Byron Blake | Hurricane and heat wave - What a message for CARICOM conference?

Europe has been experiencing a record heatwave in intensity, duration, and geographic coverage in June, not July or August. The Caribbean, specifically Jamaica, was struck by the strongest Atlantic hurricane on record, Hurricane Melissa, at the end of October 2025, not in August or September. The scientific community is unequivocal. These two phenomena are the result of climate change driven by human action- a deliberate failure to keep mean global temperatures below 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels.

There was another historic event in October 2025. The Conference of the Parties (COP 30), in Belém, Brazil, took the unprecedented decision to remove the words “transition away from fossil fuels” from its final Declaration. Those words were the headline from COP28 in Dubai, 2023. That declaration stated: “Nearly every country in the world has agreed to “transition away from fossil fuels” – the main driver of climate change”. 

CARICOM countries were advised, after COP 29 failed to secure commitments to programmes and plans to reduce global warming, to insist that COP 30 be a single-focused agenda conference. On the contrary, they were charmed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva into accepting the most sweeping agenda of any COP. No focused discussion on the programmes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. On the contrary, there were robust discussions about the words “transition away from fossil fuels”. 80-plus high-carbon-emitting countries mounted an obviously coordinated attack on the two-year-old, almost unanimous decision. Unprecedented in the United Nations’ practice.  A slightly higher number of the endangered argued vehemently for the retention. In the United Nations’ practice, the Chairman would have ended the debate.

To the contrary, President Lula, in the dying hours of the Conference, introduced a final declaration with the vital 5-word phrase omitted. That was not an accident. Brazil is one of the most experienced countries in the United Nations’ procedures, protocols, and precedents. Brazil was a part of the orchestrated deception. It has a strong national interest in fossil fuels, both oil and coal.

CARICOM leaders have been deceived by other world leaders on the issue of global warming and climate change before. A few weeks before the Copenhagen COP in 2009, CARICOM leaders had an unprecedented visit from President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom at their Meeting in Grenada. The objective of the two European leaders was to get CARICOM leaders to shift from the long-globally-accepted AOSIS position of keeping mean global temperatures below 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels to a new, imprecise formulation “below 2.0 °C”.

Grenada was the chair of AOSIS and hence its lead spokesperson for the COP in Copenhagen. CARICOM leaders resisted, but gradually they peeled off. The coup d'grace came when a CARICOM leader, a scientist, asked, mockingly, “Point 5, what difference would .5 make? That question has been convincingly answered by Hurricane Melissa, the European heatwave, and the many other record-breaking systems being experienced across the globe as the mean change approaches 1.5 °C above.

What will CARICOM do?

The 51st Regular Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) will be convened in Gros Islet, Saint Lucia, from July 5-8. We, like the rest of the Caribbean public, have no idea what is on the agenda. We hope that, unlike the case at the 50th Conference in St. Kitts/Nevis in February, at least two aspects will be given the required time for full discussion. These are:

1. CARICOM’s plan and strategy to deal with the war declared on the global climate by the major polluters, the fossil fuel industries, in the decision taken in Belém not to hold themselves to any limits in their emissions?
2. How does CARICOM, including Jamaica, deal with the massive loss caused to Jamaica by Hurricane Melissa?

With respect to two independent real-time studies have established that the extreme intensity of Hurricane Melissa was the result of extreme global warming at the location. Three of Jamaica’s leading international legal scholars and one development economist with an extensive background in climate change and sustainable development matters have advised that Jamaica has a case for seeking redress for the damage the country has suffered. They have advised further that Jamaica, and by extension CARICOM, has the legal and other technical expertise to prepare the documentation and support the policymakers in pleading the case. They have also cautioned that failure to pursue action in a case where the evidence is clear and is supported, as stated earlier, by two independent studies done in real time, could create a precedent that Jamaica, other CARICOM States, and Small Island Developing States generally could find difficult to overcome in future cases where cause and effect might not be as easy to establish.

The threats to small island and low-lying coastal states are existential. While the forecast for this extreme El Niño year is for fewer hurricanes and storms, the projections are for those that occur to be stronger and more destructive. 

Further, scientists have now established that “Extreme El Niño and La Niña events may increase in frequency from about one every 20 years to one every 10 years by the end of the 21st century under aggressive greenhouse gas emission scenarios.”  

The dispensation secured by the major polluters in Belem will create those aggressive greenhouse gas emission scenarios. 

 CARICOM leaders dare not meet and look the other way while their populations await such doomsday scenarios?

A final observation about the 51st Regular Meeting of the Conference. The 1983 decision is that the anniversary Conference Meeting includes July 4. The 2026 anniversary conference is set for July 5-8. Is there an acceptable extenuating circumstance? Or is this a part of the drift from agreed practices and moorings so blatant over the last few years?

Ambassador Byron Blake is the former deputy permanent representative to the United Nations and former assistant secretary general of CARICOM.