BELEM, Brazil — Jamaica spent years building a pot of money to handle climate-fuelled disasters. It turned out to be enough to cover just 5% of the cost wrought by one storm. Hurricane Melissa has left the island nation with bills totalling $10 billion — only $500 million of which it can cover with climate-preparation reserves stockpiled to deal with disasters, Jamaican cabinet minister Matthew Samuda told Reuters. Jamaica is asking wealthy countries at the COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, to urgently offer grants, investment and concessional finance. What it does not want are commercial-rate loans that saddle the country with more debt as it faces a future expected to deliver increasingly severe climate impacts such as heatwaves, droughts, rising seas and catastrophic storms. “We do

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