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Honourable Mustapha Abdul-Hamid, Minister of Public Utilities of Trinidad and Tobago
Ms Kathrin Renner, Acting Chargé d’Affaires, European Union Delegation, Trinidad and Tobago Mr. Tyrone Sutherland, Coordinating Director, Caribbean Meteorological Organisation Madam Permanent Secretary and Deputy Permanent Secretary Mr. Emmanuel Moolchan, Director, Meteorological Services Division, Ministry of Public Utilities Other Senior Officials Distinguished Guests Representatives of the Media Ladies and Gentlemen As Secretary-General of CARIFORUM, the Caribbean Forum of African Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) States, it is my pleasure to be here in Brasso Venado for the commissioning of this weather radar system for Trinidad and Tobago. I must admit that this is my first visit to this part of my homeland. Mr. Chairman, last October I had the privilege of delivering an address at the commissioning of a similar weather radar system in Guyana. In that address, I alluded to the many challenges posed to the Region by natural disasters. Then I was referring in particular, to those disasters which could be monitored by the weather radar systems. On January 12 this year, however, our Caribbean sister nation of Haiti suffered one of the worst natural disasters in history with loss of life estimated at close to quarter million people, that is more than the combined populations of Barbados, Montserrat and St. Kitts and Nevis. Though that January 12 Haitian catastrophe could not have been forecast by the Doppler Radar, it was however, a powerful reminder that disaster is a constant companion to all and sundry in our part of the world. This situation becomes more pronounced as we increasingly encounter the effects of the phenomenon of climate change. This situation was one of the compelling factors on my mind when on 8 November 2003, on behalf of CARIFORUM, I signed a Financing Agreement with the European Commission. That Agreement gave effect to a financial commitment from the European Development Fund (EDF) of 13.2 million Euros (about 18.5 million US Dollars) for the construction of four weather radar stations in the CARIFORUM Region. The other weather radar stations provided for under the Financing Agreement are located in Barbados, Belize, and Guyana. The Regional Weather Radar Warning System, as the project was officially titled, was recognized as vital to the development aspirations of CARIFORUM. Such regional weather radar networks provide early warning and monitoring of hurricanes, tropical storms, and other severe weather systems, that endanger life, destroy property and infrastructure, retard industry, and generally adversely affect sustainable development. Indeed, some eight months after my signing of that Financing Agreement, the Twenty-Fifth Meeting of the CARICOM Conference of Heads of Government which took place in July 2004, identified inadequate risk mitigation as one of the nine “Key Binding Constraints” to the development of several sectors of the regional economy, particularly, agriculture. Ladies and Gentlemen, as we are all aware, the CARIFORUM Member States face serious challenges in their bid to achieve competitiveness in their search for a niche in the global market place. This is particularly important in an era when preferences have become virtually an historical footnote and when the new trading arrangements between developed and developing nations generally pay little or no heed to asymmetry. It is therefore imperative that economic competitiveness becomes the underlying principle of all industrial and business activity in our Region. In striving towards that competitiveness, due attention must be paid to disaster preparedness and mitigation mechanisms. For, as has been the case of the January 12 earthquake in Haiti, or the 2004 Hurricane Ivan in Grenada, one natural disaster can not only destroy thousands of lives and billions of dollars worth of property, but can actually wreck entire economies as well. In recognition of this fact, the European Commission and CARIFORUM, as partners in development, decided to embark upon this vital regional project with the Trinidad and Tobago Doppler Weather Radar as one of the components. Apart from the four in this project, there are five additional weather radars, one each in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana. Together, these nine Doppler Weather Radars comprise the Caribbean Basin Weather Radar Network. These powerful radars, built in Germany, will provide continuous surveillance of all weather at various ranges and up to a distance of 400 kilometers (250 miles) in all directions. The new radars will enable weather forecasters to study and monitor weather systems in the Region as they develop, thereby allowing Meteorologists to transmit more accurate and timely information of the type, intensity and location of severe weather, including for us especially, approaching tropical storms and hurricanes. The technological principle will be that the various national meteorological services will make the weather data available to the public via the Internet. In other words, the Caribbean public and others will be able to see for themselves, approaching weather conditions on the radars. The estimated contribution of this Regional Weather Radar Warning System Project to the sustainable development of CARIFORUM is very significant. Specifically, cost savings in terms of damage prevention and reduction accruing from the new weather radar system, are estimated at 7 million Euros (or about 10 million United States Dollars) per year. Mr. Chairman, the signing of that Financing Agreement with the European Commission was further testimony to the European Union’s continued generous engagement with the Caribbean Region. In this regard, I wish to take this opportunity on behalf of the Member States of CARIFORUM, to acknowledge with deep gratitude this significant contribution by the European Union to the development of our Region. I also wish to express our appreciation for the interventions made by a number of international and regional organisations that have all served to make this regional endeavour a success. These include the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the United States Department of Commerce and the National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida. The Caribbean Meteorological Organisation (CMO) and the Disaster Reduction and Recovery Unit of the United Nations Development Programme regional office in the Caribbean, have also collaborated on another project directly linked to the Doppler Weather Radar project. That Project, I have been informed, will make available the radar images provided by this new network to natural disaster preparedness organisations and agencies in the Caribbean. Permit me, in closing to pledge CARIFORUM’s unstinting collaboration and cooperation with the work of this facility in Trinidad and Tobago, as indeed to all the others comprising the Caribbean Regional Weather Radar Warning System. I thank you. |
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