WASHINGTON, USA — Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador Sir Ronald Sanders has warned that climate change and an inequitable financial system are trapping small Caribbean states in “permanent recovery,” urging the world to “price risk honestly and finance resilience fairly.”
Speaking at a consultation of more than 200 persons, convened by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on poverty, public debt and climate change, Sanders said disasters are driving debt while insurance costs surge. “When a Category-5 storm wipes out homes, roads, and power, governments must borrow to rebuild—again and again.”
The ambassador remarked that Ocean heating and mass coral bleaching are eroding the blue economy—“over 84 percent of the world’s reefs have faced bleaching-level heat stress since January 2023.” Sea level is rising roughly 3.4 mm a year in the Caribbean; without major adaptation, studies project 38–47 percent tourism-revenue losses by 2100. A record sargassum influx this year has further strained coastal communities, while tighter reinsurance markets are making coverage unaffordable.
“The impacts of climate change are accelerating faster than the fiscal capacity of small states to adapt,” he said, pointing to average annual disaster losses near 2 percent of GDP, adaptation needs around 3.4 percent of GDP, and small island states receiving only about 2 percent of tracked adaptation finance. Talent flight compounds the problem, with roughly 70 percent of the Caribbean’s tertiary-educated living in OECD countries.
Sanders said per-capita income “distorts reality,” graduating vulnerable states out of affordable finance, taking little account of their exposure to shocks. He urged rapid implementation of the UN-endorsed Multidimensional Vulnerability Index to unlock affordable, long-tenor financing. Framing climate and debt as human-rights issues, he cited recent Inter-American and International Court findings that financing terms must protect essential services and social spending as human rights.