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Regional leaders say the outcome of the ‘mixed bag’ climate talks once again overlooks the real and mounting threats faced by Caribbean countries.
A coastal community in the Eastern Caribbean. Small island states say their extreme climate vulnerability is still not reflected in global finance decisions made at COP30. Credit: Alison Kentish/IPS
– Caribbean small island states say this year’s UN climate conference has once again failed to deliver the urgency and ambition needed to tackle escalating climate devastation across the region. From slow-moving climate finance to frustrating political gridlock, leaders say COP30 did not reflect the realities that small islands are living through every day.
Jamaica is recovering from Hurricane Melissa, which left over 30 percent of the country’s GDP in losses and billions of dollars in damage. While the country has been able to respond rapidly thanks to a suite of innovative developmental finance tools, including a USD 150 million catastrophe bond, parametric insurance and a disaster savings fund, its Minister for Water, Environment and Climate Change, Matthew Samuda, warns that the vast majority of Caribbean islands do not have similar mechanisms.
Speaking at a press conference organized by Island Innovation and themed “Islands, the Climate Finance Gap, and COP30 Reflections,” Samuda said this is precisely why global negotiations must center the lived experiences of SIDS.
“I think I perhaps may be a little more disappointed than I am usually at the end of a COP because seeing what Jamaica is going through, seeing what Vietnam is going through, seeing extreme weather events pop up all around the world over the last 10 days, you would think that the urgency and the facts staring us in the face would have brought about greater ambition,” he said, adding that “unfortunately, the global geopolitical landscape didn’t allow for us to go much further.”
A Struggle Just to be Heard?
For many small islands and territories, simply participating meaningfully at COP30 was an uphill battle. The British Virgin Islands, like other Caribbean territories, had to rely on partners, including the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre for accreditation and access to the negotiations.
“We try to split up and cover as much as we can,” said Dr. Ronald Berkeley, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Climate Change. “Our reliance on partners shows how limited our reach still is.”
Berkeley said that despite the Caribbean’s visible and worsening climate impacts, it remains difficult to get major emitters to understand the region’s urgency.
“For small islands, this is real. I’m not sure a lot of the big players believe us,” he said. “Until you live through being almost blown to smithereens by a Category Five hurricane, you will never understand.”
The BVI recently established its own climate trust fund, currently funded with about US$5.5 million, to address some financing shortfalls, but Berkeley emphasized that this cannot make up for reliable, large-scale climate funding.
Barriers to Pledges
Caribbean officials are echoing the same concern—that climate finance exists on paper but rarely reaches small, vulnerable nations at the speed or scale required.
“At COP there were positive commitments, about US$1.3 trillion annually by 2035 for climate action, the tripling of adaptation finance and operationalizing the Loss and Damage Fund,” said Dr. Mohammad Rafik Nagdee, Executive Director of the Caribbean Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (CCREEE).
“But the elephant in the room is the global finance gap,” he said. “Even where access exists, it’s not accessible at the speed the climate crisis demands. Processes are lengthy, requirements heavy and small governments simply don’t have the technical capacity.”
Nagdee said the region needs “greater predictability, simpler pathways and finance that is actually ready to disburse.”
Living Through it—Not Debating it
For Jamaica, which is emerging from one of the most devastating storms in its history, the mismatch between climate impacts and climate action is glaring.
“In the past four years, Jamaica has had its hottest day on record, its wettest day on record, its worst droughts, two tropical storms, a Category 4 hurricane and now what could be classified as a Category 6,” Samuda said. “That’s climate change in reality. That’s not an academic debate for us.”
Caribbean leaders widely described COP30 as a ‘mixed bag,’ with negotiations with incremental progress overshadowed by inadequate urgency.
“We cannot talk about building back better if the resources arrive slowly,” Nagdee said.
For small island states living on the frontlines of warming seas, rising temperatures and record-breaking storms, the message from COP30 is clear and becoming all-too familiar—that climate change is accelerating and the price of delay is already being paid.
This feature is published with the support of Open Society Foundations.
IPS UN Bureau Report
