The President of Dominica, Sylvanie Burton, headed a high-level Dominican delegation to the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in New York, highlighting the need for climate adaptation strategies in small island nations like Dominica.
President Burton highlighted the impact of climate change that her country faces every day. She recalled Tropical Storm Erika in 2015, which wiped out 96 percent of Dominica’s gross domestic product (GDP), followed 2017 by Hurricane Maria, which destroyed over 225 percent of the GDP.
“We stand today at a critical juncture in human history. Climate change, as we know, is not just an environmental challenge; it is a threat to every aspect of life as we know it. For Dominica, as for many Small Island Developing States, this is not a distant or abstract issue; it is a daily reality,” stated Sylvania Burton.
“That is why, this year, we watched in agony as Hurricane Beryl swept through the island states of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Barbados, and Jamaica,” she noted.
While addressing the audience, Burton said this is a moral imperative, a matter of the utmost urgency, and a matter of climate justice, and their future depends on the decisions made in these halls.
She expressed that there is no denying that climate change is happening and indeed, the country feels its disastrous impacts on a daily basis.
Already, the warnings of weather scientists regarding global warming and the consequent increase in the frequency and severity of storms have proved to be accurate, said the Dominican leader.
She encouraged the international community to unite and take powerful action to limit global warming to 1.5°C by saying, “We need urgent, bold, and decisive action to limit global warming to 1.5°C as science clearly dictates.”
She also stressed the solution to limiting global warming: to do so; people must drastically reduce emissions, boldly honor financial commitments, and build critical resilience infrastructure in regions particularly vulnerable to climate change.
Finally, she said that the other Caribbean islands are already focusing on developing national climate adaptation strategies and have also invested in resilient infrastructure, agriculture, community education, and renewable energy. “So, as citizens of a small island nation like Dominica, we should also develop national climate adaptation strategies,” she added.
