Fletcher: Caribbean paying twice for climate crisis

An­talya, Türkiye — The Caribbean is pay­ing twice for a cli­mate cri­sis it did lit­tle to cre­ate, and the fi­nan­cial bur­den is tak­ing mon­ey away from schools, health­care and oth­er es­sen­tial ser­vices across the re­gion, Cari­com Cli­mate En­voy Dr James Fletch­er has warned.

“We are fight­ing for our sur­vival be­cause every frac­tion of a de­gree above 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius is dan­ger­ous for small is­land de­vel­op­ing states,” Fletch­er said dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at the Unit­ed Na­tions Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence (COP31) in An­talya, Türkiye.

Eleven years af­ter the his­toric Paris Agree­ment, which Caribbean coun­tries helped shape through the “1.5 to Stay Alive” cam­paign, Fletch­er ac­knowl­edged that the world re­mains off course.