Climate shock warning

One of the Caribbean’s leading experts on climate change and its devastating effects is sounding a warning that, if Jamaica does not increase its resilience it will continue to suffer economic and social shocks from the impact of climate change.

The latest warning has come from Professor of Climate Change at the University of the West Indies Mona Campus Michael Taylor, some six weeks after Category 5 Hurricane Melissa slammed into Jamaica leaving a trail of death, disease and multibillion-dollar losses, including housing stock and agriculture.

Taylor, who is also dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology, was delivering Thursday’s distinguished lecture on ‘The Post-Melissa Climate: Why the Conversation Must Change’.

His sombre warning coincidentally came the same day Jamaica’s Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change Matthew Samuda was elected president of the United Nations 193-member United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA).

The UNEA, the world’s highest-level decision-making body for matters related to the environment, “undertakes policy review, dialogue and the exchange of experiences and sets the strategic guidance on the future direction of the UN Environment Programme”.

In his acceptance statement on Thursday, Samuda emphasised the urgency of global environmental stewardship, pledging to lead UNEA-8 with “inclusivity, transparency and practical action”.

Samuda’s stance is that “environmental stewardship is no longer an isolated agenda item [but] the defining challenge of our century”.

In his role chairing the next meeting of the UN body, Samuda is expected to highlight the lived experience of the small island state which is part of the region grappling with the effects of climate change.

It is against that backdrop that Taylor bemoaned what he called the “four climate science truths” that Melissa, which made landfall in New Hope, Westmoreland, on October 28, exposed.

Those truths, he told his audience, were that “the unprecedented is now inescapable; that the once untouched are now becoming imperilled; that the utopian is becoming improbable; and that urgent has become immediate”.

Said Taylor: “Melissa did not create those truths, but it certainly did confirm them. Melissa confirmed the first truth through the massive scale of the storm, which translated into massive structural damage. It confirmed the second through the wide scope of social and environmental impact it wrought. It confirmed the third through the sheer size of the national setback. And it confirmed the fourth by spotlighting how our best climate plans remain largely unenacted.”

Several powerful cyclones have struck the region over the last 10 years, including Hurricane Dorian in 2019 and Beryl in 2024 and Taylor argued those were calls to action which were largely ignored or approached inadequately.

“If Melissa makes anything undeniable, it is that science and research can no longer be treated as optional accessories to development. They must remain current, continuous and deeply embedded in how this country plans, builds, finances and governs. And so let me just say plainly and as diplomatically as I can, one of the hardest things in the Caribbean is to secure consistent support for, including from the private sector, long-term research.”

With four parishes on Jamaica’s west suffering the brunt of Melissa’s fury, over 1,000 persons remain in shelters and thousands are without electricity, water and telecommunications, even as the country battles health and economic crises.

With donations and aid streaming in, the Government has already indicated it is moving to the next phase of recovery, where people who lost their houses will be provided with assistance to repair and rebuild.

However, Taylor cautioned that the efforts to withstand future shocks must be research based.

“Yet, more Melissas are going to come. And if we are to survive what is ahead, our region must remain armed with the best possible knowledge, not imported, but that are from our context, not yesterday’s data and not borrowed assumptions. Secondly, in my framework, we must confront the lessons Melissa has forced upon us. In confirming the four scientific truths, Melissa exposed weaknesses we have to address in our resilience building. These are the starting points.”

He argued that, with the warnings that the environment gave being ignored, it has become critical that the existing gaps be closed.

“Melissa revealed our engineering gap between the climate we are are building for and the climate now striking us; our protection gap between who we used to think was vulnerable and who the climate has now exposed; our continuity gap between how often shocks now arrive and how slowly our development model recovers; and our implementation gap between what we plan and what we actually get, what gets delivered on the ground.”

Taylor urged quick action, insisting that in the post-Melissa era, the climate conversation must drive urgent action.

“If the next storm is strong, and the science says it will be, then our objective as a nation must be to ensure that, even if the storm is stronger, the shock afterward will be smaller because the gaps have been reduced,” he said.

“That means elevating the conversation around safeguards for society and environment proactively and in so doing shrinking the protection gap. Elevating the conversation around shifted approaches to development so that growth continues between storms and is not erased after every impact. This will shrink the continuity gap and finally elevate the conversation around the speed for execution, moving from intention to delivery and from strategy to ground, thereby shrinking the implementation gap.

“This is how we begin to collectively close the conceivability gap. Not by hoping that storms weaken but by ensuring our system strengthens faster than the risk escalates.”

The UWI professor pointed out that the research findings exist and the university should be part of that conversation.

“Acknowledge the signs. Consider the lessons learned. Tackle the gaps head-on. Climate change is no longer a distant threat to be managed someday. It is now the condition under which all our futures will be built or broken.”

Over the last 10 years, the Atlantic Basin has seen record-breaking averages of 18 storms and 11 hurricanes annually, with cyclones increasing in intensity.

Hurricane Melissa was reported to be the third-strongest hurricane on record and the most powerful to make landfall in Jamaica, with experts warning that increasing global temperatures are creating ideal conditions for stronger weather systems to form.

karen.madden@gleanerjm.com