DDME’s 20th Anniversary Director’s Message

DDME’s 20th Anniversary Director’s Message

Dr. Virginia Clerveaux 

As we reflect on the past 20 years at the engagements of the Department of Disaster Management and Emergencies (DDME), the capacity building, trainings/workshops undertaken, plans, policies, standard operating procedures developed, exercises/drills conducted, legislations enacted, expansion of the office from one island to now 4 islands,

from 4 staff to now 16, developing an organizational structure that is aimed at building resilience not just in the department, but throughout the TCI, establishing a robust emergency communication system with a strong social media presence and commencement of an early warning system, since its inception, its infancy to its current stage of maturity, we must also reflect on the stalwarts that have cradled this institution throughout its infancy and directed its destiny.                 

While we revel in retrospective pride, we also need to recognize that the hazard landscape around us is ever changing, presenting new challenges as we speak and requiring that we take a prospective look at where we need to take the Department of Disaster Management and Emergencies (DDME) to meet emergent climate challenges and the potentially crippling effects of global pandemics that gave us a rude awakening in the ongoing COVID-19 reality.

The theme of our 20-year celebration is: Honouring our past, treasuring our present and Shaping our future Pillars of Resilience. Resilience will not be achieved overnight. It requires dedication, hard work and a continued investment in time and resources.

According to legend, Thomas Edison made thousands of prototypes of the incandescent light bulb before he finally got it right. And, since the prolific inventor was awarded more than 1,000 patents, it's easy to imagine him failing on a daily basis in his lab at Menlo Park.

In spite of struggling with "failure" throughout his entire working life, Edison never let it get the best of him. All of these "failures," which are reported to be in the tens of thousands, simply showed him how not to invent something. His resilience gave the world some of the most amazing inventions of the early 20th century, such as the phonograph, the telegraph, and the motion picture.

It's hard to imagine what our world would be like if Edison had given up after his first few failures. His inspiring story forces us to look at our own lives, our country, our organization, our communities – do we have the resilience that we need to overcome our challenges? Or do we let our failures derail our dreams, our vision, our mission? (mindtools.com)

Resilience (or resiliency) is our ability to adapt and bounce back when things don't go as planned, whether it is a hurricane impact, a pandemic or other world crisis. Resilient people don't wallow or dwell on failures; they acknowledge the situation, learn from their mistakes, implement measures to prevent or reduce a reoccurrence and then move forward.

In the context of disaster management, tackling climate challenges, building climate and disaster resilience, and enhancing social, economic and environmental sustainability are interconnected and urgent regional and international agendas. They are critical to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in both the national and international context.

As we contemplate the design and execution of our future resilience, we acknowledge that, as past lessons have taught us, powerful committed leadership and partnerships are indispensable to our success.

The DDME is about to draft its 2021-2030 Country Work Plan with funding through CDEMA and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) that will build on the gains that we have made in our 2013-2020 plan. Our strategy for addressing future resilience will focus as we have in the past, on:

1. Enhanced public information and early warning for improved individual and collective decision-making.
2. Enhancement of our programmatic framework for disaster risk assessment and effective disaster risk communication at all levels of our society.

iii. Assessment of future climate challenges and design of structural and non-structural measures for resilience capacity building.

According to Saeed Ahmed (2021), we have seen climate change increasing the frequency and severity of extreme climate events, and this will likely continue in the future.

Looking ahead, further disasters will undoubtedly occur, and they will almost certainly be increasingly costly, and unfortunately, deadly. As disaster risks cannot be entirely eliminated, we must collectively increase our risk reduction efforts, financial preparedness and improve our response to these eventualities.

For many countries, fiscal space has always been a concern when it comes to disaster risk financing. The situation has worsened in 2020-2021 as fiscal deficits and debts increase as countries respond to COVID-19.

In light of our experience with the COVID-19 pandemic, the DDME would be remiss in its mandate to build future resilience capacities if we do not adopt a more centralized focus on building our resilience to epidemiological hazards in general and pandemics in particular.

Our ongoing COVID-19 experiences have afforded insights to the weaknesses in our preparedness, response and recovery systems and provides us with a laboratory for determining strategies that must become integral to our disaster resilience strategies going forward.

I do not wish to get ahead of myself and our upcoming work plan so let me end on this note -let us all be proud of what we have achieved together in advancing the status of disaster risk management in the TCI.

Let us recognize the stalwarts that have laid the foundations on which we continue to build. Let us acknowledge the lessons learnt from our past experiences and harness them towards building our future resilience.

Let us continue to build the public and private partnerships that will allow us to look back in 20 years and be able to say with confidence as we do today, congratulations on our collective effort in building a more disaster resilient TCI.

Once again I wish to thank my team, Team DDME on who’s shoulders I stood for the past 10 years as we worked tirelessly, often going beyond the call of duty in our quest to build a disaster resilient society. I encourage you to continue your efforts and dedication to the mission.