Climate change, debt relief expected to top Caribbean island nation priorities at regional meeting ahead of UN conference on Small Island Developing States
The Caribbean SIDS—Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago—are battling unique challenges, including rising sea levels, extreme weather events and changing weather patterns that are threatening ecosystems and damaging economies. “Our region is complex but we share a special bond, due to our small size and geographic positioning and our unique vulnerabilities; the effects of a changing climate and intense natural disasters, the impacts of various exogenous economic shocks and cascading impacts of global political instability are major factors on our development,” said Ms. Keisal Melissa Peters, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. “This is a signal moment, we must assess where we are, with a clear-eyed vision for where we want to go; and define how we are to get there.”
Small Island Developing States Are in Hot Water: Here’s What the International Community Must Do to Help
The world’s small island developing States (SIDS) are among the most vulnerable countries on the planet. And they are in trouble. Some of them are literally sinking. Or, to be more exact, the waters that surround them are inching higher, threatening to swallow them up. Those same waters, which for millennia have been their source of food and their channel for transport, is also getting warmer and more acidic, killing fish and coral, and becoming more chaotic in its movements.