In the wake of another Caribbean climate disaster, Labour should raise its ambition to offer international support.<\/p>\n
This month has been unprecedented, even in a news cycle that has grown increasingly immune to ever-worsening climate catastrophes. After Beryl, a powerful category five hurricane, smashed its way across the Caribbean, an alarming report by the\u00a0<\/span>Copernicus Climate Change Service<\/span>\u00a0found that the planet has breached 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming for the twelfth month straight.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For a new UK government pledging to take strong climate action<\/a> at home, this must be a wake-up call for it to act on its historic responsibilities as a major global greenhouse gas polluter. These two alarming events alone show why it must put climate finance<\/a> at the heart of its climate agenda as COP29 rapidly approaches.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The Caribbean is one of the regions most at risk of climate change<\/a>, with 70 percent of its\u00a0<\/span>population<\/span>\u00a0living or working in coastal areas\u00a0<\/span>surrounded by ever-warming seas<\/span>\u00a0that make hurricanes like Beryl more common and more violent. While a category five hurricane is unprecedented this early in the year,\u00a0<\/span>forecasters have already predicted<\/span>\u00a0that the region could experience up to seven severe hurricanes between now and the end of October.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Extreme climate shocks are not only wreaking havoc, claiming lives, and destroying whole communities<\/a> \u2013 they are also severely\u00a0<\/span>affecting the region\u2019s tourism-dependent economies. Already\u00a0<\/span>it\u2019s been estimated<\/span>\u00a0that the clean-up alone will cost tens of millions of dollars \u2013 a cost that doesn\u2019t even begin to factor in what\u2019s needed to rebuild destroyed communities still paying the price of previous disasters \u2013 crises that are gendered in their nature.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Costly damage Hurricane Maria \u2013 the deadliest Atlantic hurricane to make landfall in the 21<\/span>st<\/span>\u00a0century \u2013 cost the island nation of Dominica an estimated\u00a0<\/span>225 percent<\/span>\u00a0of its GDP, while Hurricane Irma in the same year cost Antigua and Barbuda more than\u00a0<\/span>$136 million<\/span>\u00a0in damages, with the tourism<\/a> industry representing around\u00a0<\/span>44 percent<\/span>\u00a0of all losses.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even seven years on, the scale of the destruction has meant that communities are still rebuilding while dealing with hurricanes that worsen with intensity and frequency with each passing year. Yet, despite this, small island nations that have only contributed around 1% of all global carbon emissions<\/a>, have struggled to unlock climate finance, accessing a mere\u00a0<\/span>$1.5bn out of the $100bn pledged<\/span>\u00a0in total to Global South countries.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Negative debt spiral All this means that small island nations are left to play catch up, forever stuck on the back foot. Instead of spending the meagre levels of finance pledged to resilience-proofing their economies and communities, loans are used to service debts while interest rates for repayments globally remain at a record<\/a> high.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In its manifesto<\/span>, Britain\u2019s Labour Party spoke about \u201ctackling unsustainable debt\u201d as a \u201cpriority area\u201d in its global commitments \u2013 indeed a positive step forward. But in power we need it to act and end the colonial debt system and support countries in the Caribbean and beyond move towards a just and climate resilient<\/a> future.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n For a new government keen to show global leadership on climate<\/a>, this year\u2019s COP summit is a vital moment for the UK to play a much stronger role on climate finance than its Conservative predecessors. As the fourth-highest historic carbon emitter in the world, the UK has a moral and historic responsibility to address climate change<\/a>, but its actions haven\u2019t matched its words so far.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n During its election campaign, Labour failed to pledge new funds to address the huge gulf in climate financing for losses and damages,\u00a0<\/a><\/span>opting instead to simply deliver the previous government\u2019s low-ball commitments to spend \u00a311.6bn<\/span>\u00a0between 2021-2026. With nations set to meet at COP this year to define new annual climate finance commitments for Global South countries \u2013 known as the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG) \u2013 Labour needs to be much more ambitious in Azerbaijan. The future of communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis<\/a> depends on it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Now, in the words of Grenada\u2019s Prime Minister\u00a0<\/span>Dickson Mitchell<\/span>, is not the time for countries like the UK to \u201csit idly by with platitudes and tokenism.\u201d Now is the time for radical action and for the new UK government to stand up and deliver for the billions of people facing a runaway climate<\/a> emergency.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the wake of another Caribbean climate disaster, Labour should raise its ambition to offer international support. This month has been unprecedented, even in a news cycle that has grown increasingly immune to ever-worsening climate catastrophes. After Beryl, a powerful category five hurricane, smashed its way across the Caribbean, an alarming report by the\u00a0Copernicus Climate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10058,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10057"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10057\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10062,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10057\/revisions\/10062"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>Women and girls are more than 14 times more likely<\/span>\u00a0to be killed by climate shocks,\u00a0<\/span>according to Women\u2019s Environmental Leadership Australia,<\/span>\u00a0while our own research<\/span>\u00a0found that women also face an increased risk of non-economic impacts such as gender-based violence and forced child marriage.<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>To make matters worse, countries across the\u00a0<\/span>Caribbean have no choice but to turn to international financial institutions and take on eye-watering levels of debt to help communities regain their footing. Debt laden with restrictive repayment conditions further locks countries into a negative spiral \u2013 forcing governments<\/a> to shape their economies and societies in order to service their debts.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n