By Simon Jessop
BELEM, Brazil (Reuters) -Jamaica spent years building a pot of money to handle climate-fuelled disasters. It turned out to be enough to cover just 5% of the cost wrought by one storm.
Hurricane Melissa has left the island nation with bills totalling $10 billion – only $500 million of which it can cover with climate-preparation reserves stockpiled to deal with disasters, Jamaican cabinet minister Matthew Samuda told Reuters.
Jamaica is asking wealthy countries at the COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, to urgently offer grants, investment and concessional finance.
What it does not want are commercial-rate loans that saddle the country with more debt as it faces a future expected to deliver increasingly severe climate impacts such as heatwaves, droughts, rising seas and catastrophic storms.
“We don’t come as mendicants. We come as victims of the actions of others,” Samuda said in an interview at the summit, referring to the fact Jamaica has done little to cause the planet-warming emissions that are driving climate change.
He said Jamaica had spent three decades improving its financial health and inching closer to an investment grade credit rating.
“To have quite a bit of that success wiped out in a single 24-hour period by a storm that was stronger, lasted longer, came at a time of year that is unusual and brought more rain than usual because of the actions of others, is a difficult pill to swallow.”
Negotiations at the COP30 summit aim to make progress in shoring up funding for developing countries to prepare for and adapt to the coming climate extremes.
The U.N. estimates they will need at least $310 billion a year by 2035. “COP30 cannot end without an ambitious outcome (on adaptation),” said Ana Mulio Alvarez, policy advisor at climate think tank E3G.
CATEGORY 5 STORM WREAKS HAVOC
Melissa walloped Jamaica on October 28 as a powerful Category 5 hurricane, delivering an initial 17-foot storm surge along with severe winds and some 30 inches of rain that caused landslides and flooding.
Scientists determined climate change had made the storm 30% stronger than it would have been without global warming – and six times more likely to hit when it did.
Samuda described the impact as “seismic,” with 192,000 buildings damaged and the country’s key tourism and agriculture sectors hobbled. He said the storm should be given a new Category 6 designation.
The economic damage was far greater than that caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, when the island lost some 10% of its GDP.
The pandemic “didn’t wash away bridges, destroy roads, disrupt the water supply in the way that this particular incident has,” Samuda said.
Before Melissa hit, Jamaica had been building protection against such events, including through a catastrophe bond issued by the World Bank that disbursed $150 million and a parametric insurance scheme that helped to net another $90 million.
These self-help measures garnered about $500 million before Melissa caused $10 billion in estimated damages, just under 30% of the country’s economic output.
“That leaves a $9.5 billion gap,” Samuda said.
(Reporting by Simon Jessop and Sebastian Rocandio; Editing by Katy Daigle and Nia Williams)
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