OPPOSITION Leader Mark Golding on Tuesday urged Jamaica to take a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) seeking compensation for the damage caused by Hurricane Melissa.

According to Golding, those obligated to pay are member states of the global community who, for decades, “stubbornly resisted scientific consensus that their carbon-releasing activities were leading to catastrophic changes in the global climate”.

“They chose to continue substantially unchanged, allowing their fossil fuel-based economies to continue unabated while effectively exporting the climate-related costs to less-developed and vulnerable nations, including small island developing states like Jamaica,” Golding said during his contribution to the 2026/27 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives.

Golding’s call — while focusing on the US$12.2-billion estimate of the loss and damage caused by Melissa, which struck south-western and north-western parishes at Category 5 strength on October 28 last year — comes after a landmark advisory opinion by the ICJ last July on states’ obligations to tackle climate change under international law.

In the decision, which followed years of lobbying by small island states and spearheaded by Vanuatu, the ICJ ruled that states must tackle fossil fuels, and failing to prevent harm to the climate could result in them being ordered to pay compensation and make other forms of restitution.

Yūji Iwasawa, the ICJ president, in presenting the ruling to a packed court at the Peace Palace in The Hague, said climate breakdown had severe and far-reaching consequences which affected natural ecosystems and people.

“These consequences underscore an urgent existential threat,” he said.

The ruling was welcomed by Caribbean leaders who described it as a “historic legal victory” for small island states everywhere. Among them was then prime minister of St Vincent and the Grenadines Ralph Gonsalves who said it would strengthen the Caribbean’s negotiating power.

Several countries in the region had provided evidence for the case.

That ruling followed an oral submission to the ICJ by Jamaica’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade Senator Kamina Johnson Smith in December 2024, asking the court to establish the obligations of states in respect of protection of the environment against harmful greenhouse emissions as well as the consequences for causing significant harm to the climate and other parts of the environment.

Jamaica was among 105 nations that co-sponsored United Nations General Assembly Resolution number 77/276 being heard by the ICJ.

The Jamaican delegation comprised senior officers of the Attorney General’s Chambers and the foreign ministry who were supported in preparations by the ministries of economic growth and job creation, health and wellness, and agriculture, fisheries and mining, among other departments and agencies of Government.

On Tuesday Golding, who themed his budget presentation ‘Build back better than before’, said that the level of damage caused by Melissa would be setting Jamaica back for many years to come.

“Our country has a duty to lead in its advocacy for fair and just compensation from those states which have put us and others like us in this position of extreme vulnerability,” Golding said.

He argued that Jamaica, “in its own interests and out of a duty to other vulnerable countries like ours which will continue to bear the loss and damage resulting from climate change, should now assemble a team of the most experienced legal experts to prepare a legal brief on the possibility of recovering compensation for the loss and damage inflicted on us by Melissa”.

Golding said the legal brief should consider the prospects of a case being taken to the ICJ, relying on the responsibility of certain countries for the global temperature increases that resulted in the damage wrought by Hurricane Melissa.

He also said a decision of the ICJ on this issue would be binding on the states found to be liable for the global warming that triggered Hurricane Melissa.

“This decision, which would be of considerable economic value for Jamaica, may possibly be obtained pursuant to the contentious jurisdiction of the international court. Alternatively, but in the same solutions-oriented spirit, the Government of Jamaica should assume a leadership position to encourage the United Nations General Assembly to seek the international court’s opinion on the levels of compensation that major contributors to global overheating may be called upon to pay for loss and damage caused to individual countries by changing weather patterns,” said Golding.

The Opposition leader insisted that on the matter of loss and damage caused by the climatic effects of global warming, “surely the law and equity are on the side of small developing states that have not contributed in any significant way to this phenomenon.

“It is the states which are responsible for major fossil fuel emissions who are causing loss and damage from monster hurricanes such as Melissa. As these major states of emission have caused the damage, it is fitting that they should make reparation for it.

“The cost that lies ahead to rebuild and insure against recurring Category 5 and stronger storms will be very heavy,” he argued.

He questioned whether Jamaica can, and should bear the cost alone for destruction to which it contributed very little, arguing that “Melissa was not happenstance, it was not an accident”.

He noted that in earlier times, Jamaica was known to have one major hurricane at Category 4 or above roughly every 40 years. He pointed out that in the 37 years since Hurricane Gilbert in 1988 Jamaica has experienced four such systems — Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Dean in 2007, which were both measured at Category 4; Hurricane Beryl in 2024 and Melissa in 2025, which were both clocked at Category 5 strength.

Stating that Ivan, Dean, and Beryl caused loss and damage to Jamaica of US$1.079 billion, Golding lamented that outside of some “important voluntary contributions from third parties”, Jamaica bore the cost of the expenditures related to these disasters.

“Financing, mainly through loans, incurs interest and capital repayment as well as some conditionalities. Jamaica has had to absorb those costs substantially on our own, partly because (i) the link between CO2 emissions and climate change was not firmly established; (ii) the legal, scientific, negotiating, technical, and administrative capabilities were not in place, and (iii) the international legal framework was still in negotiation,” said Golding.

He told the House that Hurricane Melissa has created a potentially game-changing shift, saying that, among other things, Melissa did not follow the historical pattern of these major systems.

“It was a tropical storm system which, while meandering slowly in the Caribbean, intensified rapidly in these waters where sea temperatures have reached 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels, and then moved directly to Jamaica.

“It is generally accepted that Melissa’s peculiar intensification and power were a climate-related phenomenon,” Golding asserted.

He noted that Hurricane Melissa struck Jamaica about four months after the ICJ issued a unanimous advisory judgment that states can be held liable for damages caused by climate change.

He argued that Jamaica has been a minimal emitter of the greenhouse gases that have caused global warming, “yet we are bearing the pain from the irresponsible and selfish actions of others”.

“This is fundamentally unjust and unprincipled,” he insisted, adding that, “As a major victim of the effects of climate disasters, Jamaica cannot remain docile and just passively assume a mountain of additional climate-related debt that will fetter and postpone our national development for decades to come.”