CDEMA pivots to cope with less US support

The Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) is adjusting its regional disaster preparedness strategy after key US humanitarian support programmes were unexpectedly disrupted earlier this year, threatening the region’s hurricane season readiness.

Executive Director of CDEMA, Elizabeth Riley, confirmed the suspension of the Regional Disaster Assistance Program (RDAP), a flagship initiative of the US Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, which previously played a vital role in training Caribbean states for disaster response.

“So as you know, actions by the government of the United States have had global impacts and the Caribbean as a part of the global community, we have also been impacted specifically. As you are aware, the Regional Disaster Assistance programme, which was one of the key flagship programmes of the Bureau for Humanitarian Affairs, was placed initially on stop order, and that programme would normally have provided significant, particularly training support to our participating states as they prepare for the hurricane season,” she said.

In response, member states have reassessed their national budgets, and CDEMA began coordinating with new partners to close the gaps left by the US withdrawal.

“Countries have pivoted and CDEMA has been supporting that effort to identify alternate partners to provide support for that training, and national governments have also relooked budgetary allocations to make sure that those deficits have been treated. I’m sure as we get the press briefings across the region from the national emergency management offices that you will see how those deficits have been met on a country by country basis,” she explained.

Riley, however, stressed, “With respect to the regional level, CDEMA in itself has not been very directly affected. We did not have any specific direct projects with the government of the United States, but there had been some implications from the perspective of partnerships. As you know with our regional response mechanism we work collaboratively with a broad group of entities, development partners, private sector, UN agencies, etc.

“The implications of the US actions have had ripple effects across a number of our partners including our UN agencies and we’ve also seen implications for some of our civil society partners such as the International Federation of the Red Cross. Partners of course have been having discussions within their own spaces as to how those impacts are going to be treated. There has been some support coming back on stream from the government of the United States which has given us an indication that there will be some level of capability across those institutions to support the regional response mechanism.”

The impact was also felt on the technical front with shifts taking place at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which led CDEMA to seek new collaborations to safeguard forecasting capabilities.

Riley said, “We’re grateful to the European Union which has extended access to significant forecasting, predicting, as well as modelling products and satellite products from the EU scientific organisations and we have a high level of confidence that we are in a position to ensure that the early alerting and the forecast and prediction related to early warning, those will be in place for the season 2025.”

Despite the setbacks, Riley said, there was a recent meeting between heads of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, during which commitments were made to restore two key programmes.

“I believe persons would have had sight of the readout from the meeting between a number of the heads of state of the OECS and Secretary of State Rubio, which took place a few weeks ago and in that statement there was an indication of the reactivation of two of the programmes to support the Caribbean during the hurricane season. One was the reactivation of the regional disaster assistance programme which I alluded to earlier, and the second was an indication of reactivation of financial flows to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to ensure support for the Caribbean region during the hurricane season. The hurricane hunter programme is treated under that specific arrangement. So from the indications that we have, we expect that the support should be in alignment with that from previous years,” she said.

(SB)