T&T took a sig­nif­i­cant step to­ward cli­mate re­silience yes­ter­day, host­ing the Na­tion­al Mul­ti-Haz­ard Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem (MHEWS) Fo­rum at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre. The event, themed “Build­ing a Re­silient Trinidad and To­ba­go Through a Com­mu­ni­ty-Cen­tred Na­tion­al Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem”, brought to­geth­er key stake­hold­ers to fi­nalise a new strat­e­gy de­signed to pro­tect cit­i­zens against es­ca­lat­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal threats.

The fo­rum marks the cul­mi­na­tion of two and a half years of col­lab­o­ra­tive work be­tween the In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank (IDB), the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM), and the To­ba­go Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (TEMA), with sup­port from the Em­bassy of Japan. Its core pur­pose is to dis­cuss the find­ings of a na­tion­al di­ag­nos­tic as­sess­ment and green­light a long-term in­vest­ment plan for the MHEWS.

Lau­ra Ro­jas, IDB’s Dis­as­ter-Risk Man­age­ment Unit Chief, was present at COP30 and gave Guardian Me­dia some in­sight in­to the fo­rum in Trinidad. She said, “The pur­pose of the meet­ing is to dis­cuss the re­port and the plan to move ahead with the in­vest­ments.”

The ini­tia­tive moves be­yond sim­ple alerts to fo­cus on com­mu­ni­ty safe­ty. Ro­jas em­pha­sised, “Re­silien­cy is not just about phys­i­cal risk. It’s al­so about so­cial risk. We put peo­ple at the cen­tre when we talk about re­silience.”

Ro­jas re­vealed the IDB is lever­ag­ing glob­al part­ner­ships, in­clud­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions with com­pa­nies like Google, to im­prove da­ta in­te­gra­tion and pub­lic un­der­stand­ing of threats. This ef­fort fo­cus­es on im­pact fore­cast­ing to en­sure that ear­ly warn­ings are ac­tion­able and lo­cal­ly rel­e­vant.

“We are bring­ing im­pact fore­cast­ing to ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems so that com­mu­ni­ties not on­ly re­ceive the alert about the weath­er event, but they un­der­stand what is go­ing to hap­pen,” Ro­jas ex­plained.

T&T tran­si­tioned from the long-wind­ed weath­er bul­letins to a colour-cod­ed Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem (EWS) in 2018, which is guid­ed by the ex­pect­ed im­pacts of an event.

The IDB’s sup­port ex­tends to cru­cial phys­i­cal projects, such as an in­te­grat­ed coastal zone man­age­ment project slat­ed for prepa­ra­tion next year to com­bat the coun­try’s high flood­ing and coastal ero­sion risks.

In ad­di­tion to fund­ing the re­silien­cy of phys­i­cal struc­tures, a ma­jor fo­cus is on fi­nan­cial pre­pared­ness. Ro­jas high­light­ed the IDB’s “con­tin­gent cred­it fa­cil­i­ty”, a pre-ap­proved line of cred­it that coun­tries can rapid­ly ac­ti­vate when a dis­as­ter meets pre-de­fined thresh­olds, such as spe­cif­ic wind speeds dur­ing a hur­ri­cane. This mech­a­nism is de­signed to pro­vide im­me­di­ate re­lief fund­ing with­out de­lays in the ap­proval process.

Ro­jas not­ed that this fi­nan­cial in­stru­ment forms one cru­cial lay­er of pro­tec­tion, along­side lo­cal re­sources. “We want to sup­port coun­tries on be­ing bet­ter pre­pared, more re­silient, and fi­nan­cial­ly pro­tect­ed against dis­as­ters,” she stat­ed, adding that this is the main ob­jec­tive of the IDB’s cur­rent scope in the re­gion.

The MHEWS fo­rum sig­nals T&T’s com­mit­ment to an all-haz­ards, whole-of-so­ci­ety strat­e­gy. By com­bin­ing ac­cu­rate fore­cast­ing with com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven gov­er­nance and ro­bust fi­nan­cial pro­tec­tions, the na­tion aims to es­tab­lish it­self as a re­gion­al leader in proac­tive­ly man­ag­ing the com­plex risks posed by a chang­ing cli­mate.