Jennifer Chapman | The UK and Jamaica must work with Commonwealth partners to protect our planet

How exciting to be here in Jamaica this week – not only a beautiful tropical island, but a country that’s also a great and long-standing friend of the UK.

With 800,000 Jamaicans living in the UK – in London, Birmingham and Bristol in particular – our cultural links are especially deep, in everything from music and cuisine to sport and business.

We share a language, a love of cricket, and reggae is one of our greatest Jamaican imports.

And we are also collaborating on some of the biggest, toughest challenges. During my time here this week, I am looking forward to seeing firsthand how some of our joint projects are delivering real results.

While here, I will be visiting the Mandeville Health Centre, a facility that the UK helped to fund via the SMART Hospitals Initiative and which – remarkably – was able to withstand the impact of Hurricane Beryl several months ago, staying operational as natural disaster struck.

This is a real example of the importance of climate resilience – especially in small island developing states (SIDS) like Jamaica that stand at the forefront of global warming’s impact.

RESILIENCE

Resilience is a theme that I and many of my colleagues in the UK and abroad are thinking about this month, as we look ahead to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) 2024 to be held in Samoa in just under two weeks’ time. Resilience will be this year’s central theme, and a focus on collective action will be driving the agenda.

I am pleased that the foreign secretary, as well as Prime Minister Keir Starmer, will be joining Jamaican Foreign Minister Kamina Johnson Smith in Samoa this month for the meeting – at which 25 SIDS will have an opportunity to speak up, and galvanise real action within the Commonwealth.

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has made clear his ambition to focus the Commonwealth on the shared challenges we can address together: building economic resilience; resilient, sustainable growth; and in particular - climate resilience.

Both for Jamaica and the UK, climate resilience will be a key pillar of our ambition, particularly following the foreign secretary’s first set-piece foreign policy speech, in which he told an audience at Kew Gardens in London recently that action on climate is also action on our collective prosperity and future.

During my time here in Jamaica, climate resilience will be at the forefront of so many of my conversations.

From 2015-2023, the UK has been able to work with Caribbean partners to develop health infrastructure, and create safer, greener healthcare facilities like the one in Mandeville – assisting with funding worth £46.1 million.

Hurricane Beryl was, of course, one of the most destructive natural disasters to hit Jamaica in recent months, the earliest Category 5 hurricane on record in the Atlantic.

ACT QUICKLY

I was glad that the UK was able to support international recovery efforts, facilitating significant aid to the region – £160,000 of which was provided to Jamaica to help support those most seriously affected.

Alongside several of our international partners, and under the leadership of Jamaican Minister of Finance Dr Nigel Clarke, we are also collaborating to establish a ‘Blue Green Financing Facility’, a project that aims to provide up to US$500 million to enhance Jamaica’s ability to combat and adapt to the effects of climate change over the next five years.

Elsewhere, the UK is investing £6.8 million through the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, to work with Caribbean partners – including Jamaica – to respond more urgently and at scale to the threats faced by climate change.

This includes the formation of a regional help desk, specialist training, and practical tools to support national infrastructure investment, and to guide public- and private-sector decisions, expanding on pilot work done in Jamaica.

I am very aware that we must continue to step up our collective global action in the face of these shared challenges: shoring up climate resilience must be at the top of that agenda.

I am hopeful that CHOGM will be the next key catalyst for further progress, drawing strength from its diversity of members, and harnessing resilience in collaboration.

Jennifer Chapman (Baroness Chapman of Darlington) is the parliamentary undersecretary of state at the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office for Latin America and Caribbean. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter: @JennyChapman. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.