Caribbean Community

The Caribbean basin is among the most climate-vulnerable regions on Earth. Comprising largely Small Island Developing States, CARICOM member nations face a disproportionate concentration of climate risk relative to their negligible contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions. Sea surface temperatures in the Caribbean have risen approximately 1°C since the pre-industrial era, intensifying Atlantic hurricane activity, accelerating coral bleaching events, and driving the salinization of coastal freshwater aquifers upon which island populations depend. The 2017 Atlantic hurricane season that saw Hurricanes Irma and Maria devastate Barbuda, Dominica, and Puerto Rico in rapid succession demonstrated with devastating clarity how a single climatic event can erase decades of economic development in a matter of hours. CARICOM delegates must evaluate existing regional mechanisms, including the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility and the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, assess their adequacy, and identify where multilateral financing, technology transfer, and coordinated land-use and coastal management policy must be significantly deepened.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation presents a distinct but deeply consequential layer of climatic variability atop these structural vulnerabilities. ENSO cycles oscillating between the warm El Niño and cool La Niña phases driven by sea surface temperature anomalies in the equatorial Pacific exert significant influence over Caribbean precipitation patterns, hurricane frequency, and agricultural productivity. El Niño phases are historically associated with suppressed Atlantic hurricane activity but also with pronounced drought conditions across the eastern Caribbean, stressing rain-fed agriculture and municipal water supplies. La Niña phases conversely tend to enhance hurricane formation and bring elevated rainfall and flooding risk to parts of the region. The increasing intensity and unpredictability of ENSO cycles under climate change complicates long-range planning for water resource management, food security, and disaster preparedness. Recent research further suggests that climate change may be altering the baseline conditions within which ENSO variability operates, potentially amplifying its regional impacts in ways that existing forecasting models have yet to fully resolve.

CARICOM stands as both a frontline witness to and a coherent diplomatic voice against the inequities embedded in the global climate system. Delegates must translate the lived experience of their nations into concrete, regionally coordinated policy, advancing frameworks that build adaptive capacity at home while sustaining pressure on the international community to honor its commitments to the world's most climate-exposed peoples.