This pains me to write.
Just months ago, as a Climate Justice Journalism Fellow with Climate Tracker Caribbean, I spent countless hours researching and writing about climate change in Jamaica — examining it through the lens of our Indigenous Peoples, our endemic ecosystems, and our living heritage. I spoke of the wisdom embedded in our culture, the kind that could help us face the inevitabilities of a changing climate — if only we’d listen.
I wrote about climate anxiety and grief, that heavy ache of loss that lingers when the land and waters you love are in peril. I warned of the cost of unchecked development and capitalism — how building without resilience in mind sets us up for disaster. I spoke of how government priorities often place economic gain above environmental and community health, and how that choice would cost us dearly.
I spoke about the financial toll of climate change on our Indigenous and wider Jamaican communities — and the cultural loss that follows when heritage sites, sacred spaces, and species disappear. I raised the issue of accessibility for persons with disabilities in a natural disaster, especially our d/Deaf community, who largely remain excluded from inclusive weather and climate reporting. I also echoed what experts have long said: poor resource management and weak environmental regulation are our undoing. They make each storm more punishing, each recovery more costly.
And now, here we are.
| Maria Alejandra Cardona/Reuters
Hurricane Melissa — a slow-moving, Category 5 monster with winds peaking at 185 mph — has left Jamaica reeling. The devastation is staggering. Thirty-two lives lost and counting. Entire communities in our western parishes of Cornwall County are cut off from basic amenities, communication, and hope. Towns flattened, roads gone, bridges washed away. The landscape looks like a bomb went off — acres of skeletal trees, fields turned to wasteland, the rising sea creeping closer, as if to remind us who’s really in charge.
The aftermath is a grim cascade, to say the least:
- Power lines and communication down— bringing isolation and silence across parishes.
- Businesses shuttered and thousands of people unemployed overnight.
- Mental health crises blooming amid grief, fear, and instability.
- Cultural and heritage loss — with historic landmarks and entire communities wiped out.
- Disease outbreaks, with reports of malaria already emerging in Westmoreland.
- Rising crime and violence fuelled by desperation and scarcity, which will be especially terrible for women and girls in these unstable housing situations.
- Collapsed ecosystems, leaving us even more vulnerable to future storms.
- Dying pollinators— petrified plants mean no bees, which makes food insecurity inevitable.
- Skyrocketing food prices, health and nutritional decline due to the widespread loss of our farms, produce, spices and medicinal plants.
- A fiscal setback that erases decades of slow national progress.
- Overwhelmed healthcare systems, with patients cut off from much-needed medication and care.
- Maternal and infant health at risk, and the elderly left stranded.
- Education setbacks, as schools, books, and digital tools are now lost.
- Low national morale, as trauma ripples through every household.
- Shortages of building materials and other essentials.
This is the true cost of our decisions. We’ve long been told that climate change is coming — but it’s already here.
The grief that hangs over our island is not just about loss; it’s about knowing that we were warned. That we saw the patterns, studied the science, felt the heat — and still looked away, hoping somehow, this storm would skip us as they usually would.
But climate change is not a foreign threat. It is a local reckoning.
We cannot continue treating development as a race to the highest bidder while ignoring the ground beneath our feet and the sea that cradles us. We cannot rebuild only to repeat the same mistakes — constructing fragile systems, ignoring communities, and neglecting our most vulnerable.
This is a call for accountability — for better planning, for resilient infrastructure, for environmental stewardship that doesn’t stop at press conferences. It’s a call for equity, for the inclusion of Indigenous and rural voices in every climate conversation. It’s a call for mental health care as primary disaster response, not as an afterthought… Because survival, for us, is no longer passive. It must be strategic, compassionate, and collective.
I, too, am grieving with the rest of Jamaica. My own community of Siloah in St Elizabeth, and my childhood home, have also been affected. But grief is not where we stop — it’s where we rise. When the wind shakes one branch, the rest of the tree bends to hold it steady.
Jamaica, let’s rise in that spirit.
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Tameka A. Coley is a Jamaican journalist and founder of Writes and Kulcha. Her work explores the intersections of culture, wellness, and environment, centring voices of equity and resilience across the Caribbean.
Writes and Kulcha has partnered with Skin by Trace (11 Ardenne Road, Kingston) to launch a Hurricane Melissa Relief Effort, supporting families from smaller communities in North East St Elizabeth and Westmoreland — areas left nearly unrecognisable after Melissa’s passage.
We’re collecting:
• Non-perishable food items
• Water, ice, and sanitary supplies
• Batteries, flashlights, candles, and power banks
• Bedding, clothing, insect repellent, and baby essentials
• Tarpaulin, first-aid, and cleaning materials
For overseas donors wishing to support, DM us on Instagram @writesandkulcha or email team@writesandkulcha.com.
WK Admin