Noreen Nunez lives in a middle-class neighborhood that rises up a hillside in Trinidad’s Tunapuna-Piarco region.

Accessed by a long, winding road bordered by trees, the houses, built in the 1970s and 1980s, are mainly painted in pastel shades. Dotted among fruit trees in their sizeable backyards are huge water tanks, mounted on concrete slabs.

The tanks are evidence that even this affluent community is not insulated from the water-stress experienced across the Caribbean.

Residents fill the tanks from the main pipes to use during scheduled outages by the water authority. But the supply is often unreliable and further impacted by low pressure for those living further up the hill.

Nunez says outages have become a regular occurrence, with water often shut off for all but a few hours during the night.

“Most of the time you have to buy food from outside or have food catered and buy bottles of water to drink,” she said. “You use disposable dishes.”

A neighbor of Noreen Nunez stands next to her water tanks, which have become a vital necessity for dealing with water shortages

Patchy infrastructure and leaky pipes

Antigua and Barbuda, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and St. Kitts and Nevis are all classed as water scarce, which the UN defines as countries with less than 1000 cubic meters per capita of renewable water resources a year.

Barbados’ situation, with only 350 cubic meters per capita, is especially grave, according to Keithroy Halliday, general manager of the Barbados Water Authority.

While most people outside of rural mountainous areas in the Caribbean are connected to the public water supply, they frequently face outdated infrastructure in need of repair, resulting in major losses of drinking water.

Alan Poon King, head of Trinidad and Tobago’s Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA), says the utility loses as much as 60 million gallons of water each day from leaking infrastructure — and that much again is wasted by problems like leaking taps on private properties.

Climate change has increased drought which is exacerbating water problems on the islands

The picture is similar in Jamaica, which Peter Clarke, managing director of the country’s Water Resources Authority, says suffers from “a serious loss of water that has been produced and is supposed to be delivered, but it is not reaching the end user because of the aging infrastructure — it’s leaky, it’s perforated.”

Climate change increases pressure

If these structural problems are left unaddressed, things are only likely to deteriorate as the planet heats up.

“There are many other problems that are facing the water sector in the Caribbean and climate change is exacerbating those existing, underlying conditions,” said Adrian Cashman, who sits on the global technical advisory committee for the Global Water Partnership.

Officials say drought conditions across the region over the past couple of years mean there just hasn’t been enough rain to replenish aquifers at the usual rate.

“This past summer [in Jamaica] we went through a significant drought,” said Clarke. “It really was challenging for the water supply providers.”

In Trinidad and Tobago, Poon King said it was difficult to quantify the impacts of climate change, but that it was an ongoing challenge: “We’ve seen reduced precipitation that could be anywhere in the range of 10-20% in the dry season.”

Last year Puerto Rico experienced water rationing following a drought

Halliday said climate change has already “significantly impacted” Barbados’ water supply, too. All of Barbados’ internal renewable water resources come from rainfall, he explained, and in 2019 the country saw its lowest recorded levels since 1947.

Climate finance and water-wise living

The Caribbean region enjoys relatively high standards of living, with most countries defined by the UN as “upper-middle income.” This excludes them from much international development funding. At the same time, high levels of public debt combined with their vulnerability to climate change makes it difficult to secure investment in infrastructure.

However, one of the region’s first major water projects financed by the Green Climate Fund (GCF), which was set up to help developing countries cope with the changing climate, is currently underway in Grenada.

Water – a scarce resource

Project head Hans-Werner Theisen says about half of the €45 million the GCF has allocated to the project will be spent improving infrastructure like water tanks, reservoirs and pipes. There will also be financial incentives to cut water waste from sectors like agriculture and tourism, which are among the biggest consumers of water.

Encouraging the public to use water more carefully is key to the project in Grenada, too. “What I think is very important is that everyone, every citizen, can contribute to water-saving measures, so we have to be water-wise in day-to-day living,” Theisen said.

Elsewhere, Barbados has passed laws prohibiting the use of potable water for washing cars, gardening, filling swimming pools and similar activities. As in Jamaica, people are encouraged to use wastewater for such activities.

Water, water everywhere…

Barbados and Jamaica encourage residents to be very careful with their water use

Despite day-to-day water outages, a 2017 UN Water report showed most people in the Caribbean have access to a safe — if irregular — water supply.

But in Trinidad, Nunez is infuriated living on an island with 360-views of the turquoise waters and nothing coming out of the tap.

“Water and air are things that humans need to live,” she added. “I can’t understand how on an island surrounded by water, they can’t find some way of using — desalinating — the water.”

According to 2019 figures, the region gets some 12% of its water supply from desalination. Poon King said in Trinidad and Tobago that figure is 20% but expanding this is problematic due to high energy costs.

For Nunez, water shortages are out of step with her country’s development status. Trinidad and Tobago have profited from its oil reserves. Yet despite its high income, it struggles to adequately supply this most basic of necessities.

“There are glass buildings and universities and huge international airports and everything like this, but there is no water,” she said. “We’ve got the latest architectural structures and homes and houses, but it seems like indoor sanitary ware and kitchens are just for show.”

• 
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A third night of rioting has shaken the Netherlands as protesters rampaged through towns and cities around the country after government introduced a night-time curfew.

About 150 people were arrested on Monday in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, where shops were vandalised and looted, and the mayor, Ahmed Aboutaleb, issued an emergency decree giving police broader powers of arrest.

“These people are shameless thieves, I cannot say otherwise,” he said. “I had to threaten them with the use of teargas – a far-reaching measure. I find that sad, because I have never had to do that in my entire career as mayor.”

But trouble also flared in smaller centres around the country such as Den Bosch, Zwolle, Amersfoort, Alkmaar, Hoorn, Gouda – where several cars were set on fire – and Haarlem, where police were attacked with stones.

Officials said the rioters, who reportedly used social media apps to organise, were overwhelmingly teenagers, and questioned the extent to which they were motivated by opposition to the 9pm curfew, which came into force on Saturday.

“This is serious disturbance of public order,” said the mayor of Haarlem, Jos Wienen. “The measures are tough for everyone, we all want to be free to move. But that does not entitle anyone to start fires, let off fireworks and commit vandalism.”

The prime minister condemned the weekend riots in which anti-lockdown protesters attacked police and set cars on fire. “What motivated these people has nothing to do with protest; this is criminal violence,” Mark Rutte said.

Police said 300 people were detained on Saturday and Sunday after youths threw rocks and in one case knives at officers, attacked a hospital and burned down a Covid testing station. More than 5,700 fines were issued for breaking the curfew.

Bars and restaurants have been shut in the Netherlands since October, with schools and non-essential shops following suit in mid-December. Infection numbers are falling but authorities fear the possible faster spread of the UK variant of the virus.

Rutte’s government is acting in a caretaker capacity before the election, scheduled for 17 March, after resigning last week over a child benefit scandal.

Koen Simmers, the head of the national police union, told Dutch television officers were prepared should the rioting continue. “I hope it was a one-off but I’m afraid it could be a harbinger for the days and weeks to come,” he said.

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Lionel Johnson, 47, lights a cigarette while sitting outside the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation temporary night shelter on Church Street. Deported from New York almost two decades ago, Johnson said he has no relatives here in Jamaica. He said he was shocked to hear about the brutal attacks on the homeless that left four dead and two injured.

The cold, haunting streets of Kingston were frozen with fear on Monday night as the capital’s nomads snuggled in corners or retreated to shelters in the aftermath of the grisly murders of four homeless men and the wounding of two others.

The macabre scenes spanned an arc of 9.5km (6.0 miles), stretching from the shopping strip of Half-Way Tree to downtown and further west near Bumper Hall.

Kingston Mayor Delroy Williams called the incidents a “stain” on the nation – a contrast to what he viewed as improving relations between the public and the homeless population.

While attacks, even deadly ones, on homeless persons occur occasionally, Jamaicans awoke to a scale of carnage to the city’s vulnerable as infamous as it was horrific.

The police said their probe into what appeared to be coordinated attacks was ongoing as they pursued several leads. Some of downtown’s homeless who spoke to journalists believe that one of their own might have been responsible for the bloodbath.

The investigations might also delve into questions of whether the savagery was the work of a serial killer. It is uncertain whether the acts were committed by a single person.

Barrington Hall bemoaned the murder of his soulmate and friend ‘Soljie’, one of the four men killed in the streets between Sunday night and Monday morning. Soljie met his demise on the outskirts of the civil and tax division of the Kingston and St Andrew Parish Court – chilling irony of the injustice that befell him.

Hall, who has been homeless for years and regularly hangs out with Soljie, mused that he might have suffered a similarly bloody fate if he had slept near his pal on Sutton Street as usual.

“Dem say me miss it. I sleep out here. Me and she, too,” Hall told The Gleaner, referencing a nearby homeless woman.

“We talk about woman and thing and we smoke, enuh … . Sometimes I beg him a draw or I buy my own and ting, yuh know. Otherwise he was just a friend.”

Two deceased were found on Hanover Street in the Kingston Central Police Division and a fourth in Kingston West in the vicinity of the Mother White Bridge.

The injured men were found at a Constant Spring Road plaza and on Derrymore Road in the St Andrew Central Police Division.

A resident of central Kingston who lives in the area where the downtown murders occurred told The Gleaner on Monday that the attacks were an indictment on the State and the people of Jamaica. He was seen busily covering bloodstains with sawdust.

“Homeless people are being murdered on the streets and not being protected by the citizens and the State, especially in COVID time.

“If they were allowing people on the street over time, maybe somebody would see the act and try and stop it,” the man, who requested anonymity, said, hinting at the nightly islandwide curfews that run from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m.

Another resident, Marlon Carter, was more concerned about the attacker and the motive.

He theorised that the modus operandi was consistent with the threats issued by a mentally ill man who roamed central Kingston.

“He was here before, but him come back about two weeks now. Every madman afraid of him. He is insane and threatens people before him attack,” he said.

The police could not confirm whether that person was a suspect.

Security personnel at the Poor Relief Department in Kingston indicated that arrangements were being made to accommodate as many homeless persons as possible overnight.

There are an estimated 2,000 homeless people in Jamaica, around 700 of them in Greater Kingston. The capital’s downtown region accounts for about 500 of them.

Lionel Johnson was among a few lonely souls who battled the chill on a Kingston sidewalk Monday night.

The 47-year-old deportee from the United States has no family and was fearful of what the night held for him on Church Street.

Earlier on Monday, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development Desmond McKenzie also condemned the attacks.

“While these are clearly horrific and criminal acts, I am left to wonder if this is the outcome of an outburst of madness. It challenges me to do even more for our homeless population,” McKenzie said in a statement.

Opposition Leader and PNP President Mark Golding called for immediate action to be taken by the Government in response to the killings.

“This morning’s (Monday’s) incidents are further evidence of the severity of the crisis of violence in our nation, where Jamaica has become a place in which our most vulnerable and defenceless can be so heartlessly attacked and murdered in our capital,” Golding said.

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The president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, has called on wealthy countries to stop hoarding excess Covid-19 vaccines, as he said the world needed to act together to fight the pandemic.

Ramaphosa, who currently chairs the African Union, said African countries wanted access to vaccines as quickly as other nations.

South Africa’s Covid outbreak is the worst in Africa, with 1,417,537 cases confirmed since the start of the pandemic, and 41,117.

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