After Hurricane Irma destroyed 90% of homes on the Caribbean island of Barbuda in 2017, the government — faced with a second storm bearing down — evacuated all 1,600 residents to the nation's larger island, Antigua.
"What if Hurricane Irma had shifted some miles south and hit both islands?" pondered Prime Minister Gaston Browne in a speech to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, during a discussion on rising security risks linked to climate change.
As a warming world brings growing threats to lives and stability in vulnerable island states, "what international plan and system would my country have recourse to, in the aftermath of such an attack to our peace and security?" he asked.