How debt swaps and fossil fuel levies can help small islands survive climate change

Excerpt from reuters.com

September 16 - Over the past year, the world has become more unstable. Amid mounting political and economic crises the focus on climate has taken a step back. We saw this in the failures to achieve a just and fair finance deal at COP29 in Baku, in national governments dragging their feet on climate commitments, and in fossil fuel companies insidiously disinvesting in clean energy to focus on squeezing every drop of oil from a scorched earth.

And scorched it is. Just this year the city of Los Angeles and regions in Canada and France burned. Mountain villages in India and Europe were wiped off the map, hundreds of people died in flooding in Pakistan, and more than a million were displaced. In Antigua and Barbuda, we’re anxiously scanning the horizon as hurricane season is upon us, while our coasts wash away and sea levels rise. As I head to Climate Week NYC and the U.N. General Assembly, my people, and millions of others on small islands developing states (SIDS), stand to lose their homelands. Not parts of it; all of it. If global warming is not contained, small island states like ours will face a future where survival means leaving our shores behind. The choice for small island states will no longer be how to adapt, but whether our people can remain on their islands at all.