Caribbean Region Warned to Stress on Disaster Planning
Caribbean Region Warned to Stress on Disaster Planning
Tourism-dependent nations in the Caribbean have been called on to examine better ways of planning for disasters in the region.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Shelly Carrington, made the call at the launch of a National Stakeholders Meeting and Regional Monitoring and Evaluation System for Disaster Risk Management and Climate Change Adaptation in the Caribbean Tourism Sector.
Conceptualized by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, the US$750,000 project targets some 10 Caribbean islands.
Speaking on behalf of Tourism Minister Richard Sealy, Ms. Carrington told the stakeholders gathered that multi-hazard disaster management considerations must be integrated within the strategic planning process for the tourism sector. She said this was imperative, since Barbados depended heavily on tourism to generate revenue.
Furthermore, Ms Carrington explained that the role of the Ministry of Tourism was to coordinate the preparedness, management and recovery of Barbados’ tourism sector in the event of a disaster.
However, in spite of many successes with respect to disaster risk management, Ms. Carrington mentioned that there were a number of challenges, including limited access to funding; inadequate information sharing between agencies, locally and regionally; reinforcement and buy-in from stakeholders who sometimes become complacent; and insufficient human resource personnel.
The system aims to build a monitoring and evaluation system that will measure the performance of stakeholder nations in building resilience to natural hazards and adapting to climate change in the Caribbean tourism sector.
It will track the success of these measures and determine whether the intended impact is achieved.
Participating countries are Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, The Bahamas, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, St. Lucia, Anguilla, the Turks and Caicos Islands and the British Virgin islands.
