For­eign Min­is­ters of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty (CARI­COM) have im­pressed up­on Unit­ed States Deputy Sec­re­tary of State Wendy Sher­man the ur­gency for the de­liv­ery of the sec­ond tranche of do­na­tions of Pfiz­er vac­cines from the US.

Ac­cord­ing to a re­lease is­sued by the CARI­COM Sec­re­tari­at, the Min­is­ters and Ms Sher­man, along with As­sis­tant Sec­re­tary of State for West­ern Hemi­sphere Af­fairs Am­bas­sador Bri­an Nichols, held a vir­tu­al di­a­logue on Tues­day 21 Sep­tem­ber in the mar­gins of the UN Gen­er­al As­sem­bly.

The Unit­ed States de­liv­ered the first ship­ments of the do­nat­ed Pfiz­er vac­cines last Au­gust, with the sec­ond ship­ment planned for this month. Min­is­ters, while ex­press­ing their deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the gen­eros­i­ty of the US, un­der­lined the im­por­tance of main­tain­ing the sched­ule giv­en the spike in COVID-19 in­fec­tions in many Mem­ber States. They stressed the im­por­tance of vac­cines to both the health and eco­nom­ic sec­tors of the Com­mu­ni­ty.

In her open­ing state­ment to the meet­ing, CARI­COM Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Her Ex­cel­len­cy Car­la Bar­nett stat­ed that the im­pact of COVID has been dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly large on “our small states, es­pe­cial­ly where tourism is the ma­jor source of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.”

CARI­COM Min­is­ters al­so took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to press the case for in­creased cli­mate am­bi­tion and fi­nanc­ing for adap­ta­tion as well as ac­cep­tance of the Mul­ti­di­men­sion­al Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty In­dex as the main cri­te­ri­on for ac­cess to con­ces­sion­al de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing.

There was al­so a strong em­pha­sis on ac­tion be­ing tak­en at the up­com­ing Cli­mate Sum­mit COP 26 in Glas­gow, Unit­ed King­dom, to scale up the am­bi­tion to cut green­house gas emis­sions to en­sure that the glob­al tem­per­a­ture rise be cur­tailed at 1.5 de­grees centi­grade above pre-in­dus­tri­al lev­els. Fail­ure to do so would im­per­il the ex­is­tence of CARI­COM Mem­ber States, the US del­e­ga­tion was told. A re­quest was al­so made for a meet­ing with US Cli­mate En­voy Sec­re­tary John Ker­ry.

The con­cern over the fail­ure of de­vel­oped coun­tries to meet the com­mit­ment to pro­vide $100 bil­lion (US) a year by 2020 to as­sist de­vel­op­ing coun­tries to adapt to cli­mate change was al­so point­ed out.

Min­is­ters em­pha­sised that giv­en the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of most CARI­COM States as high or mid­dle-in­come coun­tries, they could not ac­cess con­ces­sion­al de­vel­op­ment fi­nanc­ing due to the use of GDP per capi­ta as the main cri­te­ri­on. This, they said, af­fect­ed their abil­i­ty to fund adap­ta­tion mea­sures for cli­mate change as well as the re­cov­ery process from the dec­i­ma­tion of their economies due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters. They un­der­lined the im­por­tance of putting in place new mod­els of fi­nanc­ing and us­ing more apt cri­te­ri­on based on vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

Both sides, un­der­lin­ing that a prob­lem for one was a prob­lem for all, ex­pressed the im­por­tance of sol­i­dar­i­ty with re­gard to the dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion in Haiti and of its peo­ple.

The CARI­COM Pro Tem­pore Chair­man Chet Green of An­tigua and Bar­bu­da thanked the Deputy Sec­re­tary of State for the op­por­tu­ni­ty to meet, un­der­ling the im­por­tance of struc­tured and mean­ing­ful en­gage­ment.

Deputy Sec­re­tary Sher­man in­di­cat­ed that she had heard/tak­en note of the con­cerns and would be re­lay­ing them to Sec­re­tary of State An­tho­ny Blinken.