Fishers urged: Rebuild with resilience after hurricane devastation

Fishing in Barbados must be rebuilt with greater resilience and inclusivity following last year’s destructive Hurricane Beryl, the industry heard on Thursday, as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and international partners launched a major recovery initiative financed by Japan.

UNDP Resident Representative Limya Eltayeb said everyone in the fishing industry needs to collaborate to ensure that it is re-established on a more sustainable foundation.

At the opening session of the Barbados Coastal Fisheries Resilience Project stakeholder engagement meeting, held on Thursday at UN House, Eltayeb said the initiative aims to ensure the industry emerges stronger after the devastation of Hurricane Beryl in 2024.

She said: “This is our first stakeholder engagement workshop to develop a knowledge product on resilient boatbuilding in Barbados. The idea here is, under the project of Barbados Coastal Fisheries resilience, we hope to co-design a product that genuinely reflects and responds to the needs on the ground, and to ensure that boatbuilding is more resilient and incorporates all the value chain and all the stakeholders in the boatbuilding industry, as well as other stakeholders in the fisheries sector more broadly.”

The project, supported by a $5.8 million contribution from Japan, was launched in April. According to Eltayeb, the initiative represents more than financial support—it is “a real partnership between the government of Barbados, the government and people of Japan, and UNDP.” 

She added: “We’re really grateful for this partnership that has brought this forward and grateful to the people of Japan who have made this possible”.

Recalling the destruction wrought by Hurricane Beryl, the UN official noted: “The devastation that we all felt during Hurricane Beryl a year ago today actually damaged and severely impacted 200 boats. It impacted the lives and livelihoods of the fisherfolk, the fisherwomen, the fishermen, but also many other stakeholders in the value chain in the fishing industry and the marine sector, including all the way down the chain to the tourism sector. So this particular project was a response to that and to see how we can build back better”.

During the passage of Beryl, a staggering 220 out of 312 active boats — or seven in ten boats — were lost or damaged at the island’s largest landing site, the Bridgetown Fisheries Complex.

Owing to the scale of devastation, Eltayeb said the project’s focus is on recovery with resilience at its core.

She said: “It’s to really have tangible and catalytic recovery actions and interventions; it’s to ensure that we upgrade the fishing sector infrastructure, upgrade the assets as well as upgrade the capacities; it is to ensure and enhance disaster preparedness in the sector and across other sectors that interlink… and its underlying principle is to increase resilience.

“Resilience not only of the marine sector, but of the fisherfolk themselves, of the association that is behind you and that you belong to, and of the women that are producing, processing the fish and really taking it from the bottom up rather than from the top down, with a vision and a view to the future because the future is where we want to go.” 

(SB)