opinion

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The Greater Caribbean This Week

Made in Japan: commitments
for disaster reduction
by Luis Carpio

Thomas Hardy

It had been some time since the worst winds had died down and the rain, which only hours ago had pelted A’s house in a relentless cannonade, had resigned itself to beating an on-again-off-again tattoo upon the tin roof of the old family home. The hurricane, already on its way to the next island, never looked back to gloat over the destruction it had visited upon the works of Man. It, after all, was just a piece of weather and neither knew nor cared who was in its path. God, neither Trini nor Venezuelan, neither Dutch nor French-speaking, kept to His inscrutable business and left us to our own self-important plans, keeping His promise not to micromanage (see: New Testament).

In a strange twist, A’s old family home, bought for a song so many years ago because it was so far from the river and the terraced hills where most planting was done, had escaped the worst of the flooding and mudslides, becoming an impromptu refuge and triage center after the local hospital was damaged and overwhelmed in its capacity to minister to those injured during the worse of the weather and those unwise enough to venture outside against official advice immediately before and afterward. Sadly, as is often the case, these well-meaning souls had left the relative security of their dwellings in order to help neighbors or seek out family members.

Ironically, the hospital, finished only eight months prior and to the highest international standards, was the showcase of the new National Building Code for Earthquake Resistance passed through the legislative process by a government that had ridden to power on a national development / law and order / safety and security platform.

In fairness, no one judged the government too harshly for this early false start and there continued to be international and national recognition of its efforts to create and empower a National Platform for Disaster Reduction as recommended in the UN’s Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), adopted by our governments in Japan in 2005. The construction of the new stadium and sports complex, in fact, was an example of multisectorial consultation and cooperation, which brought on board a wide range of planning, environmental, financial, educational, sports and other authorities and community stakeholders.

The new platform’s ability to enlist champions to its cause was also generally lauded, particularly due to its success in getting the private sector to stop griping and get on board by appealing (of all things) to their profit motive. The fact that the international donors to the project insisted on this approach didn’t hurt either.

The hurricane’s lessons had not been lost upon A and had added real-life experience to the curriculum which she hoped to complete soon. Upon graduation as the first-ever disaster reduction specialists in the nation, A and her class would be immediately deployed at the national and community level in order to put their new knowledge and the available technology to use in reducing disaster risk, including by preparing an adequate response.

This would become increasingly important in A’s community, given the near-certainty that coastal-dwellers, pushed inland by rising sea levels, would exert ever-growing demands on already strained resources.

I bring you this bittersweet and apocryphal tale of qualified successes and failures because, as straightforward as some of these things may look on paper, it is a fact that few, if any, developing countries can pull them off on their own.

International and (crucially) regional cooperation will be a determining factor in the Greater Caribbean’s ability to meet the Hyogo commitments and the members of the Association of Caribbean States can be proud of their initiative to hold their first ever High-Level Conference on Disaster Reduction which will take place in Haiti on 14th, 15th and 16th November.

It has been said that the difference between optimism and hope lies in that, while the former is the belief that things will turn out as you wish, the latter is the conviction that something is worth fighting for regardless of the consequences. We should similarly soon come to accept that the lightning rod on the church steeple, far from a sign of flagging faith, is a testament to our free will and a symbol of our hope.

Luis Carpio is the Director of Transport and Natural Disasters of the Association of Caribbean States. The opinions expressed are not necessarily the official views of the ACS. Comments and reactions can be sent to mail@acs-aec.org

Also in this section:

Bernal, Panama and China
Falun Gong, Should the world boycott the Beijing Olympics?
Leis, The privatization of air
Carpio, Disaster reduction: made in Japan
James, Disaster relief in the Caribbean Basin
Pilgrim, Don't roll the dice on decent values and their opposite
Sánchez, Venezuela turns its attention from MERCOSUR to the Andean nations
Reporters Without Borders, Cuba arrests six journalists in 24 hours

Jackson, Blues power

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