By Peter Richards
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, Jul 5, CMC – Two senior United Nations officials, Friday, said that the passage of Hurricane Beryl through the Caribbean this week, underscores the concerns of small island developing states (SIDS) that have continuously bamed developed countries for the severe impacts associated with climate change.
The UN Resident Coordinator for Jamaica, The Bahamas, Bermuda, The Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands, Dennis Zulu; and Simon Springett, the UN Resident Coordinator for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, told reporters that they were both in attendance at the fourth international conference on SIDS, where the developing countries raised the issue.
“Dennis and I were both fortunate to attend the …conference held in Antigua and Barbuda at the end of May and clearly these were the messages that were coming out, a real call and demand for climate justice,” Springett told a virtual news conference.
He told reporters that “when we say climate justice, it links to …financing both adaptation and mitigation,” adding that the Grenada government “has been trying for a very long time …to build some resilience and now this gets wipe out. Watch video
“These countries all have a very high GDP (gross domestic product) to debt ratio and reconstruction…quite frankly does not get done on grant based financing and these governments are not able to take loans at concessional rates”.
(Details in Full News section)
CMC/2024