Reconcile Journal Digest #2: hurricane melissa vs. climate resillience vs. tourism.

Welcome to Reconcile Digest #2. I’m so glad you’re here.

Last week, unfortunately, the students in my lectures didn’t get the best of me. I was extremely distracted, firstly by the severity of the hurricane from Cat 3 to Cat 5, then by the radio silence from family (mine and every other Jamaican sharing their stories), and THEN, by the research. Hurricanes happen in the Caribbean; we know this. But the severity of this one, the impact on the ground, and the amount of rebuilding needed now (!!) is a reminder that storms are a climate justice issue. Climate justice is a social justice issue.

Full downloadable references at the end!

There is a lot of research on the topic. It took me all week to get my head around this paper, which I chose as I had it previously stored in my reference manager (I use Mendeley).

Interestingly as a side note, it was confirmation of my future aspiration: to call on guest contributors with subject specialities beyond my own to translate research for our archive. I think there would be so much value in hearing about this from those who have been researching + understanding it for years! In the meantime, today’s digest looks at how to assess towns in Jamaica for it’s resilience to climate crises like this, and highlights a dilemma of economic dependency. I have also shared some fascinating additional resources that shed light on the long-standing, well-researched impact of climate change on Jamaica, downloadable from our archive.

^{_{Due to the unfolding nature of the storm last week, this research ended up being shared on}}^_Instagram^{_{as soon as I compiled it (Friday night), because the support links felt timely/urgent. This was a one-off; the priority will always be sharing to our archive first, and IG afterwards!}}