The Caribbean is the coal mine on the frontlines of the climate catastrophe
Originally published on Global Voices
Hurricane Beryl's eye as it made landfall on Carriacou on July 1, 2024. Imagery, which contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data 2024 (acquired by the Copernicus Sentinel 2 satellite), is regulated under EU law (Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 1159/2013 and Regulation (EU) No 377/2014). Via Wikimedia Commons.
By Holly Bynoe
On July 1, an early and “unprecedented” storm, Hurricane Beryl, swept through my home islands of the transboundary Grenadines. Mayreau, Canouan, Union Island, Petit St. Vincent, Palm Island/Prune Island, the Tobago Cays, Petite Martinique and Carriacou were positioned either inside or mere miles away from the eyewall of the tempest; Bequia, Mustique, and the mainlands of Grenada and St. Vincent on the edge of the eye.
Beryl developed in an area east of the Windward Islands, which several meteorologists referred to as “the graveyard.” This storm is the most recent evidence of the entrenchment of the Caribbean region as the canary in the coal mine of the climate catastrophe, exposing the ugly underbelly of climate injustice. It “baffled meteorologists and weather enthusiasts,” and tested our mettle, courage and preparedness by breaking old records and creating new markers — becoming the earliest-forming Category 5 in recorded history and the only Atlantic hurricane to intensify from a tropical storm to a significant, life-threatening hurricane in under 48 hours.
Before Beryl’s landfall, I shared with family and friends experiences of preparing for Cat 4 and 5 hurricanes while living in The Bahamas from 2015 to 2019. There was a laid-back approach while I pressed for shutters to be in place by a specific time, and some informality regarding hurricane preparedness — perhaps due to very little lived memory of the passage of the last major hurricane, Janet, which made landfall across Carriacou in 1955. There was also hubris about Beryl tracking south, away from the mainland and becoming “less of a problem” to the country.
Map of hurricanes identified by their categories that have impacted the Grenadines since 1900, using data acquired from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOOA). Cartography by Alison D. Ollivierre, Tombolo Maps & Design, used with permission.
Many things were brewing across the already poorly provisioned Grenadines. In addition to updates from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) on the rapid intensification of the tempest, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves’ address got people scrambling to secure whatever materials and resources they could manage, and on a Sunday at that. There would be no ferry service carrying plywood, hardware materials, candles, batteries, non-perishable food, tarpaulins or essential items, nor teams on the ground reinforcing shelters, a ferry service, or systems in place to facilitate evacuations north to the mainland. Every island had to make do with what was available. The National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) advised those who felt their homes would be compromised to seek safety at “official hurricane shelters,” which were simply public buildings that were no more prepared for a hurricane than their houses.
In Beryl's aftermath, the Grenadine islands were reported as “flattened,” “apocalyptic,” “erased,” and “devastated,” words synonymous with erasure and the cornerstone trendy lingo of global disaster management and recovery efforts. But what these words mean — and attempt to convey — is more complex than their singularity. You can only understand their feeble, inadequate, fearmongering and impotent use once touched by the violence of assumed “flatness” and erasure.
Historically, the colonial project attempted to flatten the gestures and ontologies of our island spaces and people, reducing, essentialising, tropifying, presenting a sanitised and well-behaved understanding of picturesque isles to the outer world as ready for investment, development, re-settlement and privatisation. These actions have generated nefarious opportunities to capture and reform the paradisiacal and exotic, often erasing local agency, social memory and footprints, which in turn affect aspects of birthright, obfuscate intangible and tangible heritages, community agency and belonging.
Beryl's impact is undoubtedly a fresh, alive, and infected wound simultaneously healing. Communities have cleared debris from their family plots, villages, homes, churches, schools, clinics, beaches, coastlines, eyes, and hearts. Rubble is feet and fathoms deep. Cleaning up, however, moves beyond the material, beyond the debris.
With our collective stomach in a knot and hurricane PTSD on tongues coursing through dreamscapes and stirring in our unregulated nervous systems, climate injustice is now, for the Grenadines, a deep and abiding embodiment. Days after, while many were still in the dark — early estimates from the national electricity company stated that, due to significant grid damage, electricity would be restored in the southern Grenadines by the end of the year into 2025.
On WhatsApp, we were staring at single ticks for hours, waiting for word on how our islands, families and friends fared, and we all knew from the reporting that it was beyond our wildest thinking. The silence was terrifying. Then, the floodgates opened with testimonials and images of stripped hillsides, transformed coastlines, decimated biodiversity, and pelted containers. Boats, crews, passports and deeds were washed away, reducing strong, well-built concrete homes to shells. Most heartbreakingly, many in the Southern Grenadines had to be evacuated after the passage of the storm, and there were six lives lost.
Sketch of the interior of the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception, Mayreau, the Grenadines, by artist Jackie Hinkson, 2004. The church was destroyed by Hurricane Beryl. Image courtesy of the artist, used with permission.
As we replay imagery that has flooded social media feeds and messaging apps — the saddest so far is the destruction of the historic Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception (est. 1930) in Mayreau that doubled as a community centre, education space, gathering hall and hurricane shelter to 350 Mayreaunians — do we re-harm ourselves by touching the severity of the damage? Are we only ingesting the pain of others?
Destruction of the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculate Conception after the passage of Beryl. Image by Niko Spencer, used with permission.
In her treatise “Regarding the Pain of Others,” Susan Sontag questions if photographs that depict pain, loss and harm can evoke empathy or if they are surfaces that further desensitise, with oversaturation leading to collective amnesia and dissociation. How are our psyches and collective mental and spiritual well-being affected when we succumb to constant viewing, scrolling, waiting and worse, replaying and becoming fixated on the energy and looping of the catastrophe?
#GrenadineStrong hashtags popped up immediately, along with numerous GoFundMe campaigns from many in the diaspora and the expatriate population, with connections to the islands by blood, experience and love.
The outpouring of care, activation of relief through the Caribbean Community CARICOM with early aid streaming in from Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua, Guyana, and Barbados, along with the extremely early organisation and mobilisation of the French Army stationed in Martinique extended a hopeful lifeline to those trying to make sense of what happened to them. A catastrophic hurricane leaves you discombobulated; not whole. Humanitarian organisations, international banks, businesses, hotels, private investors and governments have since made donations and financial promises to help the recovery of the Grenadines.
The process hasn’t been without a fair share of chaos, error, misinformation, propaganda and careless journalism, all reinforcing harm. On July 10, the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), the intergovernmental agency for disaster management in CARICOM, shared an update on the relief efforts in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Executive Director Elizabeth Riley's problematic report included the erasure of Mayreau and Palm Island from the list of islands affected, the misspelling of Canouan, and false claims stating that there was up to 90 percent of damage to infrastructure on the mainland of St. Vincent and Bequia, equating the structural damage to the islands in the southern Grenadines. When approached with questions about their supposed visit to assess Bequia and the need to provide further evidence supporting the claim of 90 percent infrastructural damage, CDEMA removed the post from its social media accounts.
Screenshots pulled from CDEMA’s Instagram account before deletion of the post regarding the report. A public assessment by CDEMA till July 13 is outstanding. Screenshots by Holly Bynoe, used with permission.
At the time of publishing, CDEMA had not shared any additional information with the public. One might wonder if the interregional organisation championing Comprehensive Disaster Management (CDM) in the Caribbean could be playing to the power of Vincentian leadership by establishing a case for the country to ask for more aid than needed, or whether it is a case of gross neglect, negligence and laziness; adding salt to the already gaping psychological wound furthering systemic, organised abandonment of the northern Grenadine island?
The criticisms of Building Back Better (BBB) and its ties to deepening public dependency and scarcity dynamics map a future of recovery entrenched in singularity, in accumulating capital and restoring materials and infrastructure while sidelining aspects of human-centred recovery, which are critical for societal transformation.
While bringing this shabby journalism forward does not imply that needs aren’t great — they are — stating that there is 90 percent infrastructural damage on Bequia and mainland St. Vincent, where on-the-ground assessments estimate 20 percent infrastructural damage at most is suspect. For context, there is an ongoing lack of accountability and transparency around the distribution of resources and funding aid after the 2021 volcanic eruption on St. Vincent.
With public trust at an all-time low, citizens must hold governments and agencies accountable for truth-telling during catastrophic times and agitate for a more dynamic definition and recovery system that includes social dimensions such as livelihood restoration and well-being.
Under many disaster management schemes, recovery from Beryl — while dealing with rebounding from COVID-19 and the eruptions that displaced 12,775 people — is viewed through the lens of materiality. While people need to have homes and creature comforts, the psychological, emotional, and spiritual communal aspects of this kind of catastrophe, as well as longer-term needs, are often poorly articulated or missing from parallel legislative frameworks altogether.
Alternative healing modalities and psychosocial support initiatives offered by institutions and community-based organisations are often short-lived and not well-funded, with the training of professionals frequently drawn from affected communities. Might the catastrophe provide structural and ideological opportunities to direct governments, community-based organisations, and spaces of service to pause and consider what can be created now?
Can disaster management and relief funds change their intentions from short-term support to longer-term, slow, sustained approaches that equip Small Island Developing States (SIDS) with intentional and embodied tools that aid adaptation, mitigation, healing and reinforcement? Can the draconian neoliberal tactics of Return on Investment (RoI) and refinancing take a backseat to the recovery of people and their communities?
Earlier this year, Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley started powerful conversations around debt eradication for climate-vulnerable countries, highlighting the need to shift how carbon-producing countries frame climate financing from reactive to proactive, from punitive to generative, from capital to human.
How can the most vulnerable communities take a seat at the table or create their futures where adaptive and proactive measures are in place to ensure the survival of their islands? How can they arm themselves against disaster capitalism with land speculation, gentrification, and small island abandonment well documented across the region? Barbuda and Abaco are recent examples — and in the context of the Grenadines, privatisation is already on our doorsteps.
How can those at risk — and set to lose their islands if conditions for recovery remain unimaginative and re-traumatising — be empowered to reinvest in the livingness, sophistication and noncompressible state of their assumed flatness? How can island communities across the Grenadines co-visualise the changes we want to see?
