Caricom Secretary-General Edwin Carrington said disaster preparedness is critical for the Caribbean at the commissioning of a Doppler radar weather system in Trinidad and Tobago.
According to a press release the new weather monitoring mechanism was actualised through a financing agreement with the European Commission (EC) and Caribbean Forum of African Caribbean and Pacific States (Cariforum) on November 8, 2003 for a financial commitment from the European Development Fund (EDF) of 13.3 million Euros to facilitate the construction of four weather radar stations in the Cariforum region.
Carrington noted that natural disasters exacerbated the “serious challenges” Cariforum member states faced in their bid to achieve competitiveness in an era when preferences had virtually become an historical footnote and when 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,” he said. Carrington said the Regional Weather Radar Warning System was vital to the development aspirations of Cariforum as it provided early warning and monitoring of hurricanes, tropical storms and other severe weather systems that endangered life, destroyed property and infrastructure and retarded industry. All those factors, he said, adversely affected sustainable development.
Carrington said a stark example was the January 12 earthquake in Haiti which was one of the worst recorded in history, with the loss of life estimated at close to quarter million people: the combined population of Barbados, Montserrat and St Kitts and Nevis. While Doppler radar system would not have been able to forecast the Haiti quake, it served as 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.”
Like the Haiti quake, or Hurricane Ivan in 2004 in Grenada, one natural disaster can not only destroy thousands of lives and billions of dollars worth of property, it can actually wreck entire economies. It was against this backdrop that the Caricom Conference of Heads of Government hosted in July 2004, had identified inadequate risk mitigation as one of the nine “Key Building Constraints” to the development of several sectors of the regional economy, particularly agriculture.
In recognition of this fact, Carrington said the EC and Cariforum, as partners in development decided to embark on this vital regional project with the Doppler radar as one of the components. Apart from the four countries which have already benefited from the project, there were five additional weather radars in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guiana. Together, these nine Doppler Weather Radars comprise the Caribbean Basin Weather Radar Network.
Caricom said the radars were built in Germany and will provide continuous surveillance of all weather at various ranges and up to a distance of 400 kilometres (250 miles) in all directions. They 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 approaching tropical storms and hurricanes.
The radars will also be critical in informing the Caribbean public of approaching weather conditions as the technology will allow the various national meteorological services to make the weather data available to the public via the internet.
The Secretary-General noted that the estimated contribution of the radar system project to the sustainable development of Cariforum was “very significant” especially in respect of cost saving through damage prevention and reduction accruing from the system, both estimated at seven million Euros or about US$10 million per year.
Carrington noted too the Financing Agreement with the EC was testimony to the European Union’s commitment to the region’s development, for which he expressed “deep gratitude.” He acknowledged similar interventions by other international and regional organisations including the World Meteorological Organization, UNDP, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, the United States Department of Commerce and the National Hurricane Centre in Miami, Florida.