The news emanating from across a wide swathe of the Caribbean, not least member countries of the Caribbean Community, point unerringly to the likelihood of an aggressive hurricane season that promises to inflict a generous measure of disruption – and in some instances, likely, worse – in the period ahead. The Caribbean has now become more than sufficiently familiar of natural disasters and the extent to which it leaves us wide open to all of its various destructive and destabilizing consequences to be acutely aware of the testing period that could lie ahead. The most pointed indicator of the likely impact of the threatened period of challenging weather and the socio-economic havoc that it could wreak across the region is reflected in what we are being told is the decision to postpone this year’s 47th Regular Meeting of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) which was scheduled to get underway in Grenada tomorrow.
The decision to set aside the meeting of CARICOM Heads would appear to have derived from an assessment of the likely impact of the hurricane season on those member countries where weather-related devastation usually delivers its own acutely destabilizing demons. Here it should be noted that Grenada has had to endure previous ‘doses’ of hurricane-related devastation, its horrific experiences of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Emily in the following year leaving the small island state devastated. How long the current hurricane season will last and the likely extent of the socio-economic destruction that it will leave behind are both ‘unknown quantities,’ even though an analysis of recent weather patterns in the region gives reason to believe that this particular intervention could test the Caribbean to the core. The timing, in itself, could result in a more destabilizing level of destruction and dislocation than might have been the case had most of the countries been better prepared for what, in terms of bad weather, this hurricane season might bring. Prevailing socio-economic circumstances in those countries militate against effective protection. This year, some aspects of the customary physical impact of the hurricane season may well afflict much of the region more severely than had been the case in previous years.
Here it should be noted that the timing of the hurricane season comes at a juncture that coincides with the regional undertaking to reduce its extra-regional food importation by 2025. Incessant rains and the attendant devastation of farms is likely to have a knock-on effect on the region’s immediate-term food security ambitions which, even without the intervention of the hurricane season, has been dripping with imponderables. Here, what up until now has been the pointed underperformance in the realization of deliverables by the region’s ‘lead’ food security territories cannot be altogether overlooked. Indeed, it can hardly be denied that up to this time there has not been a single genuinely persuasive uplifting report on just where we are going with our regional food security plan. The long-awaited report on the pace of progress in the matter of the creation of the Regional Food Terminal sticks out like an infected thumb
It now seems clear that the countries in the region that are most vulnerable to the ravages of the likely ugly weather in the period ahead will require a generous measure of support from an international community that is already weighed down with commitments in other parts of the world where crises of one kind or another (including climate-related ones) have given rise to the need for external aid-related intervention. Some of those crises far exceed the challenge which the Caribbean now faces. The alarm that is being sounded about the hurricane season and its portents comes a matter of days prior to the start of the July 10-12, 2024 Caribbean Investment Forum (CIF 2024) an event which, at this juncture, could have critical implications for the economies of the region, but which may now, itself, be threatened with postponement. What may lie immediately ahead for much of the region is reflected in a warning, a week ago, from the United States Hurricane Center of likely worse to come regarding the likely impact of Hurricane Beryl, attended by a warning to residents to seek shelter “ahead of powerful winds and swells”. The imponderables, going forward are both numerous and demanding.
