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The threat of dis­as­ter doesn’t just come from the skies or the oceans: it comes from the qui­et and com­pound­ing strain on na­tion­al bud­gets. At COP30, Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS)—a glob­al com­mu­ni­ty fac­ing dis­pro­por­tion­ate risks from the cli­mate cri­sis—are plead­ing with the world to ho­n­our the 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius thresh­old ini­tial­ly out­lined in the Paris Agree­ment. Most SIDS are caught in a vi­cious cy­cle where se­vere weath­er events dec­i­mate crit­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture, high re­liance on im­ports fur­ther strains re­sources, and mount­ing debt lim­its their abil­i­ty to in­vest in re­silience projects they des­per­ate­ly need.

Guardian Me­dia spoke with Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty Cli­mate Change Cen­tre (CC­C­CC) Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Dr Col­in Young, at COP30 yes­ter­day about some of the pri­or­i­ties for the re­gion. Young hopes that the Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) re­flect the ur­gency of the sit­u­a­tion and are 1.5 de­gree-aligned (in ref­er­ence to the Paris Agree­ment).

He said, “We sim­ply can­not adapt our way out of cli­mate change. So, if we’re not cut­ting emis­sions in line with the sci­ence, the im­pacts like we saw in Ja­maica with Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, that is on­ly go­ing to in­crease, be­cause every frac­tion of a de­gree in­crease trans­lates in­to se­vere loss­es and dam­age.”