Guyana is among the countries in the Caribbean that faces the greatest risk of a retreating shoreline and stands to lose 53 metres of its shoreline by 2050 if the current climate trend continues and the sea level increases, according to the recently released World Bank Climate Report.
The World Bank, on Wednesday, officially launched the 360° Resilience – A Guide to Prepare the Caribbean for a New Generation of Shocks – report which presents a framework for a holistic approach for Caribbean nations to adapt and build resilience as they battle climate change, new diseases and other socioeconomic issues.
The study was conducted over two years in 17 countries in the Caribbean. The list includes Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Sint Maarten, St Kitts and Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago, the Turks and Caicos, Belize, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines and Suriname.
The team was led by Julie Rozenberg, Senior Economist in the World Bank Sustainable Development group for Latin America and the Caribbean and consisted of five core persons and several other contributors.
It is no secret that climate change is happening and faster than scientists had anticipated because of the industrialization of the world and use of fossil fuels. The recently concluded United Nations Climate Change Summit (COP26) heard an impassioned plea for action from Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
“For those who have eyes to see, for those who have ears to listen and for those who have a heart to feel, 1.5 is what we need to survive. 2 degrees, yes S-G (Secretary-General), is a death sentence for the people of Antigua and Barbuda, for the people of the Maldives, for the people of Dominica and Fiji, for the people of Kenya and Mozambique, and yes, for the people of Samoa and Barbados. We do not want that dreaded death sentence and we have come here today to say, try harder, try harder, because our people, the climate army, the world, the planet needs our actions now, not next year, not in the next decade,” Mottley had said during her address to COP26.
Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali orally committed to lowering carbon emissions by 70% while calling for increased financing from the developing nations to compensate for their contribution to climate change.
Retreating shoreline
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are battling with most of the consequences of climate change which puts a strain on their economies. The 360° Resilience report highlights increased flooding, due to sea-level rise, as one of the major threats to the Caribbean nations. As a result of the rise in sea levels, the total number of persons exposed to flooding is increasing over time.
“When looking at country-specific exposure patterns, results are consistent with the built-up exposure and show that people in Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, St. Lucia, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago are more exposed than those in the rest of the region. Again, Guyana and Suriname stand out due to their topography—their exposure rates for 1-in-5-year floods with over 15-centimeter flood depth are at 10–12%, while 1-in-100 and 1-in-1,000-year events expose 37–57% of their populations,” the report state.
Looking at the sea-level rise and the future risks, the report explained that climate change is likely to exacerbate the frequency and intensity of erosion along with other weather-related calamities. Those anticipated increased risks would have an impact on the people living, particularly, on the coast, infrastructure and ecosystems.
“According to estimates by Simpson et al. (2010), 110,000 people in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) may be displaced in a 1-meter sea-level rise and no adaptation scenario. Climate change and sea-level rise will also lead to the definitive loss of land,” the report outlined.
Based on its modelling system, the World Bank explained that mainland countries like Guyana and neighbouring Suriname are expected to be heavily affected by the sea level rise which would lead to increased flooding and possible coastal displacement. It added that sea-level rise under a moderate climate change scenario would see Guyana, Grenada and the Turks and Caicos being the most susceptible to its effects putting 40-100 per cent of its coastal population at risk. The model uses a time range of 2010 to 2050.
Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago face the largest risk of a retreating shoreline, with an estimated retreat of 53, 58 and 43 meters, respectively, by 2050 under Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP 4.5). When looking at risk towards the end of the century in high climate change scenarios (RCP 8.5), the countries with the highest expected annual people exposed are Dominica with 1.8% of the population exposed, Guyana 4.7%, Suriname 2.8%, and St. Martin 2.9%, the report states.
In a 2020 documentary, aimed at highlighting Guyana’s diminishing coastline, local filmmaker Alex Arjoon and his team at Reel Guyana revealed that they spent four years documenting what was happening to the coast.
It is estimated that sea levels will rise one to four feet by the end of the century and with parts of Guyana’s coast sitting as low as one metre below sea level at high tide, it is cause for concern. In the documentary, the consequences of climate change and the encroaching sea was vividly depicted by the situation at the Shell Beach Protected Area in the Barima-Waini Region. A large swathe of the area has been eroded over the years resulting in the loss of eco-systems and displacement of people.
Positing a similar situation, the World Bank report estimates that Guyana stands to lose 65 metres of its sandy beaches by 2050.
“Results indicate that on average, for all the Caribbean countries and islands included in this study, a shoreline retreat of sandy beaches of 35 meters is projected under a high climate change scenario by 2050, increasing to 98 meters by 2100…the largest average projected shoreline retreats are in Belize (46 meters), Guyana (65 meters), Suriname (71 meters), and Trinidad and Tobago (53 meters) by 2050 under high climate change impacts,” the report relates.
The total sandy landmass at risk of being swallowed by the sea in the Caribbean is significant: under a high climate change impact scenario, 192 square kilometres of sandy beaches are expected to be lost by 2050, increasing to 543 square kilometres by 2100.
Findings and way forward
At the launch of the report, Rozenberg said that the document was compiled because of the uncertainty of the region’s future and the more intense and frequent shocks brought by climate change.
“So we wanted to take stock of where the region was in building resilience, and how prepared they were for the shocks of the future that are more uncertain and potentially more dangerous than the shocks of the past,” she said.
Explaining the team’s findings, Rozenberg said that they discovered that Caribbean countries have achieved high levels of resilience, but this resilience has not always been inclusive and a lot of people have been left behind. With one in every five persons, in the Caribbean, living in poverty, the economist said that their data revealed that more people are exposed to natural disasters and external shocks than the rest of the region.
“The second finding of the report is that Caribbean countries are not well prepared for the new challenges that are brought by climate change,” she informed.
Based on the general findings of the report, the World Bank team proposed three broad recommendations to increase the resilience of the region. The first recommendation is to increase government efficiency, which means in a context where governments do not necessarily have the capacity or the resources to spend more on resilience, they have many options to spend better and to deliver higher levels of resilience with the same levels of resources than they have.
Rozenberg explained that governments could improve investment management and infrastructure maintenance as means of increasing resilience. She added that governments can also improve their risk financing strategies to access instruments that can mobilize funding quickly after shocks, to the economy, without increasing public debt.
“But it’s not sufficient to (just) have those instruments. it’s also important to have the mechanisms in place to spend this money better and that includes having better procurement rules for emergency situations and allocating additional budget for emergency health expenditures or adaptive social protection,” she outlined.
She also said that the report recommends the empowerment of private sectors explaining that if governments cannot spend more, they can help households and the private sector make better decisions for resilience. Rozenberg said it includes giving them access to the financial instruments to invest, like better access to credit, or better coverage and adequacy of social protection for the most vulnerable households.
“Finally, because climate change is coming and is going to increase physical risk, it is important to increase spending in physical protection and that includes strengthening critical infrastructure investing in coastal protection. We found in a study that we did for this report that the coastal areas that have mangroves suffer from 40% less damage during storm surges than other coastal areas. It’s also important to enforce the building codes and standards and consider changing risks,” she said.
Meanwhile, the World Bank’s Vice President for Latin America and Caribbean Carlos Felipe Jaramillo said that governments are increasingly becoming better at preparing for natural hazards.
However, he added that economic growth, over the past 10 years, has slowed and climate change is compounding the intensity and frequency of threats and bringing new ones like sea-level rise.
“The number of people exposed to floods in the region increased 70% between 2002- 2020 and will keep increasing because of climate change. 72% of infrastructure assets are exposed to at least two different types of natural hazards and 30% of hotels along the Caribbean beaches would experience beach loss by 2050 due to sea-level rise and erosion,” he related.
Jaramillo committed the World Bank’s assistance towards helping the countries strengthen their resilience.
