By: Staff Writer
November 23, 2021
With increasing climate change, the threat of hotter weather has created a reaction of greater flood threat says the World Bank vice president.
The world is in danger unless world leaders act fast on climate change issues. The world is likely to hit 1.5C warming limit within 20 years in what the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described the report as a “code red for humanity”.
Studies have been trending towards climate change exacerbating extreme flood events and coastal countries like the ones in the Caribbean are at risk of being underwater in a matter of years.
Carlos Felipe Jaramillo is the World Bank Vice President for the Latin America and the Caribbean Region, said on a webinar unveiling the bank’s latest report, “360° Resilience : A Guide to Prepare the Caribbean for a New Generation of Shocks,” said: “The number of people exposed to floods in the region increased 70 percent between 2002-2020 and will keep increasing with climate change; 72 percent of infrastructure assets are exposed to at least two different types of natural hazards and 13 percent of hotels along the Caribbean beaches would experience beach loss by 2050 due to sea level rise and erosion.”
The cost of all of this is huge as he added that in some countries, the annual cost of coastal protection could exceed “5% of GDP every year.”
Mr Jaramillo also said: “Now is the time to rethink prior resilient strategies and to prepare for the natural disasters of the future. New challenges need new approaches that build on strong institutions on robust analytics and more transparent prioritization.”
Underscoring the importance of the report, he added: “This report comes at an opportune time to help countries identify gaps in resilience building, and includes policy recommendations that can help build a stronger recovery and better prepare the region for the future.
He continued, “Building cross cutting resilience to disasters and climate change has been the centre of the World Bank strategy in the Caribbean in recent years and we are supporting the region with an active portfolio of over $2.8bn in IBRD (International Bank for Reconstruction and Development) in either financing, or trust and financing for 74 projects.
“We are deepening our commitment to address climate change by increasing to 35 percent the share of our financing that provides climate pro benefits; designing innovative tools, such as the issuance of a catastrophe bond in Jamaica, the first in the Caribbean region that offers financial protection against storms. Also providing policy lending support to strengthen fiscal frameworks and debt transparency, and also supporting the recovery in St. Vincent and the Grenadines with quick finance to help cover the emergency needs born from the La Soufriere volcanic eruption, and supporting SMEs and creating jobs to help the economic recovery in Haiti.”
Julie Rozenberg, economist with the bank’s Sustainable Development Group, added more on the report: “The first finding is that Caribbean countries have achieved high levels of resilience. But this resilience has not always been inclusive, and a lot of people had been left behind. The reason why we’re saying this is because Caribbean countries have experienced very high level of damages to their physical assets, with the 400 natural disasters that have been recorded since the 1950s.”
Essentially, the signs of inequality are in the Caribbean as this report suggests that as countries in the region rebuild after being devastated with a natural disaster, the “haves” get the lion’s share of the redevelopment, leaving the poorer classes with whatever residual is left.
She also said that growth has been “resilient” in the region, despite the natural disasters that have beset it. But the region’s future is still yet “uncertain” due to the Caribbean still being largely unprepared for the possibility of more severe weather outcomes and climate change that may affect tourism, the region’s number one industry.