Small island developing states are “feeling the pinch” of the energy crisis, warned Kerrie Symmonds, Barbados’s minister of energy, business development, and commerce and senior minister coordinating the productive sector.
At the Global Energy Forum on Tuesday, Symmonds drew attention to the experience of small island developing states (often called SIDS) as the holdup in the Strait of Hormuz continues to throttle global energy trade. He explained that to manage the “significant” oil price increases, the government of Barbados has essentially been applying a subsidy to gasoline, bringing it from around $4.70 a gallon to $4.01. But “that cannot continue indefinitely.”
Yet for these SIDS countries in the Caribbean, high gasoline prices aren’t the only effect of the energy crisis. Patrick Brunings, Suriname’s minister of oil, gas, and environment, explained that as larger countries begin to more seriously “invest in new energy mixes” to “secure their own energy,” they may have fewer funds left over to send to the Caribbean for climate-change adaptation and resilience efforts.
“In effect,” he explained, “the Caribbean region faces a tightening trilemma: rising climate impacts, shrinking adaptation finance, and a global energy system under pressure, all converging at the moment when resilience is most urgently needed.”
