When Hurricane Melissa tore across Jamaica in October 2025 with winds of 185 mph — the highest ever recorded on the island — it left behind $12.2 billion in damage and losses. A new study by the development think-tank ODI Global has since calculated that $9.7 billion of that figure, roughly 80 percent, can be attributed directly to climate change.

That calculation is not simply an academic exercise: it is the kind of evidence that could, one day, determine who pays. The broader report, published on Wednesday, finds that Caribbean nations collectively suffered $53.2 billion in climate-fuelled economic damage between 2000 and 2024. That sum represents more than 90 percent of the $57 billion in total losses recorded across 39 developing island nations spanning the Caribbean, the Pacific, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea.

Over the same 25-year period, climate-related disasters caused an estimated 190 deaths a year across those territories. The losses fall overwhelmingly on nations that produce a fraction of the greenhouse-gas emissions that drive the disasters. The figures carry legal as well as moral weight. Several Caribbean states have already submitted evidence to the International Court of Justice in a case whose landmark advisory opinion, issued last year, indicated that countries could face compensation orders if they fail to prevent harm to the climate system.