SVG commits US$36.4 to boosting climate resilience – CDB assists in boosting community response

The government of St Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG) has budgeted EC $99 million (or US $36.4) for sea and river defense and related works this financial year, which it believes will offer the island protection from flooding and other climate hazards. 

This was announced by Minister with responsibility for National Mobilisation, Frederick Stephenson, at the launch of a workshop put on by the Community Disaster Risk Reduction Fund of the Caribbean Development Bank, for community development practitioners across the ministry and its agencies on February 10.  

In addition to the capital expenditure works – slated for the stretch from Sandy Bay down to Sans Souci on the Windward side of the island - the Gonsalves-led Administration has some EC$30 million set aside to respond to natural disaster shocks. 

“Though all of these monies are in the capital estimates in the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of National Mobilization, when the work is started, we have to be involved because they’re the river defense and sea defense works… and you have an important role to play in those areas because you have to go first of all into the communities and get the community involvement to buy into these projects,” Stephenson said directly to the practitioners at the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO) in Kingstown, where the workshop was being held.

The minister said both the capital expenditure projects and the disaster fund were critical to buffering the tiny island in light of globally accepted science that climate change is likely to wreak havoc across the Caribbean in coming years, as well as the presence of La Soufriere in the country’s northern tip. 

The minister spoke of the recent flooding experiences of St Vincent where in the 2013 floods, some 13,000 persons were impacted, while in 2016 floods, some 25,000 persons were affected with losses of some 5 per cent of the national gross domestic product, mostly in infrastructure and the productive sectors. 

The 2013 floods occurred on Christmas Eve and brought 15-16 inches of rainfall in roughly four hours.  

“Those floods caused tremendous damage and rivers overflooded their banks. All the rivers to the north, which were dry rivers, became flooded,” Stephenson recalled. 

It was in the wake of the 2016 floods that government introduced a one per cent tax on phone calls to create an emergency response fund.   

“That contingency fund, which the government would have at hand to use as a first response to a natural disaster, has accumulated the sum of $30.5 million. This would be able to assist the government assist and respond swiftly, just in case there’s a natural disaster and roads are blocked and you have to hire equipment and you have to move people, you have to provide food, you have to provide lodging and safe shelter,” said Stephenson. “This is what this fund will be able to chip until we get the funding from whether the CDB or the World Bank, or wherever. ”  

The Minister’s comments at the workshop were aligned with the theme: Improving Inclusive Disaster Risk Management through Strengthened Community-based Organisations. It is being executed by the Community Disaster Risk Reduction Fund (CDRRF).

The workshop, which is similar to one previously staged in St Ann, Jamaica, targeted practitioners in a train-the-trainer kind of approach as well as community members themselves. Both groups were trained in the weeklong workshop which ran from February 10 – 14.  

The move, the CDRRF secretariat said, is in response to gaps identified across the region in the way community-based organisations operate.   

The primary objectives are to strengthen the operational capacity of the targeted community groups to enable them to apply for grants; to encourage inclusive approaches to planning and implementation of activities; and to increase the organisations’ knowledge of and actions towards improving community resilience. 

The CDRRF was established by the Caribbean Development Bank and is financed by the government of Canada and the European Union.