Mickel Jackson | Climate justice beyond the rhetoric

There is no climate justice without social justice. Small island developing states like Jamaica, which emit a negligible fraction of the world’s greenhouse gases, bear a disproportionate brunt of the destruction wrought by rich countries and their corporations.

As discussions on climate justice intensify, we must move beyond rhetoric to confront how the crisis compounds existing inequalities — and ensure that any proposed remedies make justice truly accessible to those who suffer most.

Corporate irresponsibility and extraordinary weather events, intensified by human activity, devastate infrastructure, erode economies, and place entire communities at risk. Yet the mechanisms meant to deliver redress remain fragmented, underfunded, and inaccessible. In this context, Justice Winston Anderson’s proposal for an International Climate Injuries Compensation (ICIC) Fund offers a necessary blend of principled accountability and pragmatic design. Financed through mandatory annual levies on major corporate emitters whose greenhouse gas emissions exceed agreed thresholds, the fund would provide direct compensation for harm from climate-linked extreme events. Modelled on the International Oil Pollution Compensation Funds, it would possess independent legal personality, allowing suits directly in national courts where harm occurs. This is a proposal worthy of urgent Caribbean leadership and global support.

Existing frameworks, including the UN’s Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD), suffer from a critical deficit: they lack a robust legal architecture capable of compelling contributions or ensuring swift disbursement. Voluntary pledges and state-to-state negotiations have produced little more than symbolic commitments. Jamaica’s recent experiences illustrate the gap with painful clarity. Hurricane Melissa last October inflicted physical damages initially estimated by the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank at US$8.8 billion. Subsequent assessments, incorporating broader losses and macroeconomic effects, pushed total damages and losses to J$1.952 trillion (approximately US$12.2 billion), or 56.7 per cent of 2024 GDP. Hurricane Beryl in 2024, less catastrophic, exacted costs of roughly J$32.2 billion.

VITAL BUT LIMITED

In both cases, Jamaica’s pre-arranged disaster-risk instruments – parametric insurance through CCRIF and a World Bank catastrophe bond – delivered vital but limited relief: over US$240 million in rapid liquidity for Melissa, including the full US$150 million cat-bond payout and CCRIF payments totalling US$91.9 million. These were immediate lifesavers, yet they covered only a fraction of the need. The UN’s FRLD, hampered by slow capitalisation and cumbersome processes, offered no meaningful drawdown on the scale required. Jamaica, like other vulnerable nations, was left bridging multi-billion-dollar gaps through concessional loans, bilateral support, and domestic resources, perpetuating debt cycles rather than enabling genuine recovery.

The proposed ICIC Fund is positioned to address these shortcomings head-on. By requiring annual contributions from multinational corporations whose emissions exceed agreed thresholds, collected and remitted by host states, it embeds the “polluter pays” principle into enforceable practice. It grants the fund independent legal personality, enabling direct suits in national courts where harm occurs. This circumvents protracted litigation against diffuse corporate actors and delivers resources where they are needed most: for rebuilding homes, restoring livelihoods, and fortifying resilience. For a region already stretched by repeated shocks, such speed and certainty represent a necessary leap.

After JFJ discussed Justice Anderson’s proposal on our weekly Let’s Talk Justice radio show, a prominent private sector personality reached out to offer caution about the delicate balance required given Jamaica’s reliance on foreign direct investment, which is necessary to drive growth and create jobs. Respectfully, multinationals operating here, whether in tourism, mining, or manufacturing, benefit from our infrastructure and workforce. In turn, they must internalise the external costs their global operations impose. The ICIC’s threshold-based approach may offer some comfort: it targets the highest emitters without imposing blanket liabilities that could affect legitimate capital flows. Done transparently and predictably, this need not fracture investor confidence but can instead foster a new compact: sustainable investment paired with corporate accountability.

GREATER CHALLENGE

The greater challenge, however, lies with accessibility for redress. While small island developing states must have ease of access at the macro level, macroeconomic figures often obscure the human scale of harm. The real test of the ICIC Fund – if and when it is established – will be whether it reaches the small farmer watching crops wash away, the fisherfolk who can’t fish because of the frequency of ‘fish kill’ when rivers are polluted, or the families in bauxite-affected communities where mining has scarred land, contaminated water, and compounded climate vulnerability. Their economic harm is immediate and personal: lost income, mounting debt, children pulled from school, health crises exacerbated by dust and flooding. Existing international funds too often route resources through governments alone, leaving individuals to navigate opaque bureaucracies or receive nothing at all.

This is where JFJ’s longstanding concerns about access to justice become central. International mechanisms frequently falter at the point of delivery to the most marginalised. Jamaica and many developing countries have long suffered from transparency and accountability deficits, where administrative inertia, elite capture, and bureaucratic opacity prevent benefits from reaching those most in need. The ICIC must therefore incorporate explicit pathways for individual and community claims—simplified procedures, legal aid, community representation, and direct payouts. Without them, the fund risks replicating the very inequities it seeks to remedy. Justice Anderson’s vision, grounded in Caribbean realities and the 2025 Inter-American Court Advisory Opinion on climate rights, provides the normative foundation; now we must insist on operational safeguards that prioritise the fisher in Portland or the farmer in Clarendon over bureaucracies. Transparency in fund governance, clear eligibility criteria, independent oversight, and accessible claims processes will be non-negotiable.

NECESSARY INNOVATION

In the end, the ICIC Fund is not a panacea, but it is a necessary and overdue innovation. It moves us from the politics of pity to the architecture of accountability. Jamaica, under the leadership of Minister of Water, Environment and Climate Change Matthew Samuda, and CARICOM must spearhead efforts to negotiate and adopt the global convention establishing the ICIC Fund. At COP31 in Antalya, Türkiye, in November 2026, or at the United Nations General Assembly, CARICOM should coordinate a unified regional position, building on its long advocacy for loss and damage. This includes tabling or co-sponsoring a dedicated resolution or side-event that places Justice Anderson’s proposal at the centre. Diplomatically, CARICOM should engage developed-country partners early. At home, Jamaica and CARICOM states should launch national and regional consultations with civil society, fisherfolk, indigenous groups, farmers, and affected communities to ensure transparency, accountability, and direct access for marginalised people are embedded from the outset. CARICOM Secretariat can receive technical support from the Caribbean Court of Justice and the University of the West Indies.

The climate emergency will not wait for perfect mechanisms. Neither should we. By embracing Justice Anderson’s proposal, while insisting on genuine access to justice for every Jamaican affected, we honour both our legal and moral duty to the vulnerable. The alternative is a future in which the heaviest costs of global inaction continue to be borne, disproportionately and unjustly, by the poorest among us.

Mickel Jackson is the executive director of Jamaicans for Justice. Send feedback to communications@jamaicansforjustice.org.