Minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for water, environment, climate change and the blue and green economies, Matthew Samuda (left) greets Dr Milton Clarke, environmental specialist at the Jamaica Social Investment Fund (JSIF), while Dr Kishan Khoday, UNDP resident representative for The Bahamas, Belize, Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Jamaica, and Turks and Caicos Islands (centre) looks on. Occasion was Jamaica’s National COP30 Consultation at AC Hotel Kingston on Tuesday.
UWI professor says inaction on climate change no longer an option
PROFESSOR of climate science and dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies, Mona campus, Michael Taylor says with science indicating that the region is entering multi-hazard unpredictability which will feature among other things more heatwaves and higher frequency droughts, it is time to start officially calculating the cost to the economy.
“I think when you read climate science through SIDS [small island developing states] lens, the first insight you get is that climate change is introducing an era of multi-hazard unpredictability. The science is saying we are getting hotter. It means we are having more hot days in a year and more hot nights. The truth is, summer is starting earlier and summer is lasting longer,” Taylor told individuals attending Jamaica’s National COP30 Consultation at AC Hotel in St Andrew on Tuesday.
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“We are seeing more warm spells and more variable rainfall. We are seeing more extremes, and when you define extremes as drought, we have seen two major region-wide multi-year droughts in the last decade, those droughts being 2009/10 and 2013 and 2016. We have seen other national droughts and the number of intense hurricanes are steadily going up. We are seeing higher sea levels,” Taylor told the two-day gathering convened to advance Jamaica’s preparations for the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference in November 2025, a global forum for countries to negotiate and discuss climate action.
Continuing his line of reasoning, Professor Taylor said heat is the new menace.
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“In 2023 in Jamaica we began March in drought and we needed an additional $100 million more for drought response. By the time we hit July, we were doing ‘heatflation’. They didn’t cost out heat, I want to point out, we need to begin to cost out what heat is doing, it’s the new hazard. We knew it was increasing in the prices of food and then we ended the year not with a cyclone but with a potential tropical cyclone that brought $409 million in damage, including $274 million for the agricultural sector,” he stated.
In pointing out that the Table of Impacts produced by the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), which mapped droughts, hurricanes, and tropical storms between 2000 and 2024, shows an increase in unplanned disruptions, Professor Taylor pointed out that although heat had been included in the list, there was no cost recorded unlike the other variables.
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“We need to start calculating heat because 2023 was a record heat year for us and we don’t have that cost,” he said.
Earlier this month, the Barbados-based Caribbean Climate Outlook Forum (CariCOF) said an expected return to ENSO neutral conditions in the Pacific while unusually warm tropical north Atlantic temperatures persist implies that the Caribbean region is set to transition into an intense heat season with heatwaves occurring as early as April. ENSO, or El Niño-Southern Oscillation, is a climate pattern involving changes in ocean temperatures in the tropical Pacific.
In the latest publication of the Caribbean Climate Outlook Newsletter, for the period March to May this year, CariCOF said March is characterised by high evaporation rates and an annual peak in the frequency of short dry spells, as well as further buildup of any ongoing drought and with increasing wildfire potential.
“By contrast, from April to May, rainfall intensity and shower frequency are likely to sharply rise, resulting in a high to extremely high potential for flooding, flash floods, cascading hazards and associated impacts in the Caribbean,” CariCOF said episodes of Saharan dust intrusion — and lower air quality — will likely increase in frequency. It also said that long-term drought is evolving in south-west Belize, northernmost Dominican Republic, south-west French Guiana, south-west Jamaica, St Croix, and north-west Trinidad. According to CariCOF, the climate outlook for the period June to August 2025, which marks the summer portion of the Caribbean wet season and heat season, night-time temperatures will likely be higher than usual in most areas.
Tuesday, Professor Taylor said unprecedented climate changes will translate to unprecedented impacts which will undermines every sector of Caribbean life “because there is no preparation for unprecedented”.
“It’s changing electricity demand, heat stress for livestock, roads in deplorable states, furnace-like classrooms, beaches are succumbing, climate change is creating new classes of vulnerable persons. Climate is changing the context in which SIDS life occurs, we see it in the impact on our development goals, just about every one, threatened by climate change,” he said, adding that development will be “ultimately delayed”.
“We are now living in a context of more unavoidable decisions that have to be taken now. Decisions about adaptation [across all sectors], mitigation. For the Caribbean it means decisions about things like oceans, land use, waste, energy, transportation. We need some urgent decisions about research, education, finance and collaboration, that’s the pathway to resilience,” Taylor said further.
“If we are moving to an era of unplanned disruptions then it means ignorance is no longer an option, we can’t just pretend that climate change is not happening, it means individualism is no longer an option — we can’t tackle climate change by tackling one sector. It means inaction is no longer an option,” he told the group in parting.
In the meantime, minister without portfolio in the Ministry of Economic Growth and Job Creation with responsibility for water, environment, climate change and the blue and green economies, Matthew Samuda, also speaking at the forum, said, “when one contemplates the development challenges that we have as a nation, and you layer in climate change, there should be no illusion that your Sustainable Development Goals and their achievement is at serious risk. The neck-breaking speed at which circumstances change, and which climate change is creating for us is very difficult to deal with”.
“We are at a crossroads, every sector of the economy and every facet of life has been impacted. Last year we went from having to truck $600 million worth of water six months before, to having a Category Five hurricane skirt the south coast though it came on land at Category Four strength, so you go from serious drought to serious hurricane to serious rainfall, to wild temperature swings in September,” Samuda said.
In reiterating the Government’s commitment to safeguarding the environment, he said a suite of 11 pieces of legislation will be addressed over the next 18 months to ensure that “our laws are fit for purpose for the environmental challenges that we face”.
“This Government is nearing completion of its regulatory processes relating to 145 megawatts of renewable energy and we are in the process of greening our fleet but these projects need to move much faster,” Samuda noted. In the meantime, he said the Ministry of Finance has given the nod for the ministry to engage The UWI to offer financial support to enable it to acquire a water lab and enhance its supercomputer capacity. The high-performance computing and storage system called ‘SPARKS’, the only one of its kind in the Caribbean, was commissioned in 2019 and is aimed at improving climate research and climate modelling in Jamaica and the wider Caribbean.
“There can be no illusion that research and scientific capacity is absolutely critical and a pillar in the fight against climate change,” Samuda stated.
