Samuda sounds alarm on climate financing shortfall

AS small island developing states, including Jamaica, bear the financial and environmental brunt of worsening weather conditions, Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change Matthew Samuda has called for greater international financing for climate adaptation. Speaking Tuesday at the United Nations’ Solutions Dialogue on Financing Adaptation in the Era of Overshoot, hosted in New York, Samuda argued that current global funds do not meet the scale of the threat faced by vulnerable countries. He pointed out that the World Bank’s assessment is that Jamaica needs about US$5-billion to strengthen its water sector alone, against climate and development challenges.

The minister noted that in the last five years, Jamaica experienced four of its five worst droughts, and its hottest and wettest days on record, and the island’s western parishes were battered by Hurricane Melissa last October — the strongest storm to hit the country in history. Additionally, Samuda pointed out that the onset of the El Niño climate phenomenon has contributed to worsening drought and heat conditions affecting the island. Samuda argued that these extreme disruptions are undeniable proof of global climate overshoot and argued that developing countries lacked the funding required to fortify their resources against the environmental crisis.

“In the case of Hurricane Melissa last year, it was US$12.2 billion, 56 per cent of [Jamaica’s] GDP [gross domestic product]. When one compares that to something like Hurricane Katrina (2005), which was one per cent of US [United States of America] GDP, then you understand that the impact of overshoot affects us disproportionately, and that is of course a concern in the entire developing world,” said Samuda. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), climate overshoot occurs when global temperatures temporarily go past the Paris Agreement’s international goal of 1.5°C of warming, staying hot for several decades before potentially falling below it.

However, scientists warn that prolonged warming above that level could result in melting polar ice sheets, irreversible biodiversity loss and other long-term changes. Currently, UNEP predicts that the Earth is on a trajectory to cross 1.5°C global warming within the next few years, with its report putting the best case scenario at 1.8°C; while other sources suggest a peak at 2°C.