Prime Minister Mia Mottley has issued a stark warning to Barbadians to face the new reality of climate change, urging them to adapt swiftly as extreme weather events grow more frequent and destructive.
After touring Charles Rowe Bridge in St George, one of the worst-hit areas during Sunday’s flood that swept away a man in the area.
The scale and intensity of Sunday’s downpour were stark reminders that Barbados is operating in a changed climate environment, one that its decades-old infrastructure was never designed to withstand, Mottley said.
When asked whether the Ministry of Transport and Works (MTW) had done enough to clear waterways ahead of the flooding, Mottley acknowledged the ministry’s ongoing efforts but acknowledged gaps that, in this instance, may have worsened the situation.
“In this particular instance, clearly MTW was clearing drainage and clearing the bush for a while,” she said. “Where they fell down, and where I’m not happy, is that they did not move the debris having cleared it, and therefore that would have compounded the situation.”
But she cautioned that the public could not expect a complete overhaul of national drainage systems all at once.
“As it relates to other communities, let us be real, you can’t boil the ocean all at once,” Mottley noted. “The MTW has been trying to deal with it, but the intensity…look at Jamaica, the intensity they faced. Look at Grenada and St Vincent last year. Our infrastructure built over the last 70, 80, 90 years is not built for this kind of weather.”
The prime minister used the moment to reiterate why she frequently travels abroad to advocate for international climate financing, saying Barbados is bearing the brunt of a crisis it did not create.
“People keep talking about my travelling,” she said. “I keep going overseas to make the point that we need to be able to receive funding for the damage. We did not cause this climate crisis, but we are on the front line of it.”
While Barbados has so far avoided the catastrophic hurricanes that have devastated other Caribbean islands, Mottley stressed that the nation is already deeply vulnerable to three major climate-driven threats: flooding, drought, and sargassum.
“There are too many times, whether it is drought or whether it is flooding…the floods and the droughts and the sargassum are the three ways in which we face the immediate danger,” she said.
Mottley referred to the devastation in Jamaica caused by Hurricane Melissa to illustrate how rapidly changing sea temperatures are intensifying storms. “The temperature of the sea was two degrees higher than it normally was,” she said. “What you hear from people is that it hit Western Jamaica almost like an atomic bomb.”
Even relatively short bursts of heavy rainfall can now pose deadly risks, she remarked.
“I’m asking Bajans, all of us, we need to be more sensitive to the new world, to the new reality in which we live,” Mottley urged. “Two, three hours of rain can cause havoc and can take people’s lives if we’re not careful.”
She suggested that adapting to this new climate landscape must become a national priority, underscoring the difference between mitigation and adaptation efforts.
“You hear us talking about mitigation and adaptation,” PM Mottley said. “Mitigation is stopping temperatures from rising, but adaptation is changing how we live, changing how we build our infrastructure, modifying it to make sure that we don’t have the level of damage or loss of life that you would otherwise have if you don’t adapt.” (SB)
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