Jamaica argues climate risk cannot be measured by income alone

Jamaica brought the weight of recent disaster to the United Nations General Assembly this week, using Hurricane Melissa to reshape how the world identifies and supports nations at risk from climate shocks.

Senator Kamina Johnson Smith, Jamaica's Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, told delegates at the 81st General Assembly session that the October 2025 hurricane inflicted damage and losses totalling 56.7 per cent of Jamaica's GDP, wiping out more than half a year's entire national economic output in hours.

What made her case compelling was Jamaica's own track record before the storm struck. The country had slashed its debt from above 140 per cent of GDP down to 62 per cent. Joblessness had fallen to a historic low of 3.4 per cent and sat at 3.7 per cent even after Melissa. Credit ratings remained stable or improved despite the catastrophe.

Yet Jamaica's prudent management offered no shield against the hurricane's force. Johnson Smith told the Assembly that a nation cannot reduce its exposure to such events simply by raising its per capita income above some threshold. She called on the UN to adopt multidimensional vulnerability indices to determine which countries deserve access to concessional and development finance, rather than using income levels as the sole measure. She also demanded climate finance that countries can actually access, afford and rely on.

Jamaica wove its case into the broader CARICOM agenda. It backed Guyana's Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett for UN Secretary-General, threw its weight behind continued international backing for Haiti's security forces, and renewed calls for stricter controls on illegal firearms entering Caribbean communities. Jamaica logged its lowest homicide rate in more than three decades during 2025 and now ranks as the Caribbean's most peaceful nation according to the Global Peace Index.

On reparations, Johnson Smith disclosed that Jamaica's petition sent to Buckingham Palace has been forwarded to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. Jamaica also endorsed Ghana's General Assembly resolution on the subject.