The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Response Agency (CDERA) urged delegates at the 18th Meeting of the Councils to use their resources to prepare a national disaster response as the region combats climate change and the H1N1 flu pandemic.
A Government Information Agency (GINA) press release said the heads of state of Caribbean countries including Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize and the Commonwealth of Dominica met to re-affirm their commitment to principles of hazard sensitive development, rationalized programming, effective resource utilization and the development of strong national capacity for disaster risk reduction. The discussions sought to address complaints of disaster management as a guiding strategy and spheres of disasters such as climate change and the swine flu pandemic.
Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon told participants at the opening session that they need to demonstrate more commitment and to “use the opportunity to familiarize themselves and make contributions to join in building around the strategy of avoided deforestation and its contribution towards the phenomenon.” Luncheon said Caribbean countries are not the only ones challenged by the communicable disease pandemic and as such members should use the same time, mechanisms and resources that would be used for their countries’ national disaster response to address health issues of such magnitude and duration.
The HPS also said 2009 would continue to be a year of challenges and countries have shown the capacity to cope with several of them. Meanwhile, CDERA Coordinator Jeremy Collymore said small-island states are seen to be particularly vulnerable to the consequences of climate change. “In particular the forecast increase in the number of severe systems, the change in the nature of their special distribution and the cascading nature of the events emphasize the importance of developing for disaster risk reduction as a ‘no regrets approach’ to climate risk management,” Collymore said.
