Climate change impacting credit ratings
Becoming weather and climate ready is extremely important to countries across the region, says Dr. David Farrell, Principal of the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH).
Addressing the launch of the Weather and Climate Ready Nations Programme at CIMH’s Husbands, St. James headquarters, he stressed the need for the entire region to be aware of the 2012 Standard & Poor’s (S&P) statement of Jamaica, which speaks about the downgrading of an economy based on exposure to weather and climate events.
“This is significant because this is not just a statement about Jamaica, this is a statement about every Caribbean country that is exposed to tropical storms – that you can be downgraded based on your weather and climate readiness,” he told participants of the NOAA’s National Weather Service initiative about readying communities for extreme weather, water and climate events.
“Sir George Alleyne made the statement in 2015, that a lot of the losses that we see in the region are not about economic mismanagement, there are losses associated with weather and climate events. Therefore, becoming weather and climate ready becomes an extremely important aspect of our society.”
Dr. Farrell also observed that the World Bank figures for 1979 to 2005, which indicate that the aggregate losses per year due to tropical storms can range from $0.6 billion to $16.6 billion a year, puts things into perspective in terms of being weather and climate ready.
“When we talk about future predictions for climate, when we talk about the 11 per cent of GDP being lost by 2018 annually – if we don’t take steps to become much more weather and climate ready.”
Director of Barbados Meteorological Service, Hampden Lovell, gave his support to the programme, recognising that Barbados, like all the other countries in the region, is exposed to some natural hazards and is therefore prone to various impacts associated with such hazards.
He therefore stressed that improvement in the nation’s readiness, responsiveness and overall resilience to severe weather will always be welcome.
“Of particular importance is the focus on community engagement, and situations such as these bring out the best humanitarian efforts in people. This will definitely be a valuable addition to all that is being done and will improve Barbados’ ability to better help people to lessen the impact on themselves and possessions, while safeguarding the fracture of the country,” Lovell said. (TL)