Caribbean Islands Brace for Challenges of Climate Change
Prime Minister Dr. Denzil Douglas remembers how quiet – even uneventful – this tiny twin-island federation was for the first four decades of his life.
But over the past 10 years, St. Kitts and Nevis, as well as the rest of the Caribbean, have seen radical climatic shifts. There is no question in Douglas’s mind that these changes are the direct results of climate change.
“Growing up, I knew nothing of hurricanes, (but) in the last decade St. Kitts and Nevis has felt the wrath of hurricanes like never before,” said Douglas, who has been the head of government here for the last 17 years.
Yet the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis are “hardly unique” in experiencing these hurricanes, Douglas said. “We can remember only too well the brutality of (hurricanes) Ivan and Emily” in Grenada in 2004 and 2005, despite the fact that at the time, Grenada was considered “very safely nestled in the more southerly reaches of our archipelago”, he told IPS.
In July 2005 Hurricane Emily left a trail of destruction in Grenada, which was still recovering from the ravages of Hurricane Ivan the previous year.
Those who live in the region face multifaceted and troubling ramifications as a result of climate change, Douglas, who has primary responsibility for the environment and climate change in the quasi-cabinet of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS), told audience members from across the region during a climate change seminar earlier in September.
The OECS is a nine-member group comprised of Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Anguilla and the British Virgin Islands are associate members.
Douglas stressed that policymakers need to jump into action, as climate change has a dimension to it that is both urgent and existential.
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Participants in the two-day seminar, held under the theme “Climate Change and Our Coast – Exploring Possibilities, Finding Solutions”, examined the impact of climate change on the critical sector of tourism and the policies and processes used to address these challenges.
Douglas called the implications of climate change “obvious and catastrophic for tourism”. He said that adaptation integrated across a wide range of sectors, rather than in a piecemeal fashion, is the only way the region will be able to deal with the effects of climate change.
“Tourism will be particularly hard hit by climate change. As ocean temperatures rise, many coral reefs will experience bleaching”, which leads to “decreased interests in diving and snorkelling and a significant loss in associated revenues”, he said. “With more frequent and violent storms, beaches, coastal development and coastal infrastructure will be severely threatened.”
“It has been suggested that climate change is the greatest threat that small island nations face,” Douglas said. He agreed with the idea, he continued. “Climate change compounds all the other threats and hazards that we face.”
