Jamaica’s climate change unit spent about two years with three officers, MPs were told, and four of the five priority projects it oversees are still unfinished.
KINGSTON, Jamaica, 21 October 2026: For roughly two years, the unit responsible for some of Jamaica’s most important climate projects was run by three people. That was among the explanations offered to Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee on Tuesday for why only one of five priority projects, allocated J$13.4 billion between them, has been completed, the Jamaica Observer reported.
The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Water, Environment and Climate Change told MPs that the team later grew to six and then eight officers, but conceded that it had never been fully staffed during the years when the work should have been delivered. He also blamed the COVID-19 pandemic and the time it takes to satisfy public procurement rules. He did not dispute that the projects were late, and he promised a faster pace and a wider search for international money.
The Member of Parliament for St Mary South Eastern, who led the questioning, put it more pointedly. Jamaica, he suggested, is more visible arguing for climate action on the world stage than it is building resilience at home, and he asked why projects kept stalling when the money was there. With a long drought forcing water restrictions in several parishes, he pressed the point in plain terms. “This is about protecting our water security,” he told officials.
The auditor saw it coming
None of this was a surprise to anyone who read the Auditor General’s two climate reports, tabled in Parliament on 10 March. The first credited Jamaica with real progress on planning and policy but said the country still lacked climate legislation with enforceable standards and proper oversight, and that national and local efforts needed to be joined up. It named housing, coastal resources, water, health and tourism among the most exposed sectors.
The second, covering adaptation work from 2018/19 to 2024/25, was blunter. Useful groundwork had been laid, it found, including vulnerability assessments for five priority areas and grant money for climate resilient projects. But delivery had been too slow to produce the resilience the money was meant to buy, with procurement and staffing problems holding back the national adaptation plan, and local projects stuck despite approved financing from the Green Climate Fund.
The minister responsible for climate change said days later that he had no objection to the findings. In April, during the Sectoral Debate, he said the Government aimed to pass climate change framework legislation, developed with help from the United Kingdom, within the 2026/27 financial year.
Money still in the post
Tuesday’s sitting also brought a revised timetable for outside help. Jamaica has applied to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage and hopes for up to US$20 million, the Permanent Secretary said, but the money is now expected in December rather than July. The principal director of the ministry’s Climate Change Branch said the new hires include a greenhouse gas inventory officer, who will track emissions and climate finance once a monitoring system exists, and a communications officer. The ministry is working with partners on a system to track its projects, measure progress and assess results.
Where homeowners come in
For anyone who owns, rents or is saving for a home, this is not a remote argument about international finance. Hurricane Beryl in 2024 and Hurricane Melissa last October showed how exposed Jamaican roofs, roads and coastal communities remain, and that exposure increasingly shows up in what a house is worth, what it costs to insure and whether a lender will finance it. Public adaptation work, from risk mapping to water security, is what allows a household’s private investment to make sense. When it arrives late, families carry more of the risk themselves, through repair bills, dearer cover and water bought by the truckload in a dry season.
There is also the matter of credibility. Jamaica is asking the world for loss and damage money while four of its own funded projects remain unfinished. The ministry has now given itself a list of things that can be checked: a tracking system, a fuller team, a December award and a law before the end of March 2027.
On Tuesday’s evidence, money was not the scarce resource. People to spend it were.
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