CARICOM-UN will raise funds to help rebuild hurricane-hit Caribbean nations
From teleSUR
The Caribbean Community, Caricom along with the United Nations Development Programme, UNDP, will host a conference to assist the hurricane-torn Caribbean nations to help them become more “resilient” in future climate-related calamities.
The conference to be held in New York on Nov. 22 will raise funds to provide “technical and financial assistance to meet that goal,” Ambassador Irwin LaRocque, Secretary-General of the Caribbean Community, Caricom, said during a press conference.
With limited resources and lack of funding, many hurricane-torn regions in the Caribbean are finding it hard to recoup.
“The currents of successive category 5 hurricanes signals a dangerous change in the intensity and frequency of climate change-related storms, heralds the advent of the new normal,” LaRocque said.
“All these disasters” offer an opportunity for the affected countries to “become the first climate change resilient countries in the world,” the CARICOM general secretary added.
Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, also urged for concessionary funding needed for the hurricane-hit regions. Using “artificial impediments” such as “per capita income” are “an act of aggression against small island developing states,” Browne said.
Browne called out the hypocrisy of naming Caribbean countries as “wealthy” when a vast majority of the countries in the region are “the poorest in the world, maybe second only to Africa,” he said.
Further adding, in order to adapt and mitigate the effects of climate change, the countries responsible for climate change should pay the price.
“The money should come from the heavy polluters, those who are contributing to the warming of the planet,” and those who continue to use fossil fuels, he further added.
A Caribbean peace conference held in Barbados, during the first week of October also discussed the perils of climate change and how developing nations are paying a heavy price for the capitalistic ventures of nearby developed nations which “increases the risk of natural disasters that can wipe out Caribbean economies by wreaking havoc on infrastructure and by causing significant loss of life.”
Attended by the representatives of Barbados, Cuba, Guyana, Jamaica, Martinique, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Venezuela and the U.S. Peace Council, the conference members noted that how they are being subjected ” to private sector dominance and the reversal of the social gains in health, education, public housing and transportation, adversely impacting the quality of life of the Caribbean working people.”
