Executive Director for the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) Ronald Jackson has rapped the region’s response to climate change.
Highlighting that it was critical to take climate change seriously, he stressed that it was also necessary to look at the phenomenon from all angles, including the islands’ level of readiness to respond to its impacts.
“I am particularly peeved that the focus on climate change has largely been heavy on clean technology energy efficiency, which is important because that is also going to be a major game-changer for our economies, but we have not seen a requisite focus on the areas of preparedness for response,” he said.
Noting that no investment that the region makes in reducing emissions was going to save it from the impact of climate change due to it not being a major emitter, he said that it was vital to look at the related effects such as increases in vector related issues like mosquito borne illnesses and more weather related issues including floods and droughts and put systems in place to address these.
“But we are not investing in the ability to cope with these expected scenarios, we are not increasing the capacities of our first responder core such as our firefighters, (or) our health services,” a frank Jackson asserted.
Admitting that Caribbean states were suffering from financial constraints at this time, he nevertheless said that more could be done as individual states and as a region to prepare for such occurrences.
He also took a similar stance regarding the general level of preparation for emergency situations at the national level, insisting that “the area of preparing for response has not been one that has benefitted from significant investment of resources, either nationally or in the broader program in the region.”
“This is one of the reasons that CDEMA has actually positioned preparedness and response as one of its major priority programs that it would be seeking to have resourced to ratchet up the level of preparedness in our member states,” he noted.
At the time, he was addressing a media briefing at CDEMA’s Lower Estate offices. (JMB)
