(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) The call for a repositioning of the Caribbean Meteorological Organization (CMO) was one of the dominant themes of this morning’s (1 December, 2008) opening ceremony of the 48th Session of the Caribbean Meteorological Council.
At the Liliendaal Venue in Georgetown Guyana, the Hon. Robert Persaud, Guyana’s Minister of Agriculture who also has responsibility for the meteorological and hydrological services, described as critical, the role of the Caribbean Meteorological Organisation (CMO) and the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) in providing services which he asserted were integral to the survival of the Region, especially in the areas of food security and the economic viability of Guyana and the rest of the Caribbean.
In this regard, he said, CARICOM Member States and civic society needed to work together in supporting the CMO and the CIMH in “strengthening our ties to develop mutually supportive networks in meteorology and operational hydrology.”
In addition to providing other services critical to the identification and tracking of natural disasters, the CMO and CIMH provide data necessary for appropriate prediction and response to the effects of climate change and as such, Minister Persaud declared that such services were critical to and linked to other developmental activities and urged the Council of Ministers to re-examine the role of the CMO and CIMH in light of changing and new realities.
“As we strive to address the global concerns relating to climate and the environment, we should continue to develop and adapt our approaches to the changing socio-economic conditions and the requirements to make the best use of the new scientific and technological knowledge,” the Minister said.
Dr Edward Greene, Assistant Secretary-General of the CARICOM Secretariat underscored the necessity of re-positioning the CMO to address developmental concerns in the international environment. He challenged the disaster management agencies to think of ways in which they could “exert greater influence on the planning and policy making processes at the national and regional levels thus elevating the status of their contribution at these levels.”
He urged the Meeting further to consider the delivery of public education, information and awareness programmes which could assist in addressing current attitudes of people towards natural disasters.
Mr. Tyrone Sutherland, the Co-ordinating Director of the CMO also announced the near completion of regional Radar Project with the support of the European Commission which has resulted in the construction and installation of four new digital weather radars, three of which were already installed in Barbados, Belize, Trinidad and Tobago and the other, to be installed in Guyana the end of February, 2009.
Mr. Sutherland also said that the radars would provide the network that would enable greater predictability of weather patterns and events especially at a time when there were blurred lines between the signatures of climate change and other variables.
The Honourable Ian Douglas, Dominica’s Minister of Tourism and Legal Affairs who gave the vote of thanks cited natural disasters as one of the major threats to regional development and noted that collaboration among Member States and not individual efforts was the more effective response to disaster mitigation in the Community. He thanked the CMO and CIMH for the services provided to the Community over the past decades.
