Climate Change expert says SVG should prepare for “horrid” 2025 as climatic conditions worsen

One of the founders, and currently advisor of the JEMS Progressive Community Organisation, Dr Andrew Simmons, does not take kindly to the fact that small states like St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) are paying the price for the actions of larger countries.

At the Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP29) United Nations Change Conference, which was held in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 23, 2024 developed countries agreed to give $300 billion annually to poor nations to battle climate change until 2035. However, he is among those who do not believe this financial commitment will be fully met.

Simmons pointed to this issue in an interview with SEARCHLIGHT on Wednesday, January 15, 2025,during which he addressed the fact that SVG is facing climatic problems that it did not create.

“2015 is when I went to the last major meeting, and when I saw the…wickedness that is taking place from the developed world, I said I’m not going back to these meetings.”

He told SEARCHLIGHT that he decided to return to SVG and invest his time working alongside people at the community level to help them build resilience and make them less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

Simmons, along with over 250 volunteers, and more than 40 permanent workers have been working on a Climate Risk Mapping Project, which aims to educate Vincentians on areas that are vulnerable to climate stressors and address conservation challenges in several communities. To date, there are 70 maps of almost every part of the mainland, 32 of which were created under this initiative.

The project, which is being supported by Wake Forest University, USA, and the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund’s (CEPF’s) Small Grant Facility managed by the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI), is anticipated to impact 4,000 to 6,000 hectares of forest in the country.

However, Simmons is among those who have voiced strong disapproval of “mega countries” like those in Europe, as well as China, and Brazil that generate vast amounts of greenhouse gases, while smaller states produce less than one percent of gases combined, but are forced to bear huge impacts from their actions.

“It is very unfair for countries like St Vincent as we are not the one creating the problems, creating the greenhouse gases that cause Climate Change.”

During the Conference in Baku, this country’s Minister of Tourism and Sustainable Development, Carlos James told President of the COP29 Mukhtar Babayev, and other delegates at the event that Small Island Developing States(SIDS) simply do not have any more time for a polite ask.

“We cannot continue to expend infinite resources on a continuous recovery cycle while chasing vague promises…”.

He added that climate negotiators were being disgracefully held in a metaphoric choke hold as the major historic, and the contemporary carbon emitters “bob and weave their way out of commitments to reduce carbon emissions and bail out on climate finance pledges”.

Minister James called these actions a “selfish and unwarranted assault on the 65 million people living in SIDS.”

Chief Executive of the National Council on Climate Change in Nigeria Nkiruka Madueke, who also spoke at the conference, was not so thrilled with its outcome, saying that “$300 billion until 2035 is a joke”.

Representative from India’s negotiating team, Chandi Raina shared similar sentiments as Madueke stating, “this document is nothing more than an optical illusion. This in our opinion will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face”.

Simmons told SEARCHLIGHT that countries like SVG will continue to face a series of problems related to climate change as heat waves, hurricanes, storms, and other natural disasters will continue to increase.

“Droughts will devastate our agriculture. The fishes will run away because the water is too hot, so they will go deeper, and we don’t have the type of boats … where we could continue to catch.”

Simmons feels that this will lead to an increase in poverty in St Vincent and the Grenadines, and added that the future of the country appears to be dismal.

He continued that SVG has the Sahara dust phenomenon, and the El Nino and La Nina weather systems to thank for reducing the severity of the 25 major storms and the six to eight major hurricanes that were predicted for the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane season.

“…[The major storms and hurricanes] came, but they didn’t get a chance to develop…I was tracking a number of them and they didn’t develop into anything much.”

However, Simmons is not so hopeful that the country will be so lucky in 2025, saying that the country is “not out of the woods” and must prepare for a “horrid” period.

“…we know that the problem in the Southern Grenadines … there’s quite a lot of people in St Vincent still without their roofs…”, after destruction caused by Hurricane Beryl on July 1, 2024.

Simmons concluded the way things are going, weather havoc will continue as he pointed at other places such as California that has been again battling catastrophic forest fires.