Year in review: Climate justice remained a pressing issue for the Caribbean in 2024

‘[Beryl is] evidence of the entrenchment of the Caribbean region as the canary in the coal mine of the climate catastrophe’

Originally published on Global Voices

From the region's diverse heritage and culture to the political developments that have impacted the region, 2024 has been a year that showcased the Caribbean's resilience, creativity, and spirit — especially as they relate to environmental issues, which have consistently held a top slot in our year-end reviews since 2017.

From the community level to the global stage, environmental challenges — and by extension, the fight for climate justice — remain the cause that brings the region together as netizens and advocates help shape global conversations with a unique Caribbean perspective. Nearly 40 percent of regional Global Voices articles this year comprised stories about the environment, the highest ever ratio since we've been doing these annual coverage summaries. Here's a look back at some of the climate-focused stories that defined the past year across the archipelago.

The climate crisis reaches ‘catastrophic’ levels

The biggest climate-related story of the year was the passage of Hurricane Beryl in late June/early July. Yes, the storm broke many records — the most quickly organised Category 4 hurricane on record, a significant early-season storm with an atypical trajectory — but it also broke many lives and livelihoods, leaving small island infrastructure and economies reeling.

The University of Miami's Tropical meteorology researcher Brian McNoldy went on record as saying that warmer ocean temperatures — the highest ever logged for that time of year — played a key role in Beryl's speedy formation. In a blazing opinion piece for The Bridge, however, artist and advocate Holly Bynoe wrote honestly and passionately of the experience of St. Vincent and the Grenadines: “This storm is the most recent evidence of the entrenchment of the Caribbean region as the canary in the coal mine of the climate catastrophe, exposing the ugly underbelly of climate injustice.”

She also made the point that the language used to describe hurricane-hit territories was “synonymous with erasure and the cornerstone trendy lingo of global disaster management and recovery efforts.” Their meaning, however, “is more complex than their singularity. You can only understand their feeble, inadequate, fearmongering and impotent use once touched by the violence of assumed ‘flatness’ and erasure.”

As for recovery? Bynoe felt that it must move “beyond the material, beyond the debris:”

[C]limate injustice is now, for the Grenadines, a deep and abiding embodiment […] With public trust at an all-time low, citizens must hold governments and agencies accountable for truth-telling during catastrophic times and agitate for a more dynamic definition and recovery system that includes social dimensions such as livelihood restoration and well-being.

The storm also reignited discussion surrounding often unconsidered effects of the climate crisis, which we have covered in the past.

Environmental and developmental challenges

An oil spill caused by an overturned tanker in Tobago in February prompted CEO of the Jamaica Environment Trust Theresa Rodriguez-Moodie to question whether the region had a sufficient enough oil spill contingency plan in place, especially in light of Guyana's newly discovered oil and gas reserves.

“Forecasts predict the country could produce 1.2 million barrels per day by 2027 or 2028,” Moodie observed.

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs), however, indicate that in the event of a spill or well blowout, the repercussions could devastate large swathes of the Caribbean, stretching from Trinidad through the Lesser Antilles, Jamaica, and the Dominican Republic.

This would devastate coastal ecosystems, infrastructure, tourism, fisheries, shipping, and other vital economic activities, placing many island nations in economic jeopardy.

Moodie was also among a cadre of Jamaican environmentalists demanding mandatory EIAs for projects that pose significant environmental risks. They cited one project in particular: a new development called The Pinnacle, located close to the Montego Bay Marine Park, the country's first marine area, which includes a five-square kilometre park and two special fishery conservation areas.

In Aruba, meanwhile, citizens took to the streets to protest against unsustainable and unregulated growth in the hotel and tourism industry which they say has been exacerbated by colonial impacts. The island's current mass tourism trend has seen it systematically losing land to wealthy foreign investors interested in building luxury hotels.

In Barbados, environmentalists suggested that without strategic conservation measures, the island's iconic bearded fig tree could potentially disappear from the landscape. Just as concerningly, changing climatic conditions have contributed to once abundant populations of flying fish — the island’s national fish — going into decline.

Guyana tries to maintain a balance

The region's newest oil and gas player has, since 2021, been insisting that it can essentially have its cake and eat it too. This year, as the South American CARICOM nation continued to strive towards its goal of being a low-carbon oil producer, it prioritised its 30×30 conservation target, whereby it aims to protect 30 percent of its land and marine resources by the year 2030.

In this vein, the country's rainforests have been key in the government's expanded eco-tourism efforts. The current administration has been pushing what it calls “climate-smart agriculture techniques” in order to sustainably increase food production, and has also put in place a carbon valuation mechanism that brings the country money in return for maintaining its forests — but there have been questions surrounding the land rights of the Indigenous people who in large part care for these forests, and whether they are actually benefitting from the existing carbon trade deal.

Coastal Indigenous communities in the country have also been struggling, with one in particular, Almond Beach, facing serious erosion — and with it, a community exodus and a threat to four endangered species of sea turtle that typically nest there.

Environmental conferences

In May 2024, Antigua and Barbuda hosted the 4th International Conference on Small Island Developing States (SIDS4), a global event that takes place every ten years and aims to address climate resiliency in nations that have unique vulnerabilities.

The focus was on establishing a mandate to negotiate a new legal mechanism (a framework for the Antigua and Barbuda Agenda for SIDS, 2024–34, abbreviated to ABAS) that will secure a fast, financed and equitable transition away from fossil fuels in order to try and stay within the 1.5° Celsius climate limit. In a piece for The Bridge, four experts in this area noted that due to their “small size, insularity, and remoteness,” SIDS are exposed to “devastating exogenous shocks of a relative scale unthinkable in larger states.”

In building a case for why SIDS should have their own Marshall Plan, they argued:

Acute vulnerability defines the development experience of SIDS but confers no entitlement to Official Development Assistance (ODA) or concessional financing. Many are locked out of affordable flows of public finance and pushed towards exorbitant commercial borrowing to bankroll investments entailing disproportionate sunk costs.

Moreover, they continued:

[D]uring 2024–34, the lifetime of the ABAS, we are likely to breach a series of key climatic tipping points, most notably the central demand of SIDS to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels. This externally imposed catastrophe threatens their way of life and even their very existence, particularly for those low-lying states at most immediate risk from sea-level rise. This, in turn, transgresses island states’ legitimate rights to development and non-interference as sovereign equals in the international community of states.

At the close of the conference, SIDS stakeholders found themselves having to advocate for maintaining their “special case” classification status for sustainable development, since developed countries have been resisting the idea that SIDS need special assistance.

At the start of October, St. Lucia hosted the RedLAC Congress, which preceded COP16 later in the month. The point of the Congress was to “[advance] global conservation targets within national and regional contexts,” since the recently adopted Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) mandates that 30 percent of the earth’s land and sea should be conserved by the year 2030 via the establishment of protected areas.

CEO of the Caribbean Biodiversity Fund (CBF) Karen McDonald Gayle felt that RedLAC “provides an invaluable platform to build and encourage a stronger presence of Caribbean countries in this network and to reinforce our collective message of long-term environmental funding for the region,” even as environmentalists called for greater regional collaboration to meet the 30×30 goal.

Painting the region blue

Nevertheless, Caribbean island nations have been forging ahead with other approaches to shield themselves against the ravages of the climate crisis. Trinidad and Tobago piloted a blue carbon credit system to finance mangrove conservation. Because of their relevance to the global carbon cycle, blue carbon ecosystems like mangroves offer climate mitigation benefits that can assist with climate change adaptation.

While mangrove forests in Trinidad and Tobago have been estimated to store at least 1,118,630.99 tonnes of carbon, there has been an increasing loss of these forest systems because of factors like development, pollution, extractive activities, unsustainable agriculture and extreme weather events. It is therefore hoped that carbon credit markets can help bridge the shortfall in financing climate action goals.

In a similar manner, expanding on the foundation of NGOs and private reserves involved in conservation efforts, Belize has been employing ‘blue bonds’ as a potential solution to its debt coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, swapping it for the protection of marine resources.

As Prime Minister John Briceño noted in January of this year, Belize’s blue spaces “sustain livelihoods, social stability, and climate security. […] The Belize Blue Bonds is much more than a deal for debt restructuring. It represents the single most successful initiative by the value of our marine resources and our history of good stewardship.”

Glimpses of hope

Whether it was our story about fisherwomen using theatre to champion gender justice at a regional climate justice camp, or the Dominican Republic's shift to electric vehicles, there was definitely positive environmental news — including the journalistic work being done around climate justice in the Caribbean.

One of our most popular environmental stories this year included a post about a Talipot Palm in Trinidad, over which there was great excitement around its flowering. The palm, known for having the largest inflorescence in the world, can flower once it reaches maturity, typically between 25 and 80 years old. After it flowers, it takes about a year for the resulting small, circular yellow-green fruit to mature — and because the tree is monocarpic, this process only happens once; the tree dies after fruiting.

The levels of interest in this story, as well as in our post about Trinidad's Caroni Swamp — which secured more than 13,000 views in English alone between July and September — suggested to our editorial team that humans are still fascinated by and deeply connected to the mechanisms of nature.

That symbiosis, more than anything, imparts the will needed to continue to advocate for and act in the interest of the planet's survival, as well as our own.

Written by Janine Mendes-Franco