There can now be no question than that during the period immediately ahead, the Caribbean will have to ‘park’ much of what would have been its substantive agenda (and here the Caribbean Investment Forum, scheduled to be held in Guyana between July 9th and 12th comes readily to mind) since the intensity of the earliest period of the Tropical Storm ‘Beryl’, suggests that, going forward, we may well become completely preoccupied with a significantly more aggressive weather pattern.
The earliest portents suggest that an adequate response to the still unfinished rampage is almost certain to be beyond the capability of the region so that during the period ahead, the leaders of the region (at least some of them) are bound to find themselves at the forefront of seeking various forms of support which is, in the first instance, the mitigation of the worst excesses of what has, even at this relatively early stage, already assumed the proportions of a tragedy. During the period ahead, there can now be no question that the countries of the Caribbean will have to work together to quickly assess the scale of the tragedy and to script and implement a coherent response.
Natural disasters such as are likely to be manifested in ‘Beryl’s behaviour’ in the period ahead usually throw up, particularly, challenges associated with minimizing the effects of the outcomes of the events, including physical casualties, disruption to normal life and creating a meaningful life-sustaining environment. Such emergencies require the application of specific skills so that the mobilization of those skills will have to be an immediate priority.
Setting aside the health considerations that derive from such disasters there are also considerations associated with the quickest possible return to normal life. Here, and with the much-touted Regional Food Security undertaking still seemingly nowhere close to ‘kicking,’ one would expect that Guyana, particularly, would significantly throw in its lot in terms of mitigating any threatened immediate-term food security crisis.
Contextually, there is a lesson here for the region. A matter of months ago, there had been a boisterous regional lobby for a collective effort to create an infrastructure for the pursuit of an ambitious regional food security undertaking. The objective of this undertaking was, we were told, the strengthening of the Caribbean’s food security bona fides. What appears to have been, over several months, difficulties associated with taking this process forward has been attended by a decided information void regarding just where we are going insofar as shoring up the Caribbean’s food security bona fides are concerned.
Regional Heads and their ‘helpers’ having, over a protracted period studiously avoided providing responses to what was and remains a critical question, have now gone sufficiently silent on the matter to cause us to believe that it never existed, in the first place. Here again, we are witnessing an expression of the customary ’jaw-jaw’ culture in which we, as a region, like to talk a lot but, all too frequently, in the final analysis, to really say nothing.
The earliest portents point to a likely weather rampage that will persist in the coming days, leaving the victims across the region, immersed in the crisis and desperately in need of support-related responses, much of which the region, on its own, is almost certainly not in a position to provide. The problem here is that while natural disasters like tropical storms can hardly be avoided, the people of the region need to be continuously assured that its political leaders remain focused on initiatives designed to, at least, mitigate the worst excesses of these natural disasters.
