A multi-agency approach is needed to help Barbados and other Caribbean states prepare and recover from an environmental disaster, says Prime Minister Mia Mottley.
Delivering remarks at the 12th Caribbean Conference on Comprehensive Disaster Management, which was held in hybrid mode at the Savannah Beach Resort, Hastings, Christ Church on Wednesday, she said governments and regional disaster emergency bodies needed help to provide the best defence and take action immediately after a disaster hits.
“Our ability to plan and adapt, to develop resilience, to mitigate is greater than it has ever been and we have simply to rise to the challenge,” she said.
Referencing Cuba’s disaster response mechanisms, Mottley said that at the core of successful disaster response “is the ability to decentralise and to ensure that units and its smallest number of people holding a unit can all carry weight all at the same time”.
“You may well think that my continued reference to many hands make light work was really crafted for this conversation but it is, in fact, true. Because more often than not in a disaster, communication is not available. More often than not, transport is not readily available. More often than not, access to key supplies and commodities is at risk and therefore the ability to have the smallest possible units capable of functioning on their own for at least the first four to five days is absolutely critical.
“We have known that but yet how many of us as countries have put it in place? And that is why since coming into office, we’ve insisted that the District Emergency Organisations must function and it is in the collection and collation of data – who needs what medication, who needs what access to ABC, or what are the priorities for persons with access to power in a community.
“The granularity of data at a time when we have more capacity to process data than ever before matters . . . I ask each of us, not just governmental representatives and NGOs and international organisations, how much more persuasion do you need to be ready for any eventualities? . . . I ask those of you who are here, first and foremost, to remember that just as all politics is local, all success for disaster response is local. And if we can’t control the smallest units and protect people in those units then we are likely not to be able to shield the most vulnerable from the worst effects of a disaster.”
The Prime Minister added that what was happening around the globe today as it relates to climate change resembled a science fiction movie.
“We must recondition our minds and our ability to act in a purposeful way to deal with what perhaps is an unusual moment because we are in a polycrisis moment. Not only is the climate at risk, but biodiversity as we all know is equally at risk with almost a million plants and insects due possibly to face some level of threat, if not extinction, which then places at the centre of the discussion food security and the ability of humans to sustain themselves….
“We are at a unique moment. If you didn’t know better, you would swear that you were in a sci-fi movie,” she said. (SZB)
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