Regional approach needed for disaster management - expert

Western Bureau:

"Time for action, we have talked long enough," Dr Paulette Bynoe declared at the fifth annual Caribbean Conference on Comprehensive Disaster Management in Montego Bay, St James, yesterday.

"We have to be proactive. A disaster is not a disaster unless you have vulnerabilities and so we have to be proactive in our planning," Bynoe told a conference on disaster management being hosted at the Hilton Rose Hall Resort and Spa.

The director of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Guyana was speaking on the topic: 'Building Partnerships for Resilience and the Mainstreaming of Climate Change Adaptation in Disaster Risk Reduction'.

Bynoe said the Caribbean needs to share scarce resources in the area of disaster management and risk reduction.

"In this region, we like to beg. We always don't have resources. I have done a national capacity self-assessment and the priority (that came out of that assessment) is the issue of resources. So why don't we share resources to improve the region's risk reduction?" she argued.

Collaborate and coordinate

Bynoe told the conference that competition among countries for international funding, as well as countries having their own approach to disaster management, is an impediment, and said regional leaders should find a way to collaborate and coordinate comprehensive plans for disaster risk management.

The fifth Comprehensive Disaster Management Conference is examining the implication for disaster risk reduction practices in the context of recent disaster experiences within and outside the Caribbean region.

It focuses on current and emerging tools and their contribution potential in this global alliance to reduce the extensive loss to vital socio-economic and physical assets, especially in developing states.