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Barbados Issue Climate Cards – Grow With That?


Kip Hansen’s guest essay – August 1, 2022

Barbados is a small island nation with a rich history – once a tobacco and sugar British colony and now an independent republic that deposed Queen Elizabeth as Queen of Barbados after her endorsement, replacing replace her with the President and Prime Minister under her authority – Unwritten Constitution.

This tiny island nation, covering only 167 square miles [ 432 km2 ] with a population of nearly 290,000, 8 billion dollars in international debt default and under the direction of the latest Prime Minister, Mia Mottley and her adviser Avinash Persaud, have begun a years-long negotiation with international bankers to try to restructure the debt in a way that is more profitable. better for Barbados. To do so, they played Climate card.

The story was included in a magazine feature-length story co-written by ProPublica and the New York Times. ProPublica is a collaborative partner on the climate advocacy team Include Climate Now.

Summing the story down to the basics, the Prime Minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley, a member of Barbados’ elite, tried to make international bankers realize that Caribbean nations are vulnerable to influence. affected by the Atlantic hurricane, and there should have been a provision in their debt structure that would have allowed them to take a break from paying off their loans when forced to spend to recover from hurricane damage – Mottley cites many things IPCC’s absurdity to get them to agree: Bullshit like “Now, however, experts believe that global warming can spur a a fivefold increase in strong stormsshow that The effects of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes will become almost certain every year“.

A stormy provision for international debt is a good thing, and it is unconscionable that these island nations don’t always have one. But let’s make one thing clear: Barbados is famous for not beaten by storm [link from the official bardadosweather.org ]. For Caribbean sailors, it is considered one of the safest islands from storms, second only to Trinidad and ABCS.

The last hurricane to ‘hit’ Barbados was on August 18, 2017 – Tropical Storm Harvey (later to become Hurricane Harvey making landfall in Texas) sweeps over Barbados like a storm. “The winds left residents across Barbados without power, with most of the blackouts occurring at Christ Church, Saint Joseph, Saint Lucy and Saint Michael. Flooding rain washed away the foundation of a house, while water flooded several houses, forcing some residents to evacuate..” [ Wiki ]

In history:

July 2, 2021: Hurricane Elsa passes just south of the island.

July 23, 2020: Tropical Storm Gonzalo passes 12 miles to the southwest.

August 3, 2012 – Hurricane Ernesto passes 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Barbados

October 30, 2010 – Hurricane Tomas covers the southern coast of Barbados as a tropical storm

October 4, 2001 Hurricane Iris passed 25 miles to the south.

September 1, 2007: Hurricane Felix passes 70 miles south.

August 17, 2007: Hurricane Dean passes 65 miles north.

September 7, 2004: Hurricane Ivan passes south as a tropical storm.

August 4, 2004: Tropical Storm Bonnie passes 20 miles to the north.

September 23, 2002: Typhoon Lili passes 45 miles south

October 7, 2001: Tropical Storm Jerry passes 30 miles southwest.

Starting to see a pattern? Hurricanes have circled Barbados at least since the turn of the century. No storm has hit Barbados since 1950, although Hurricane Janet in 1955 came close to causing some damage. New York City hit by a storm more often than Barbados.

“I can’t do these things if I have to spend money to increase water supply because of the climate crisis,” she was quoted as saying. ” The ProPublica/NY Times, citing the usual villains in climate propaganda, pointed out that Barbados “was among the half of the world. The Caribbean islands that the United Nations has described as water-scarce, with seawater seeping into its aquifers, and rainfall could be reduced by as much as 40% by the end of this century”.

Seawater does not penetrate Barbados aquifers. Barbados, being a mountainous island rather than a sandy atoll, reliably receives 55 inches of rain per year, most of it during the six-month rainy season from June to December, a more years, some years less. There is no climate crisis in Barbados and there will be no shortage of water supplies, except for the mismanagement of the city water system:

Maybe Barbados is being threatened by sea ​​level rise? Despite being an island nation, Barbados does not have a reliable tidal record. In fact, there are no reliable even mid-term (10-30 years) tidal records for any of the islands of the Windward Islands chain. Data on sea level rise in the region is also not reliably available. If we judge by the data from Puerto Rico, the Caribbean has seen a generally accepted 8 inches of sea level rise per century. Barbados is a mountainous island with elevations of at least ten meters (30 feet) or higher on most of its coast. Even the relatively low Bridgetown is about 40 feet high.

And how did Barbados get so indebted? The NY Times covered this story:

“For at least a decade before Mottley was elected, a combination of mismanagement and corruption had eroded the country’s economy. As former Barbados central bank governor DeLisle Worrell described to me, the country has developed a “dysfunctional” fiscal culture in which government agencies and departments take loans and negotiate deals without consulting the central bank, debt accumulation and demand backlog. At the southern end of the tourist island, sewage spews from neglected pipes as funding to repair them has lagged. The country’s response was to print more money and borrow more from abroad, to stem the economic bleed. In 2013, during Worrell’s tenure, Barbados received one of the largest commercial loans in history – $150 million – from Credit Suisse at an interest rate of 7%; within a year, it grew to $225 million, and by 2018 the return on balance was 12 percent. The money didn’t run out, and the sewer pipes weren’t fixed yet.

Bottom line:

1. Barbados is a small island in the Caribbean with a rapidly growing population. Barbados suffers all the disadvantages of small island economies (listed here) – such as “growing population, limited resources, remoteness, vulnerability to natural disasters, vulnerability to external shocks, overdependence on international trade and the environment fragile school…. Growth and development are also constrained by high communication, energy and transportation costs, infrequent international transport volumes, and disproportionately expensive infrastructure and public administration.

2. Barbados, after gaining full independence, suffered at the hands of its government – corruption was rampant and often the norm. However, having inherited the benefits of more than 300 years of British government rule, “Barbados is richest country in the world in terms of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) per capita, has grown well The mixture economyand moderately tall Standard of living. According to the World Bank, Barbados is one of the 83 high income economy In the world. Even so, a 2012 self-study combined with Caribbean Development Bank disclosure 20% of Barbadians live in povertyand almost 10% are unable to meet their basic daily food needs”. [ Wiki ]

3. Barbados is part of the Windward Island chain, which faces western Atlantic cyclones every year. Because reason not understandBarbados has not been affected by a major storm since 1831 – Great Storm Barbados.

4. It is possible that Barbados could be affected by future climate changes – anything is possible. But the climate currently shows no signs of threatening Barbados in any way.

5. Adding a Hurricane Clause to international loan agreements is a good thing – even if Barbados doesn’t really need it, other Caribbean countries have benefited from Barbados’ example in demanding one. rules. Furthermore, like all hurricane-prone areas, building code standards should be raised to require “storm protection” for basic structures and homes. The government should assist the poor in upgrading their homes to these standards.

6. Clearly, in the world of international money and banking, playing Climate Cards can be very successful – despite the fact that there is contradictory evidence regarding Barbados.

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Author’s comment:

I have done humanitarian work on many small islands in the Caribbean and have visited other places as far south and east as St Vincent (which is totally cute, even though it’s volcanic) and Trinidad. Life is both easy and hard in Paradise. Paradoxically, when hit by natural disasters, the poorest return pretty quickly, losing too little and gaining too little. In Barbados, considered a relatively wealthy country with a fairly high standard of living, 20% of the people live in poverty that many of us in North America and Europe have a hard time with.

It is true that if Barbados were to suffer a hurricane like the one in 1831, its infrastructure and economy would be devastated. Barbados will not recover like New York City did after Superstorm Sandy.

On the other hand, almost all of the Windward Islands have been hit by hurricanes over the years and are still thriving. The travel drought caused by Covid is bad, but everything is recovering well.

Human development on Monserrat has been almost completely destroyed in the past two decades by its volcanic activity. St Vincent has an active volcano, which erupted last year. Most of the islands (not Barbados) in Natural wind is a volcano.

Like I said, life in Paradise is both easy and hard. I wish Barbados well but fear for it; The power of government is in the hands of experts.

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