Caribbean leaders struggling to raise hundreds of millions after Hurricane Beryl wiped out entire islands have asked the UK government to back a “Marshall plan” to rebuild their devastated countries.
The hurricane, which made landfall in the Caribbean on 1 July, killed at least 11 people, demolished more than 90% of buildings in parts of Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) and left thousands homeless and without running water, electricity and food.
The letter, addressed to the foreign secretary, David Lammy, and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, points to the continuous pattern of destructive hurricanes in the Caribbean, with Dominica losing more than 200% of its GDP after damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017.
The letter, signed by the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda, SVG and Grenada, warns that Caribbean countries cannot sustain the rising debt from rebuilding again and again.
The letter calls for “immediate debt cancellation provided through a pre-arranged mechanism that triggers automatically in the event of a qualifying disaster such as the current one”.
Likening the impact of hurricanes on Caribbean nations to a nuclear Armageddon, the letter proposes an initiative similar to the US’s $13bn Marshall plan to rebuild Europe after the second world war. That $13bn is equivalent to $227bn (£175bn) today.
The Caribbean version would include cheaper loans, debt restructuring options, improved access to grants for climate-related damage and a large-scale programme to build green and resilient infrastructure and stronger economies.
On 5 July Lammy announced a £500,000 package for Caribbean countries affected by Beryl and promised to prioritise the climate emergency. But the SVG prime minister, Ralph Gonsalves, and his Grenadian counterpart, Dickon Mitchell, have described the money raised so far from insurance policies and contributions as a “drop in the bucket”.
In a joint appeal on 11 July they implored “major emitters” that “engineered the climate crisis” for the sake of prosperity to do the morally responsible thing and offer meaningful support for their relief and recovery.
“How is a country with very little fiscal space going to rebuild 2,500 houses, as in the case of SVG? Even a larger country, [with a] larger economy will find that very problematic, much less to a country as small and fragile as ours … we really need your help. It’s as simple as that. If you have a sense of responsibility and humanity, and I believe you do have, I think you will assist,” Gonsalves said at the press conference.
Coordinated by the ODI thinktank and signed by climate experts, the letter to the UK government supports the argument that Caribbean islands should not be left to bear the financial burden of a crisis they did not cause.
Emily Wilkinson, ODI’s principal research fellow and director of its Resilient and Sustainable Islands Initiative, said the UK’s support for the Marshall plan could help small islands “avert a debt crisis”.
