Building resilience now critical to Caribbean’s climate future

As cli­mate change in­ten­si­fies storms, flood­ing, droughts and coastal ero­sion across the Caribbean, re­gion­al lead­ers are call­ing for a fun­da­men­tal shift in how coun­tries pre­pare for dis­as­ters, from re­act­ing to crises to build­ing re­silience be­fore they oc­cur.

That call echoed through­out the open­ing day of the Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment Con­fer­ence 2026 (TTDRM2026) at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port of Spain, where pol­i­cy­mak­ers, emer­gency man­agers, de­vel­op­ment agen­cies and pri­vate-sec­tor lead­ers gath­ered to ex­plore how Caribbean na­tions can bet­ter with­stand and re­cov­er from grow­ing cli­mate and dis­as­ter risks.

Held un­der the theme “Re­silience 360: Bridg­ing Knowl­edge and Ac­tion,” the three-day con­fer­ence, which con­cludes on Wednes­day, is ex­am­in­ing a range of is­sues in­clud­ing re­silient in­fra­struc­ture, cli­mate adap­ta­tion, dis­as­ter risk fi­nanc­ing, ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems, busi­ness con­ti­nu­ity, com­mu­ni­ty pre­pared­ness and the role of tech­nol­o­gy in strength­en­ing na­tion­al re­silience.

Con­fer­ence chair and TTDRM Man­ag­ing Di­rec­tor Stacey-Ann Pi-Oso­ria said re­silience must be­come a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty for coun­tries fac­ing in­creas­ing cli­mate un­cer­tain­ty.

“TTDRM2026 and its theme, un­der­scores the ur­gency of build­ing na­tion­al re­silience in a world where cli­mate shocks threat­en small is­land states and their eco­nom­ic ex­is­tence,” she said.

Pi-Oso­ria said re­silience re­quires a broad­er un­der­stand­ing of risk, recog­nis­ing that dis­as­ters do not af­fect sec­tors in iso­la­tion but can dis­rupt economies, health­care sys­tems, trans­porta­tion net­works, tourism and food se­cu­ri­ty si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

She al­so high­light­ed the eco­nom­ic val­ue of in­vest­ing in pre­pared­ness.

“In dis­as­ter risk man­age­ment, this means that for every US dol­lar spent on mit­i­ga­tion and pre­pared­ness, it saves US$10 in fu­ture re­sponse and re­cov­ery costs,” she said.

From the per­spec­tive of in­fra­struc­ture, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John said re­silience must move be­yond strat­e­gy doc­u­ments and be­come vis­i­ble in the sys­tems com­mu­ni­ties de­pend on every day.

“Re­silience can­not re­main in pol­i­cy pa­pers, tech­ni­cal re­ports or aca­d­e­m­ic dis­cus­sions,” John said. “It must be trans­lat­ed in­to roads that re­main pass­able dur­ing floods, bridges that con­tin­ue to car­ry com­mu­ni­ties through ex­treme events, drainage sys­tems that are main­tained be­fore dis­as­ter strikes and coastal works that pro­tect rather than dis­place risk.”

She said re­silience al­so be­gins with in­di­vid­ual re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, point­ing to poor waste dis­pos­al and il­le­gal dump­ing prac­tices that con­tin­ue to wors­en flood­ing through­out the coun­try.

“These are the prac­ti­cal things,” she said. “Re­silience is not on­ly about big in­fra­struc­ture and big words. It’s about the lit­tle things we do, or re­frain from do­ing, that help us mit­i­gate against dis­as­ter.”

For Dr Ar­lene Laing, Co­or­di­nat­ing Di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion (CMO), re­silience de­pends heav­i­ly on how well peo­ple un­der­stand and re­spond to risk in­for­ma­tion.

“The goal of a warn­ing is not just trans­mis­sion. The goal of a warn­ing is be­hav­iour­al change,” she said.

Dr Laing out­lined the grow­ing role of im­pact-based fore­cast­ing in the Caribbean, ex­plain­ing that mod­ern warn­ing sys­tems are de­signed not on­ly to pre­dict weath­er con­di­tions but al­so to com­mu­ni­cate what those con­di­tions mean for com­mu­ni­ties, in­fra­struc­ture and es­sen­tial ser­vices.

“It shifts the fo­cus from ask­ing what weath­er will oc­cur to ask­ing, what will this weath­er do?”

She iden­ti­fied stronger me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices, clear­er pub­lic com­mu­ni­ca­tion, greater col­lab­o­ra­tion among agen­cies and im­proved pub­lic re­sponse to warn­ings as crit­i­cal com­po­nents of re­gion­al re­silience-build­ing.

As dis­cus­sions con­tin­ue over the next two days, del­e­gates will ex­plore how gov­ern­ments, busi­ness­es and com­mu­ni­ties can work to­geth­er to strength­en re­silience in the face of in­creas­ing­ly com­plex cli­mate and dis­as­ter risks.

The over­rid­ing mes­sage: re­silience is no longer sim­ply about re­cov­er­ing af­ter a dis­as­ter. It is about build­ing sys­tems, in­sti­tu­tions and com­mu­ni­ties that can an­tic­i­pate, with­stand and adapt to the chal­lenges ahead.