Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor-News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

On ap­proach to the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go, the run­way is al­most sur­round­ed by the sea—a sight that can un­set­tle even the sea­soned trav­eller. But the ocean’s close prox­im­i­ty to both the run­way and the air­port has be­come a grow­ing area of con­cern and study across the re­gion.

Sim­i­lar run­way con­di­tions ex­ist at St Vin­cent’s Ar­gyle In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, St Lu­cia’s George Charles Air­port, An­tigua’s VC Bird In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port, and Do­mini­ca’s Dou­glas-Charles Air­port.

“Our run­ways are just about four feet above main sea lev­el, so when you talk about the im­pact of cli­mate change, even if you’re not fo­cused on that, dis­as­ters hap­pen,” Shane Munroe said as he fea­tured on a pan­el dis­cus­sion on Build­ing Cli­mate Dis­as­ter Re­silient Air­ports at the Air­ports Coun­cil In­ter­na­tion­al Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean’s An­nu­al As­sem­bly Con­fer­ence last week host­ed in Port-of-Spain.

Munroe, the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of MBJ Air­ports in Ja­maica, said that as the im­pact of cli­mate change wors­ens, gov­ern­ments around the re­gion will have to ask them­selves some im­por­tant ques­tions.

“Cer­tain­ly, for us in the re­gion as it re­lates to re­silience, we are look­ing at var­i­ous ar­eas, so in­fra­struc­ture re­silience, mean­ing, what is the re­silience of your ter­mi­nal build­ing, your run­way if you ex­pe­ri­ence a cat­e­go­ry five hur­ri­cane?” he said.

“We talk about op­er­a­tional re­silience, mean­ing how quick­ly you can re­cov­er in the in­stance of a dis­as­ter or a ma­jor cli­mate-re­lat­ed event. What is your re­cov­ery time? We’re al­so talk­ing about your fi­nan­cial re­silience, so can you sur­vive the down­time? Can you be out of op­er­a­tion for a num­ber of days? Or, what if the dis­as­ter is so se­vere that it af­fects you for weeks?”

Fund­ing ded­i­cat­ed to cli­mate re­silience projects

He fur­ther added that the ca­pac­i­ty of the air­port to re­cov­er must al­so be as­sessed in or­der to build re­silience. His fel­low pan­el­list, Jorge Rosil­lo, who is the gen­er­al man­ag­er at Galá­pa­gos Eco­log­i­cal Air­port, said plan­ning ahead for air­ports was crit­i­cal. “A dol­lar that we spend pre­vent­ing is a hun­dred or a thou­sand dol­lars we can save on re­cov­er­ing. So when we plan an air­port, we have to think ahead of that,” Rosil­lo said.

It’s a point Munroe backed up in an in­ter­view with me on the side­lines of the event. He added, “Of­ten times, the ques­tion is, can we spend mon­ey on this? It doesn’t make any mon­ey, but when you think about it from what is the avoid­ed cost, when you think about what hap­pened in St Maarten, the im­pact on their ter­mi­nal build­ing, and how long it took to put a new ter­mi­nal build­ing back in place.

“Can these same small states, lim­it­ed in funds, af­ford to be out of ser­vice for an ex­tend­ed pe­ri­od of time? The an­swer is no, so clear­ly you have to put that as a pri­or­i­ty and think about the avoid­ed costs. You have the avoid­ed cost of re­pairs, the avoid­ed costs of loss of rev­enue every day that you are not op­er­at­ing.”

When pressed on the fi­nan­cial chal­lenges fac­ing small is­land states, Munroe said there was fund­ing ded­i­cat­ed to cli­mate re­silience projects from mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies.

He went fur­ther in say­ing that how we think about in­fra­struc­ture when it comes to up­grad­ing, re­fur­bish­ing or build­ing air­ports is al­so cru­cial, adding, “When talk­ing about in­fra­struc­ture, I’m talk­ing about an el­e­vat­ed run­way where floods can’t af­fect it, an el­e­vat­ed ter­mi­nal al­so, and then we have to talk about mod­u­lar and flex­i­ble de­sign; if some­thing is dam­aged in one part of the ter­mi­nal, you can use an­oth­er part of the ter­mi­nal.”

He not­ed that thought must be placed in­to how the air­port can con­tin­ue to be op­er­a­tional even if a part of the ter­mi­nal is in­op­er­a­ble. When asked about the new air­port ter­mi­nal in To­ba­go, Munroe on­ly said, “I saw the air­port in To­ba­go; it looks great.”

De­sign­ing air­ports for a chang­ing cli­mate

Tashia Bur­ris, who heads the Tourism Di­vi­sion in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, could not give a def­i­nite an­swer on what type of de­sign went in­to build­ing the new To­ba­go air­port ter­mi­nal and whether it was built with cli­mate re­silien­cy in mind, but she of­fered this re­sponse to the Sun­day Guardian: “In terms of the ac­tu­al con­sul­ta­tions down to the minute lev­el, I was not part of any, so I can’t say if any were done at all, but I can tell you that it is my hope that part of what went in­to the con­sid­er­a­tion of the de­sign of the air­port in­clud­ed the use of green tech­nol­o­gy, be­cause that is where the in­dus­try is go­ing, and es­pe­cial­ly in a place like To­ba­go, where we like to talk about clean, green, safe, and serene, and we try to play up our fo­cus on en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty as part of our over­all tourism prod­uct, we should re­al­ly have a piece of in­fra­struc­ture that mir­rors that. So, it is my hope that that was con­sid­ered when the de­sign con­sid­er­a­tions were be­ing put to­geth­er, and def­i­nite­ly if they were not, that there is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to in­te­grate that in.”

Bur­ris ex­pand­ed on her point of sus­tain­abil­i­ty in her pan­el dis­cus­sion that fo­cused on the Caribbean Lead­ers Pan­el: Shap­ing the Re­gion’s Fu­ture To­geth­er. She said, “We can’t just look at air­lifts, but we have to look at the fact that we have very large oceans. We are all ringed by wa­ter ... For me, where I see air­lift go­ing in par­tic­u­lar is that we have to be sus­tain­able, so with new tech­nolo­gies, mak­ing air­craft health­i­er for the en­vi­ron­ment, be­cause when we talk about sus­tain­abil­i­ty, the first thing that comes to mind is en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. When you con­sid­er how sen­si­tive the Caribbean re­gion is—you’re talk­ing cli­mate change, our en­vi­ron­ment and bio­di­ver­si­ty–what­ev­er in­puts we make in­to the tourism sec­tor must be sus­tain­able, must be re­silient, and must be re­spon­si­ble.”

Rosil­lo, on the oth­er hand, chal­lenged at­ten­dees to change the way they think about air­port de­sign, adding, “There is al­so a lot of sus­tain­abil­i­ty here be­cause if we think that the na­ture that can af­fect you can al­so save you. If you start plant­i­ng man­groves if you are by the sea lev­el, that helps to mit­i­gate all the sea lev­el rise. There are lots of ways you can do these things (build re­silience) if you are plan­ning ahead.”

He urged Caribbean air­port au­thor­i­ties to utilise ad­vance­ments in me­te­o­rol­o­gy and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence to pre­dict when se­vere weath­er can af­fect their ar­eas and plan ahead.

As the cli­mate con­tin­ues to change, it presents po­ten­tial­ly tur­bu­lent times ahead for air­ports in the Caribbean. For such an ex­pen­sive in­dus­try to run, and one that is cru­cial for the peo­ple of this re­gion, ex­perts are hop­ing greater em­pha­sis is placed on mak­ing air­ports more re­silient to with­stand dis­as­ters or, in some cas­es, stave them off.