Climate risks threaten Caribbean children

SEIGO­NIE MO­HAMMED

GML Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

—re­port­ing from Cas­tries, Saint Lu­cia

There may soon be vir­tu­al­ly no safe zone from over­lap­ping cli­mate threats for chil­dren across parts of the East­ern Caribbean, with new re­search warn­ing that more than nine in ten could be ex­posed to at least three cli­mate haz­ards by mid-cen­tu­ry.

The UNICEF-com­mis­sioned analy­sis cov­ers ap­prox­i­mate­ly 176,000 chil­dren in Bar­ba­dos, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lu­cia, and Saint Vin­cent and the Grenadines.

Pre­sent­ing the find­ings in Saint Lu­cia Wednes­day, Meru Labs cli­mate and da­ta an­a­lyst Iri­na Bird Red­di­ar said more than a third of chil­dren are al­ready liv­ing in ar­eas ex­posed to at least three cli­mate haz­ards.

“By mid-cen­tu­ry, un­der the high emis­sion sce­nar­ios, this could rise to more than nine in 10,” Red­di­ar said. “That means there is no safe zone in the re­gion. And the ques­tion is not whether chil­dren will be af­fect­ed, but how se­vere­ly and how of­ten.”

The warn­ing goes be­yond hur­ri­canes.

Un­der a high-emis­sions sce­nario, the study projects the East­ern Caribbean could be about 1.4 de­grees Cel­sius warmer by mid-cen­tu­ry, bring­ing more than 80 ad­di­tion­al days above 30 de­grees an­nu­al­ly. Mod­er­ate to se­vere drought could oc­cur for three to four months each year on av­er­age, while a ma­jor hur­ri­cane pass­es through re­gion­al wa­ters rough­ly every six years.

Re­searchers say the con­se­quences could fol­low chil­dren through­out their lives, from learn­ing loss and ill­ness to mal­nu­tri­tion, psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tress, re­duced ed­u­ca­tion­al at­tain­ment and low­er life­time earn­ings.

“GDP-based ac­count­ing can­not see the cost that ac­cu­mu­lates silent­ly in chil­dren's bod­ies, their minds, and their fu­tures,” Red­di­ar warned.

The study al­so ex­pos­es a sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy gap. While na­tion­al cli­mate plans across the six coun­tries iden­ti­fy sec­tors crit­i­cal to chil­dren, in­clud­ing health, ed­u­ca­tion, wa­ter and agri­cul­ture, Red­di­ar said none cur­rent­ly con­tains child-spe­cif­ic in­di­ca­tors, mea­sur­able out­come tar­gets or adap­ta­tion com­mit­ments tied to child out­comes.

“And with­out this, it's im­pos­si­ble to track whether cli­mate in­vest­ments are reach­ing chil­dren or to demon­strate their re­turns to cli­mate fi­nance providers,” she said.

UNICEF East­ern Caribbean rep­re­sen­ta­tive Maryam Ab­du said gov­ern­ments must now trans­late the ev­i­dence in­to bud­gets and pol­i­cy.

“Re­ports should not be on the shelf, it should in­flu­ence what we're go­ing to do as a gov­ern­ment, as a peo­ple, and in­clud­ing de­vel­op­ment part­ners,” Ab­du said.

Saint Lu­cia is al­ready us­ing the re­search.

NDC in-coun­try fa­cil­i­ta­tor Oni­ka Benn an­nounced that of­fi­cials are fi­nal­is­ing a project de­signed to pro­vide at least five days of wa­ter for 20 schools in the coun­try's most wa­ter-stressed ar­eas. Sup­port has been pledged for wa­ter tanks and so­lar-pow­ered wa­ter pumps.

The coun­try is al­so de­vel­op­ing a cli­mate in­vest­ment pro­pos­al ad­dress­ing wa­ter se­cu­ri­ty, tech­ni­cal and vo­ca­tion­al ed­u­ca­tion and psy­choso­cial sup­port for chil­dren, teach­ers and coun­sel­lors.

Saint Lu­cia’s Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Lisa Jawahir said the test will be whether the re­search pro­duces mea­sur­able change.

“We must move from ev­i­dence to pol­i­cy, from pol­i­cy to in­vest­ment, and from in­vest­ment to mea­sur­able im­prove­ments in the lives of our peo­ple,” she said