Post-volcano development at Port Little Bay in Montserrat. (Photo by Franklyn Michael) Continued from previous page This issue of our newsletter again brings to the fore the importance of Resilience in the face of our region’s enduring vulnerability to natural hazards in both the long- and short-term – windstorms, hurricanes, floods, rainstorms, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, drought and Climate Change. This is why we continue to focus on the need for Resilience: “Since 1950, the region has been hit on average, by seven disasters per year that have killed hundreds of thousands of people and affected millions more. Annual damage in the Caribbean accounts for 40 per cent of global damage. Caribbean small states have suffered more damage at greater frequency than both other small and larger states. Climate change is expected to exacerbate these effects by increasing the frequency and severity of natural disasters, affecting the livelihood of the populations, and harming the essential assets their insufficiently diversified economies rely on.” Source: Dr. Asha Kambon – Consultant, Disaster Risk Reduction It is critical that our policy-makers, planners, and academics put our vulnerability at the core of our development thrust. The lessons of our vulnerability are stark. Montserrat 25 years after the eruption of the Soufriere Hills volcano in infrastructural terms is a shadow of its pre-volcano state – airport, port, electricity and hospital. The population is still only 50% of what it was in 1995. Dominica continues to recover well but it lost several thousand residents after recent storms and hurricanes. Will they return to Dominica to live before retirement age? Recovery is not only expensive it takes a long time if Preparedness and Mitigation are weak and sporadic. We need to break the cycle of “interrupted development” in the Caribbean region by making our infrastructure and utilities more structurally resilient, educating our people better to deal with hazards, using higher construction standards for houses, better use of physical planning while broadening our economic bases. It is understood that the path to Sustainable Development might not be a straight line but we in the region are following an unsustainable zigzag path. CARICAD is committed to playing our role to smoothen and straighten out the roadway to Resilience and Sustainable Development. We pledge to continue our efforts. 3
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