers of loss of biodiversity,” said de Souza Dias.

“So unless we see progress in the negotiations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then the loss of biodiversity will probably continue.”

But de Souza Dias is also putting forward biodiversity as part of the solution to the climate change problem. He suggested that better management of forests, wetlands, mangroves and other systems can help reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“We can also enhance adaptation because adaptation is not just about building walls to avoid the sea level rise impacting coastal zones. It is about having more resilient ecosystems that can resist more the different scenarios of climate change,” he told IPS.

“We need to conserve better the ecosystems in our landscape…having more diverse landscape with some forest, some wetlands, some protected catchment areas. Currently we are moving to more simplified landscapes, just big monocultures of crops, large cities, so we are going in the wrong direction.”

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at destinydlb@gmail.com

By Desmond Brown
Jul 22 2014 (IPS)

As unpredictable weather patterns impact water availability and quality in St. Lucia, the Caribbean island is moving to build resilience to climate-related stresses in its water sector.

St. Lucia Builds Resilience to Drought and Flooding from IPS News on Vimeo.

Dr. Paulette Bynoe, a specialist in community-based disaster risk management, climate change adaptation policy and environmental management, says integrated water resource management is critical. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Jul 18 2014 (IPS)

As unpredictable weather patterns impact water availability and quality in St. Lucia, the Caribbean island is moving to build resilience to climate-related stresses in its water sector.

Dr. Paulette Bynoe, a specialist in community-based disaster risk management, climate change adaptation policy and environmental management, says integrated water resource management is critical."All governments must work together within the region and lessons learnt in one country can be translated to other countries." -- Dr. Paulette Bynoe

“We have been making progress…making professionals and other important stakeholders aware of the issue. That is the first step,” she told IPS.

“So in other sectors we can also look at coordination whether we talk about agriculture or tourism. It’s important that we think outside of the box and we stop having turfs and really work together,” she added.

Earlier this month, Bynoe facilitated a three-day workshop on Hydro-Climatic Disasters in Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) in St. Lucia. The workshop was held as part of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States-Reducing the Risks to Human and Natural Assets Resulting from Climate Change (OECS-RRACC) project.

Participants were exposed to the key principles of IWRM and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR); the implications of climate change and variability for water resources management; policy legislation and institutional requirements needed at the community level to facilitate DRR in IWRM; the economics of disasters; and emergency response issues.

Rupert Lay, a water resources specialist with the RRACC Project, said the training is consistent with the overall goals of the climate change demonstration project in GIS technology currently being implemented by the OECS Secretariat.

“What we need to do now in the region and even further afield is to directly correlate the effects, the financial impacts of these adverse weather conditions as it relates to water resources,” he told IPS.

“We need to make that link strongly so that all of us can appreciate the extent to which and the importance of building resilience and adapting to these stresses.”

On Jul. 9, the St. Lucia Water and Sewage Company (WASCO) placed the entire island under a water emergency schedule as the drought worsened. The government has described the current situation as a “water crisis”.

The crisis, initially declared for the north of the island, has expanded to the entire country.

Managing director of WASCO Vincent Hippolyte said that there had not been sufficient rainfall to meet the demands of consumers. At the most recent assessment, the dam’s water level was at 322 feet, while normal overflow levels are 333 feet.

“Despite the rains and the greenery, drought conditions exist because the rivers are not moving. They do not have the volume of water that will enable WASCO to extract sufficient water to meet demand,” he said.

“We are in the early stages in the drought situation. It is not as severe as the later stages, but we are still in drought conditions.”

The government said that experts predicted the drought would persist through the month of August.

Bynoe said what’s happening in St. Lucia and elsewhere in the Caribbean is consistent with the projections of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Climate Modeling Group from the University of the West Indies.

She said both bodies had given possible future scenarios of climate change as it relates to the Small Island Developing States, and how climate change and climate variability could affect water resources.

“I think generally the issue is that in the region there is a high likelihood that we can have a shortage of water so we can experience droughts; and perhaps at the same time when we do have precipitation it can be very intense,” Bynoe, who is also Director of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Guyana, said.

She noted that the models are saying there can either be too little water or too much water, either of which could create serious problems for the Caribbean.

“With too much water now you can have run off, sedimentation, water pollution and water contamination which means in countries where we depend on surface water the treatment of water become critical and this will then bring cost implications because water treatment is very costly,” Bynoe explained.

“But also, if you are going to treat water you have to use a lot of energy and energy is one of the sectors that contribute to greenhouse gasses. So you can see where the impact of climate change is affecting water but with water treatment you can also contribute to climate change.”

For St. Lucia and its neighbours, Bynoe said lack of financial resources tops the list of challenges when it comes to disaster mitigation and adapting new measures in reference to hydro-climatic disasters.

She also pointed to the importance of human capital, citing the need to have persons trained in specific areas as specialists to help with modeling, “because in preparation we first have to know what’s the issue, we have to know what’s the probability of occurrence, we have to know what are the specific paths that we can take which could bring the best benefits to us.”

She used her home country Guyana, which suffers from a high level of migration, as one example of how sustainable development could be negatively affected by capital flight.

“But you also need human capital because first of all governments must work together within the region and lessons learnt in one country can be translated to other countries so that we can replicate the good experiences so that we don’t fall prey to the same sort of issues,” Bynoe said.

“But also social capital within the country in which we try to ensure that all stakeholders are involved, a very democratic process because it’s not only about policymakers; every person, every household must play a role to the whole issue of adaptation, it starts with the man or woman in the mirror,” she added.

In October 2010, Hurricane Tomas passed very near St. Lucia killing 14 people and leaving millions of dollars in monetary losses. The island was one of three Eastern Caribbean countries on which a slow-moving, low-level trough on Dec 24, 2013 dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain, killing 13 people.

A section of the major roadway leading from Dominica’s Melville Hall Airport to the capital, Roseau. The island is highly vulnerable to flooding and landslides. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
MERO, Dominica, Apr 8 2014 (IPS)

Christmas 2013 was the most “dreary and depressing” Don Corriette can remember in a very long time.

“It was a bleak time. People obviously did not plan their Christmas to be like this,” said Corriette, 52, Dominica’s national disaster coordinator.“The reconstruction efforts are crucial as the hurricane season in the Caribbean is fast approaching." -- Sophie Sirtaine

Days of holiday preparations were swept away when a slow-moving, low-level trough dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on the island on Dec. 24 and 25. The “freak weather system”, which also affected St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, killed 13 people and destroyed farms and other infrastructure.

Officials said the impact from the extraordinary torrential rainfall, flash floods and landslides was concentrated in areas with the highest levels of poverty.

Just six months earlier, in July 2013, tropical storm Chantal battered Dominica’s southern tip. The worst affected was the tiny southern community of Gallion, where the population is under 100.

“It [the Dec. 24 trough] did cause a high level of distress and anxiety, leaving many not knowing what to do next,” Corriette told IPS.

“There is no doubt that within my lifetime, not only in Dominica but throughout the region and the world by extension, we have seen some very significant differences in patterns of weather over the last 30-40 years that indicate that something is happening and we have to tie it to probably climate change,” he said.

“There are those who do not believe that theory but we have seen it developing and unfolding in front of our very eyes – the melting of the glaciers in the northern regions, the expansion of dry lands in Africa and other places, and the higher intensity of rainfall in the Caribbean islands – not that we are getting more rain but we are getting more intense rainfall in a shorter period of time,” Corriette added.

Flooding as a result of climate impacts has been identified as a threat to a number of communities in Dominica.

Under the Reduce Risks to Human and Natural Assets Resulting from Climate Change (RRACC) project, administered by the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), a demonstration project to improve drainage in the Mero community is expected to inform the rest of the country on how to mitigate the impacts of flooding.

The RRACC Project evolved after a series of one-day stakeholder meetings in July 2010 on Climate Variability, Change, and Adaptation in the Caribbean region with individuals from national governments, nongovernmental organisations, the private sector, and donor agencies.

These meetings were convened by the USAID, the OECS, and the Barbados Coastal Zone Management Unit (CZMU). As a result of these meetings, USAID formulated a five-year (2011-2015) framework for climate change adaptation strategy for the Caribbean region to be implemented using “fast-start” financing as part of the U.S. commitment at the December 2009 U.N. climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

The strategy draws from regional and national climate change plans and addresses high priority vulnerabilities in sectors key to the region’s development and economic growth, while identifying specific interventions that could contribute to greater resilience in the Eastern Caribbean.

In St. Vincent and St. Lucia, more than 30,000 people affected by the December 2013 flash floods will start recovering and regaining access to markets, water and electricity through an extra 36 million dollars approved by the World Bank’s Board of Directors under the International Development Association (IDA) Crisis Response Window.

A cleric prays with Colleen James in Cane Grove, St. Vincent hours before it was confirmed that James’ sister had died in the floodwaters. Her two-year-old daughter was also missing. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

The Governments’ Rapid Damage and Loss Assessments conducted in January with assistance from the World Bank, the Africa Caribbean Pacific – European Union (ACP-EU) Natural Risk Reduction Programme and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), estimated total losses to be around 108 million dollars, or 15 percent of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines’ gross domestic product (GDP); and 99 million dollars or eight percent of GDP in Saint Lucia.

“We will never forget the people who lost their lives as a result of this disaster, and will use their deaths as a wake-up call for the entire nation that we are a country that is highly vulnerable to natural disasters and the impacts of climate variability,” St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves told IPS.

The disaster happened at the peak of the tourism season. While the full financial impact remains unknown, early estimates conclude that this event will affect the agriculture and tourism sectors and result in economic contractions in both countries.

“While services and transport access have been largely reinstated, parallel efforts will need to be undertaken to mobilise resources required to stabilise and permanently rehabilitate, reconstruct and retrofit damaged infrastructure,” St. Lucia’s Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony told IPS.

Within a few weeks of the disaster, the World Bank was able to make 1.9 million dollars in emergency funds available to support the governments’ recovery efforts.

“The reconstruction efforts are crucial as the hurricane season in the Caribbean is fast approaching,” said Sophie Sirtaine, World Bank country director for the Caribbean. “Our financial support will not only rebuild critical infrastructure and boost the economy, it will also help build long-term climate resilience.”

Last week, St. Lucia announced it is conducting a survey to determine the potential impact of climate change on the supply of and demand for freshwater as well as on the exposure, sensitivity and vulnerability of the livelihoods of communities.

The Climate Change Adaptation Strategies for Water Resources and Human Livelihoods in the Coastal Zones of Small Island Developing States (CASCADE) is being undertaken by the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Studies (SALISES) of the St. Augustine campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in collaboration with the Italty-based Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) and the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC).

The survey will also seek to determine how households view environmental issues affecting their communities.

“The survey results will provide guidance for future public awareness programmes and policy development. The knowledge obtained will also allow government agencies, NGOs and community groups to take appropriate measures to adapt to and, hopefully, minimize the negative impacts identified, which will be to the benefit of all the citizens of St. Lucia,” according to a statement issued by the government.

It said that surveyors would be visiting households throughout the island until May 13, reiterating that the results of the exercise “will be of critical importance to individuals, their families and to St. Lucia”.

Residents stand on a bridge destroyed by massive flooding in St. Vincent. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Jan 7 2014 (IPS)

Guyanese President Donald Ramotar says the death and destruction caused by intense rainfall in three Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries over the Christmas holidays is a sign that the region has no time to lose in fortifying its resiliance to climate change.

A slow-moving, low-level trough on Dec. 24 dumped hundreds of millimetres of rain on St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Dominica, killing at least 13 people. Following the deadly floods and landslides, the Guyanese government approved financial support of 100,000 dollars each for St. Lucia and St. Vincent and 75,000 to Dominica.“The damage unleashed by the trough [on]…that dreadful night has been extensive and severe." -- Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony

“The scientific evidence is showing that for our region, which is one of the most vulnerable, these weather events will become more frequent as the impacts of global climate change intensify,” Ramotar told IPS.

Guyana’s coastal plains are approximately six feet below sea level.

“Recognising our own vulnerabilities here in Guyana, efforts will intensify in 2014 to improve and expand infrastructure, in particular our sea and river defence and drainage and irrigation systems; enhance our forecasting capabilities and response mechanisms, and build climate resilience in the social and productive sectors of our economy,” he said.

The Guyanese president said these steps will be taken within the framework of the country’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).

The LCDS, a brainchild of former president Bharrat Jagdeo, sets out a vision to forge a new low-carbon economy in Guyana over the coming decade. It has received acclaim globally, and is now in the implementation stage.

Ramotar said the time for urgent action is now, citing “millions of dollars in damage and loss of life” resulting from extreme weather events.

In St. Lucia – one of three Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) countries that felt the most severe impact of the Dec. 24 floods – Prime Minister Dr. Kenny Anthony said that while the full economic cost of the storm has not yet been determined, it is clear that reconstruction will run into several hundred million dollars.

“The damage unleashed by the trough [on]…that dreadful night has been extensive and severe,” he told IPS.

“We now know that some 10 homes were completely destroyed by the raging floods. Agriculture has suffered badly. According to initial estimates there was 30-40 percent damage to banana fields, 90 percent damage to vegetables and five percent damage to tree crops.”

Anthony told IPS that 90 percent of all ponds have suffered “varying degrees of siltation” and shrimp, fish and livestock have been lost.

“Our infrastructure, some of which was already compromised by Hurricane Thomas [in 2010] has taken a further battering,” he said.

St. Lucia’s minister of sustainable development, Dr. James Fletcher, told IPS that the catastrophic events brought about by climate change caused severe infrastructural and psychological damage.

“These extreme weather events are quite traumatic for us, both on our psyche and on our national purse…but this is what climate change is bringing to us and this is what we have to unfortunately look forward to,” he told IPS.

At the same time, Fletcher said citizens and commercial enterprises must do a better job of solid waste management, since the indiscriminate disposal of garbage clogs waterways and causes serious problems.

“Some people treat the rivers as garbage disposal sites. This is something that we have to pay close attention to,” he told IPS.

The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) said it continues to be in contact with the affected countries and is coordinating the response and recovery support. CDEMA is assisting the three impacted states in developing proposals to access the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Emergency Response Grant facility and the Emergency Recovery Loan facility.

The government of Barbados is making available a coast guard vessel to assist in transporting emergency supplies to St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The “Trident” is capable of transporting more than four tonnes of cargo at one time.

In Dominica, where 65 households were affected by flooding, disaster officials estimate that 1.13 million dollars is required for immediate clean-up.

Prime Minister Anthony said the government of St. Kitts and Nevis has dispatched via the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank 1.36 million dollars as a donation to assist St. Lucia with its recovery efforts.

Britain is also providing 1.36 million dollars for vital emergency humanitarian support to St. Vincent and the Grenadines and St. Lucia.

British Minister of State for International Development Alan Duncan is visiting the region, and is meeting with the prime ministers of the two affected countries to discuss the humanitarian situation and reconstruction needs.

The newest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said the ability of tourism-dependent Caribbean destinations like Barbados, Belize, Jamaica and the Bahamas, among others, to provide not only for their residents, but for the many thousands of visitors demanding water, energy, and other natural resources, is in jeopardy.

“As severe storms, drought, hurricanes, and other climate challenges rise to the forefront of issues being addressed by CARICOM countries, emerging data sheds new light on the future challenges in store for the islands and coastal nations throughout the region,” the report noted.

St. Vincent Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves (centre) chairs a meeting to discuss reconstruction following deadly floods on Dec. 24. At left is his Antiguan counterpart, Baldwin Spencer. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Dec 30 2013 (IPS)

Ralph Gonsalves fought to hold back tears as he shared how his cousin was killed the night before Christmas.

Raymond Gonsalves was buried alive when a slow-moving, low-level trough dumped more than 400 mm of rain on this island in a less than 24 hours and triggered massive flooding and huge landslides.

“People have lost their lives; families are suffering. I was with a family which lost five in one household,” Gonsalves, the prime minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, told IPS.

His cousin Raymond, he recounted, “was in his house, in the bedroom, and a landslide came down and buried him on his bed.”

“I have it in my family too,” he said. “I feel the pain, I feel the anguish of people.”"Climate change...has to be given the prominence and the priority that it deserves."
--Baldwin Spencer, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda

Gonsalves told IPS that St. Vincent and the Grenadines is “on the frontline of climate change”, explaining that his cousin had been among several the government moved from their homes beside the sea following Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

New houses were built for them but even then “the ravages of wave action were too severe, so we moved them to [another] place.” They had been moved, he said, “from one disaster point to another.”

The prime minister said that while the country is not a disaster area as a whole, several areas have been declared disaster areas.

Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer of Antigua and Barbuda, who serves as chairman of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), a sub-regional grouping, arrived here on Saturday to see the destruction first-hand. He will also visit St. Lucia on Sunday.

A deadly event

The trough on Dec. 24 brought torrential rains, death and destruction not only to St. Vincent and the Grenadines but to St. Lucia and Dominica as well. Disaster officials in St. Vincent have so far recovered nine bodies, and the search continues for three more people reported missing and feared dead.

In St. Lucia, five people were killed, including Calvin Stanley Louis, a police officer, who died after a wall fell on him as he tried to help people stranded by floods.

Spencer told IPS he is convinced that there is a link between climate change, global warming and the erratic weather being experienced in the region.

“What has happened in these three member states of the OECS clearly demonstrates that the issue of climate change and associated weather issues can no longer be treated as a backburner issue,” he told IPS. “It…has to be a front burner issue and has to be addressed collectively.”

“I would say that this has to jolt all of us into the recognition that climate change is not something that we can continue to take lightly. It has to be given the prominence and the priority that it deserves.”

He hastened to point out that climate change has not skipped the attention of governments of the OECS.

“Policies and programmes have been developed in conjunction with regional and international bodies involved with this process to introduce…practicable measures,” he said. “But these devastating situations would urge us…to move more expeditiously in putting into place whatever is required to assist in combating the effects of climate change.”

Ronald Jackson, the executive director of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), said he could not give a scientific answer connecting climate change and the Christmas Eve storm, but he strongly believed climate variability issues and climate change issues were involved.

“There is going to be a change in the culture of how we deal with these things, how we monitor the meteorological information that is being presented because we are living in very uncertain times,” he said.

A boy clears debris from his home in St. Vincent following flooding Dec. 24. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Serious damage

Gonsalves said that during a helicopter overview of the country’s forests, the minister of works and chief engineer observed massive landslides, rivers that had spread, and land that had been denuded.

“The extent of landslides suggests the figure of about 10 percent, which is a huge number,” he told IPS, adding that the practical implications of the landsides are huge as well. “If we are seeing these logs in the lower end of the river, you could imagine the damage which is caused in the upper end. If the logs are not cleared and if we don’t deal properly with river defences, we have a time bomb” where the next heavy rains will simply add to the buildup.

The capacity of the state to respond to a disaster of this magnitude it is not at the level it ought to be, Gonsalves added.

“There are profound limitations. In the ministry of social development, we just don’t have enough persons in that area to deal with the extent of the social problems which have arisen,” he told IPS.

Two decisions regarding immediate reconstruction were reached during a six-hour meeting at the prime minister’s office Saturday. They involved financial institutions, contractors, local and regional disaster management agencies, representatives of CARICOM, and the governments of Antigua, Barbados and Trinidad and Tobago.

The prime minister said all financial institutions have indicated that they will try to help provide the financing for the work to be done.

The island’s water authority has said that by Tuesday, the country should be up from what is now 50 percent of the population with access to water to 85 percent.

“The issue of the water is the most critical, immediate human need,” Gonsalves said. Even the country’s 42 water trucks “are still not enough to deal with the problem.”

“We will work to make our country better than it is and to use this challenging period to lift ourselves and to carry ourselves to higher heights,” Gonsalves concluded.

A cleric prays with Colleen James in Cane Grove, St. Vincent hours before it was confirmed that James' sister had died in the floodwaters. Her two-year-old daughter is still missing. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, Dec 26 2013 (IPS)

Colleen James arrived in St. Vincent and the Grenadines from Canada two days before Christmas hoping to enjoy the holiday season with her family. Now she’s getting ready to bury her two-year-old daughter and 18-year-old sister.

“I never do nothing wrong. I always do good,” a dazed James told IPS as she looked out across the flood damage occasioned by a slow-moving low-level trough that brought torrential rains, death and destruction not only to St. Vincent and the Grenadines but St. Lucia and Dominica."We looked across and saw people floating down a river." -- Curt Clifton

Disaster officials have so far recovered nine bodies and the search continues for three more people reported missing and feared dead.

In St. Lucia, five people were killed, including Calvin Stanley Louis, a police officer who died after a wall fell on him as he tried to assist people who had become stranded by the floods.

The trough system resulted in 171.1 mm of rainfall within a 24-hour period ending at 8.50 a.m. on Dec. 25.

Trinidad’s Prime Minister Kamla Persad Bissessar has requested that the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) mobilise food and emergency supplies to be sent to St Lucia.

The CEO of ODPM, Dr. Stephen Ramroop, has contacted the Deputy Prime Minister of Saint Lucia Philip J. Pierre and received a list of items that were urgently required, including canned goods, biscuits, infant formula, water, mattresses, blankets, hygiene kits, disaster kits and first aid kits.

The ODPM expects tp ship two 40-foot containers to Saint Lucia by 1.00 p.m. local time Thursday.

No requests have come from the other affected islands as yet.

St. Vincent and the Grenadines Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves, who has cut short his holiday in London, is due here on Thursday.

The body of 18-year-old Kesla James was recovered midmorning Wednesday, Dec. 25, 2013. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Curt Clifton told IPS he was visiting a friend in the Cane Grove community on the outskirts of the capital, Kingstown, when they “looked across by the neighbour and saw people floating down a river” and rushed to their aid. They managed to rescue James and one of her daughters.

The floods have caused widespread damage in all three islands. Roads, bridges and in some cases, houses, have been swept away and the telecommunications companies, as well as public utilities, are urging patience as they assess the situation.

“We have seen quite an extent of damage, particularly from the gutters coming down, bringing a lot of debris on the road,” Montgomery Daniel, minister of housing, informal human settlements, lands and surveys, told IPS.

“It is going to take some time for us to clean it up. We are going to need the assistance of heavy-duty equipment,” he said.

Sixty-two people were left homeless in the wake of the flooding.

Health officials have also urged residents to be wary of diseases associated with the floods as in many cases pipeborne water has been disrupted.

Dominica’s Environment Minister Kenneth Darroux, a surgeon by profession, is hoping that the island’s plea to the World Bank for financial assistance will help the island better prepare in the long-term for the devastating effects of climate change.

Darroux is spearheading efforts by the Dominica government to secure 100 million euro from the World Bank to fund the country’s Strategic Programme for Climate Resilience (SPCR).

“Discussions are at an advanced stage,” Darroux, who now serves as minister of environment, natural resources, physical planning and fisheries, told IPS. The funds will be part loan and part grant.

Darroux noted that “the traditional climate change and environmental issues were not really producing the results that the government wanted,” adding that climate change should be viewed as a development issue rather than just isolated changes in the climate.

The World Bank-assisted programme is scheduled to begin in 2014 and will address key issues in various parts of the country. These include capacity-building for adaptation to climate change at a cost of 3.7 million euro; construction of storm drains at a cost of 5.2 million euro; agroforestry, food security and soil stabilisation at a cost of 6.0 million euro; and road works totaling 56 million euro.

Dominica has so far received 21 million dollars from the climate investment fund, 12 million of which is grant financing and nine million is “highly concessionary financing”, Darroux said.

The country also expects a further 17 million dollars from the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and the Disaster Vulnerability Reduction Project (DVRP), which is a regional project being undertaken by the World Bank which is running simultaneously with the PPCR.

“This investment package will seek to begin addressing the deficiency that was identified in the SPCR,” Darroux told IPS.

“I am confident that the implementation of this project will show the world that the people of Dominica stand ready to play out part in the climate change fight.”

The PPCR is a collaborative effort between Dominica, Haiti, Grenada, Jamaica, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

Each island has a national programme and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (5Cs) serves as a focal point for the regional tracking of activities.

The issue of climate finance is a major one for Caribbean countries and several decisions taken at the 19th session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 19) in Warsaw, Poland, this past November are of particular relevance to the region.

The Adaptation Fund Board (AFB) reached its target of mobilising 100 million dollars to fund six projects. These include a project in Belize, which had been submitted by PACT, one of only two National Implementing Entities (NIE) in the Caribbean accredited to the Adaptation Fund.

The other NIE is in Jamaica, which has also received funding for its project.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF) was also operationalized at COP 19. Developed countries have been asked to channel a significant portion of their 100-billion-dollars-per-annum pledge for climate change through the GCF.

The Board of the GCF has been tasked with ensuring that there is an equitable balance of funding for both adaptation and mitigation. All developing countries are eligible for funding from the GCF.

This cemetery in St. Lucia was among the sites which suffered damage when Hurricane Tomas hit the island in 2010. The Oct. 31 hurricane killed 14 people in St. Lucia. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
MOCHO, Jamaica, Dec 10 2013 (IPS)

The Mocho Mountains that run through the centre of Jamaica were once covered by lush tropical forests that helped control rainfall. Now, much of the forests and farmlands have been destroyed and the community is hard hit by the resultant extreme weather.

“[The area] is one of those that was severely mined for bauxite and so the trees were lost and so too was the arable land for farming,” Indi McLymont-Lafayette, the regional coordinator for Panos Caribbean, told IPS. Panos, a global network of institutes, works to give a voice to poor and marginalised communities.

McLymont-Lafayette, who grew up in Mocho, said the community was now very vulnerable to climate change.'People are seeing coastlines now being inundated and the sea encroaching further inland.” -- St. Lucia's Minister for Sustainable Development Dr. James Fletcher

“They were very hard hit by hurricanes Ivan and Dean [in 2004 and 2007 respectively]. There are longer droughts and the farmers are grappling with issues of trying to access water because the community is primarily rain-fed,” she said.

In the past, Mocho, which is about one and a half hour’s drive from the capital, Kingston, was well known as the breadbasket of the central parish of Clarendon.

“And if [there is] sporadic rainfall, which is also predicted under the climate change umbrella, it’s harder for the farmers on the ground to regularise their planting season so that means it has implications for the food security of Jamaica,” McLymont-Lafayette added.

She said she clearly remembered the first time she experienced a natural disaster. It was in 1988, when Hurricane Gilbert made landfall on the island. Before that, the last hurricane had occurred 37 years previously, in 1951.

“When I was growing up in my teens there was only one hurricane, which was Gilbert in 1988. It was an exciting thing for me then because it was the first hurricane we’d had since 1951 and I heard about that from my grandparents,” she said.

But when it came, the devastation it caused made her “never want to see a hurricane again”.

“But of course that has not been the case. And over the past 15 years, almost every year we’ve had tropical storms or some hurricanes.

“I think if you look at the statistics between 2002 and 2007, up to 70 million dollars [was] lost due to extreme weather events, and that is a lot of money for a developing country like Jamaica. So I know it’s a serious concern for us and many of the small islands in the Caribbean,” she said.

Indi McLymont-Lafayette, the regional coordinator for Panos Caribbean, said that Jamaica had put a lot of focus on preparing for climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

Among the small island Caribbean states is St. Lucia, which was hit by major hurricanes in 2007, 2010 and 2011.

The country’s minister for sustainable development, Dr. James Fletcher, told IPS that climate change was affecting the island.

“That’s a point that we’ve been at pains to [explain] to the international community – that while for some of them climate change is an academic discussion or some sort of esoteric concept, for us in the Caribbean we are living climate change,” Fletcher said.

“Fishers are seeing their fish catches affected because the oceans are warmer, coral reefs are bleaching and fishery is not as productive as it used to be. People are seeing coastlines now being inundated and the sea encroaching further inland.”

He said that St. Lucia was still recovering from Hurricane Tomas, which hit the island on Oct. 31, 2010 and killed 14 people, and explained that the government was still repairing much of the damage it caused.

He also lamented that the bread and butter industries for most Caribbean countries, like agriculture and tourism, were already being affected and stood to be affected even further.

“Very soon I think we will start seeing differences in fertility for some of our agricultural lands, because for us in the Caribbean there isn’t any place that isn’t too far away from the sea,” Fletcher explained. “As salt water starts coming inland, then it starts having impacts on the fertility of your agricultural lands so we are experiencing climate change in so many different ways.”

For Antigua and Barbuda, McLymont-Lafayette pointed to the climate prediction in Germanwatch‘s 2008 climate risk index that Barbuda would probably sink in another 40 years.

“When I heard that, as a Caribbean person, I was devastated because I primarily thought of climate change as impacting the Pacific and those places,” she said.

But Caribbean countries are fighting back and have recognised the importance of adaptation to cope with the impact of climate change.

Just last week the Barbados House of Assembly gave the green light for government to utilise 13.3 million dollars from the consolidated fund for an on-going project to battle climate change and protect the country’s coastline.

Minister of Environment and Drainage Denis Lowe said Barbados needed to fight back, since climate change was already leading to dying and bleached coral.

“We believe that there is a direct correlation between the state of the corals around the island and the intensity of weather patterns and weather systems, including sea level rise and temperature of water,” he said.

The minister explained that there were 20 coral reef sites around the island that were in need of protection.

McLymont-Lafayette said that Jamaica had put a lot of focus on preparing for climate change. “Last month, we tabled a climate change policy in cabinet and Jamaica has established a Climate Change Ministry, which is one of the few in the world, so we are taking this very, very seriously,” she said.

Jamaica’s Ministry of Water, Land, Environment and Climate Change was created in January 2012. It has responsibility for the formulation and implementation of policy relating to its related subject areas.

Seventy percent of Jamaica’s infrastructure is along the coast.

“Our airports, our hotels are on the coast and in Negril where we advertise seven miles of beautiful beaches there has been significant beach erosion partly due to sea level rise and other factors,” McLymont-Lafayette said.

“So the bottom line is that we have to put measures in place to restore the coastline if we want tourism to continue to be sustainable.”

St. Kitts (pictured here) and its northern neighbour Jamaica are increasing their energy efficiency with solar streetlights. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Peter Richards
BELMOPAN, Belize, Aug 23 2013 (IPS)

Every year, the Caribbean’s electric sector burns through approximately 30 million barrels of fuel. Overall, the region imports in excess of 170 million barrels of petroleum products annually.

Dr. Al Binger, technical coordinator for the recently launched multi-million-dollar Energy for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Caribbean Buildings Project, said that the region must now focus on ways to reduce the amount of fuel used to generate electricity, and in the process save millions of dollars.

He told IPS that building modifications, such as replacing windows and doors, installing solar water heaters and other retrofitting activities, are among the major components of the EDS project, which he hopes will eventually be embraced by all 15 members of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

“Improving the efficiency of energy use in the building sector is a project priority. We’re looking for a 10 to 15-percent improvement across the whole electricity sector in this pilot project, which means we could save the equivalent of about 400,000 dollars per year for the pilot project [in five countries]. So you see, energy efficiency pays back quickly. It’s a good investment,” he told IPS.

Belize will be the first to begin implementation of the ESD project, which seeks to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent in the near term and increase the use of renewable energy.

Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada, St. Lucia, and Trinidad and Tobago are next in line to participate in the four-year, 12.4-million-dollar project that was launched by the Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) this week.

“The participating countries expressed interest in collaborating, which is exceptional as countries usually do these activities individually,” said the CCCCC in a release, noting that each country will establish a national steering committee, a project manager and an executing agency.

The centre says the EDS project will do a range of things to support the Implementation Plan, the landmark policy document that guides the Caribbean’s climate change response. This includes boosting capacity to perform audits, introducing new building codes, labelling appliances as energy-savers, and creating best practices for how the private sector can reduce its energy consumption.

A major focus is resilience, and helping economies adapt to new weather conditions.

Binger noted that Jamaica, for example, had to give up its banana industry after 100 years because it became unsustainable due in part to climatic changes.

“Jamaica built an entire railroad just to grow banana… So the Implementation Plan is about the economy of tomorrow, what will it look like, and that starts with the energy sector,” he said.

Earlier this month, the architect Brian Bernal, addressing a workshop hosted by the Jamaica Institute of Architects in association with the Caribbean Architecture Students Association of the University of Technology (UTECH), said that overhauling the island’s energy use profile would not be enough to protect it from rising sea levels, increased air temperature and more intense storms and hurricanes.

He argued that the effort has to be coupled with a deliberate move to ensure that buildings can withstand the anticipated shocks.

“We need to change the way we use energy resources to reduce our CO2 emissions, while simultaneously increasing our ability to resist the effects of climate change,” Bernal said.

“Robust and enforced building codes are highly effective in ensuring a better quality of building and when employed in conjunction with green building standards or practices will significantly increase the functional resilience of our buildings,” said Bernal, whose company serves as the lead consultant of the multi-disciplinary team for the “Build Better Jamaica — Developing Design Concepts for Climate Change Resilient Buildings project”.

That project is sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Institute of Sustainable Development and is aimed at helping Caribbean countries prepare for climate change, particularly in the design and construction of buildings that are more resilient to disasters, but which do not compromise the natural environment.

The CCCCC said that the main aims of the ESD project, the “first regional project of its kind in CARICOM”, are to increase the number of successful commercial applications of energy efficiency and conservation in buildings as well as expand the market for renewable energy technology applications for power generation.

“We will be primarily using photovoltaics, [and] some wind energy to a lesser extent,” said Binger.

At a 2010 Caribbean conference, the Climate Studies Group at the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica, noted that small-scale wind for domestic use offers an advantage over total reliance on grid-supplied electricity if net metering is allowed and also for standalone systems where the wind is fairly consistent.

A farmer in his banana field, which was destroyed by a tropical storm. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
CASTRIES, St. Lucia, Jun 15 2013 (IPS)

The Caribbean has the unenviable reputation as one of the most disaster-prone regions in the world, a situation exacerbated by climate change and vulnerability that experts warn could have significant economic consequences if unaddressed.

As a result, a comprehensive strategy to build Caribbean resilience ought to include adaptation to the effects of climate change, Warren Smith, president of the Barbados-based Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the region’s premier lending institution, has suggested.

Calling the Caribbean “the most vulnerable region in the world to natural hazards”, Smith said that “a growth strategy, in the context of the Caribbean reality, will be found wanting if it does not address resilience in all of its manifestations”.

Natural hazards “have been increasing in intensity and adversely impacting the region’s economic growth”, he added while addressing the bank’s governors recently, citing a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report which found that in the past 60 years, Caribbean countries have been hit with 187 natural disasters, primarily cyclones and floods."[The Caribbean is] the most vulnerable region in the world to natural hazards."
-- Warren Smith

The report estimated the annual economic cost of damage from natural hazards at one percent of gross domestic product (GDP) – a considerable drag on economic growth and a central factor in debt accumulation.

“In the face of these daunting statistics, the IMF has suggested that small island developing states in the Caribbean should be seen as frontline states for climate change funding,” Smith said.

“Growth prospects for our most vulnerable countries will be enhanced if resources for climate resilience can be front-loaded as part of a more comprehensive adjustment package,” he added. “Climate adaptation interventions should be fast-tracked and targeted at the most vulnerable economic sectors, primarily tourism and agriculture.”

St. Lucia’s prime minister, Kenny Anthony, told IPS the CDB had shown keen interest in providing assistance to the region on the issue of climate change. Together with the European Investment Bank, the CDB was refining projects to be funded under a 65-million-dollar Climate Action Line of Credit (CALC).

“This credit line provides an opportunity for low-cost financing for projects aimed at building resilience against climate change,” he described. “The region should…embrace this opportunity and make every effort to use these resources to help deal with reducing greenhouse gas emissions, land degradation and dwindling water supplies,” he told IPS.

Small Caribbean states include Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.

Six of these countries rank in the top 10 most disaster-prone countries in the world in terms of disasters per land area or population. The rest of the Caribbean is not far behind, with all the countries among the top 50 hot spots.

The frequency of disasters varies significantly within the Caribbean, with Jamaica and the Bahamas having the highest probability of a hurricane striking in any given year. However, for most other countries, the probability of a hurricane remains high, above 10 percent per year.

The CDB president said “bitter experience” has taught the region that even the most carefully crafted fiscal adjustment programme can be quickly derailed by a major climate event, adding that adequate insurance coverage could be an efficient way of transferring some of this risk.

He cited the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) as “an excellent vehicle for this purpose” but said the challenge is that a borrowing member country (BMC) of the CDB, going through acute fiscal adjustment, would be unlikely to purchase adequate insurance coverage.

“The CCRIF estimates that, based on current levels of coverage purchased by Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, and St. Kitts and Nevis, the CCRIF payouts for Hurricanes Georges and Gilbert, would have been a mere one to two percent of total national losses,” he said.

“The prevailing view in sections of the donor community is that countries in fiscal and debt distress should front-load their reforms. This notion should be broadened to include the front-loading of climate resilience support,” he added.

Smith noted the CCRIF is ideally placed to provide two practical forms of such support to Caribbean countries, adding that donor assistance could be provided to these countries to increase the level of their catastrophic insurance cover to a more acceptable level.

The CCRIF recently request a new injection of donations to help make flood insurance more affordable, he pointed out, a move that “would open up yet another window for transferring some of the risk associated with flooding, which is now an almost annual event in the Caribbean”.

The costs associated with the frequent recurrence of natural disasters in the region are high. Since the early 1960s, the Caribbean has experienced average losses equivalent to almost one percent of GDP in damages each year, and such economic costs are on the rise. Losses have risen from .9 percent of GDP per year in the 1980s and 1990s to 1.3 per cent of GDP in the 2000s.

Natural disasters have also taken the lives of 1,345 people over the past 60 years, though they have by no means defeated Caribbean countries.

Guyana, often dubbed the breadbasket of the Caribbean, says it is pioneering an aggressive approach to accelerating economic diversification and building greater resilience, with significant returns emerging from these efforts.

“Gone are the days when our heavy dependence on the traditional products, sugar, rice and bauxite, left our economic fortunes to the vagaries and vicissitudes of these industries,” Ashni Singh, Guyana’s finance minister, told IPS.

“Today, buoyant activity in mineral exploration and extraction, agricultural diversification, information and communications technology (ICT), construction and financial services and adventure tourism, all form the basis for a broader-based and more resilient Guyanese economy.”

He also pointed to “aggressive efforts at migrating from dependence on fossil fuels to reliance on hydropower to meet the needs of our national electricity grid”, with increased generation capacity and improved reliability and affordability.

As Caribbean leaders meet in St. Lucia this week, they are focusing on a series of routine issues affecting the region, including problems with the smooth operation of the single trading market.

But those from the smaller eastern group of islands are also likely to raise the implications of a recent U.S. court ruling that has much to do with the protracted battle between mainland China and Taiwan for diplomatic recognition in the Caribbean Community bloc.

In the past week, Justice Harold Baer of the Southern District Court of New York handed tiny Grenada a major victory over Taiwan when he ruled that the Asian economic giant had no right to garnish the overseas earnings of Grenada to win back payments for development loans when Taiwan and Grenada were seemingly inseparable diplomatic buddies.

Grenada was one of only 23 countries around the world that had recognised Taiwan as a full sovereign state rather than as a breakaway rebel province of China, as Beijing has long maintained.

But the two had a bitter falling out after the previous government switched allegiance to China and booted out Taiwan, humiliating Taipei and setting off a chain of events that nearly led to full-scale economic hardships for Grenada.

Once China replaced Taiwan as Grenada’s Asian darling, Taiwan began to demand immediate repayment of about 30 million dollars in concession loans to the island, clearly as punishment for being chased off the 344 sq km island of 110,000 north of Trinidad, even though authorities there had asked for time to work out a payment plan. Taiwan basically said no, and demanded its money in a shorter period.

Lawyers for Grenada took the matter to a U.S. court because Taiwan had successfully begun to garnish the island’s earnings from cruise lines and air travel, putting the money – nearly a million dollars – into its own account rather than Grenada’s.

Wazir Mohamed, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Indiana, East, says there are lessons for small island nations caught in the middle of a tug-of-war by developed nations to win hearts and minds in the region and access minerals and other natural resources.

“There are a lot of implications for small states being caught in a new type of cold War in the world today,” he told IPS. “Nothing has changed in the way capital is being used by the West and nations like China. It is a new form of colonialism, but the only thing different to the past is that this new form is now being implemented and effected much more rapidly than in the past using capital that is very, very mobile.

“Caribbean nations have to be careful about being caught in the middle of these geopolitical fights involving other nations,” said the Caribbean-born Mohamed.

For Grenada, cruise lines were on the verge of scrubbing St. George’s as a port of call because they were uncomfortable being in the middle of a nasty diplomatic row that forced them to take the side of one over the other.

In his ruling, Justice Baer called the actions of Taiwan inimical to the island’s development since Grenada depends on money from the cruise and airline sectors “as a source of revenue for carrying out public functions”.

As widely expected, lawyers for Taiwan say they will appeal. For now, Grenadian authorities are breathing easier even as they prepare for the very likely round two legal process.

For other nations, like summit host St. Lucia, the issue is of prime importance and one to monitor very closely as it could also face similar problems. The last government in 2007 had ironically kicked out China and replaced it with Taiwan, upending the decision of another administration in the late 1990s.

China has so far not retaliated by demanding back its money, notably funding for a new sports stadium, hospital and buildings in St. Lucia’s industrial zone, but has condemned local officials outright for its diplomatic expulsion.

“We have been very careful about making this decision, and now that we have taken it, we do not expect the Chinese will love us any more for it,” said then Foreign Minister Rufus George Bousquet. “But we expect that they will conduct themselves in a manner that is acceptable to our government.”

Bousquet’s government has since lost power. The new administration of Prime Minister Kenny Anthony has already spoken to both sides, but for now is playing it safe and has remained loyal to Taiwan even though it had chosen China in a previous period in office. Bousquet had also said the policy back then was to deal with which donor was willing to give more.

Once Taiwan departed Grenada, China moved in to win hearts, funding a national sports stadium and donating generously to reconstruction efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, which devastated the island in September 2004.

Other Caribbean trade bloc nations that recognise Taiwan over China include Haiti, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, Belize and now St. Lucia, even though the official policy of the bloc is for a “one China Policy”.

The Grenada issue is not an official agenda item for leaders when they meet in the main of two annual summits from Wednesday to Friday, but officials all say the court ruling has implications and lessons for island nations still caught between China and Taiwan for diplomatic recognition.

For now it appears that mainland China is winning. Last September, many regional leaders travelled to Trinidad for the China-Caricom forum where the delegation from Beijing offered up to one billion dollars in soft loans to fund projects throughout the region.

Some states, like bloc headquarters Guyana, signed on quickly by proposing various projects for funding, but Taiwan does not have that luxury as its diplomatic and aid outreach is confined only to those with which it has formal diplomatic relations.