Caribbean Community (CARICOM) Secretary General Dr. Carla Barnett has highlighted climate change concerns as the region braces for what experts predict will be a ‘hyperactive’ 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season.
The season officially starts on June 1.
Dr. Barnett, speaking at a meeting of the Council for Foreign and Community Relations (COFCOR) last week, underscored the unjust reality that the Region, despite contributing little to climate change, bears the disproportionate burden of adapting to it.
The CARICOM Secretary-General described climate change, one of the agenda items at the Dominica meeting, as a reality that becomes even more critical with the approach of the 2024 hurricane season.
“Regular hurricanes seriously set back our development efforts, undoing hard-won progress, such as when Hurricane Maria devastated Dominica,” Barnett noted.
She declared that no climate resilience could exist without affordable resources necessary for infrastructural development.
“In our bilateral and joint engagements, we must continue, as a collective, to reinforce the urgency of reform of the global financial architecture, as proposed in the Bridgetown Initiative, to facilitate increased access to resources, at costs that we can bear, to address the impact of climate change on our economies and societies,” the CARICOM Secretary-General stated.
