The Caribbean re­gion is emerg­ing slow­ly and painful­ly from a tor­rid sea­son of elec­tions, and an equal­ly in­tense hur­ri­cane sea­son—whether or not some be­lieved they were af­fect­ed by ei­ther.

It’s now ev­i­dent there re­main open wounds as­so­ci­at­ed with com­bat­ive pol­i­tics, neg­a­tive in­stincts re­lat­ed to trans­paren­cy and so­cial co­he­sion, and the con­se­quen­tial col­lec­tive abil­i­ty/in­abil­i­ty to ef­fi­cient­ly con­front seem­ing­ly over­whelm­ing chal­lenges.

For guid­ance on un­rav­el­ling such con­nec­tions, we should spend time ex­am­in­ing things such as in­sti­tu­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment, po­lit­i­cal cul­ture, and the im­pacts of an in­dis­putable cul­ture of of­fi­cial se­cre­cy.

For this rea­son, to­day’s thoughts in­voke the re­quire­ments of an in­ter­na­tion­al treaty—the Es­cazú Agree­ment—which man­dates pub­lic rights to ac­cess en­vi­ron­men­tal in­for­ma­tion, par­tic­i­pa­tion in de­ci­sions, and so­cial jus­tice in en­vi­ron­men­tal mat­ters.

Es­cazú does not stand alone. There is Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goal (SDG) tar­get 16:10, which calls for “en­sur­ing pub­lic ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion and pro­tect­ing fun­da­men­tal free­doms.” In many of our coun­tries, to­day, there are al­so ac­cess to in­for­ma­tion laws, and oth­er leg­isla­tive pro­vi­sions.

The im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa on Ja­maica on Oc­to­ber 28 pro­vides us with an ex­am­ple of sea­soned hands, on all fronts—pol­i­tics, cri­sis, and nom­i­nal com­mit­ment to the free flow of of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion—at­tempt­ing to come to terms with the ur­gency of one of the biggest dis­as­ters in Caribbean his­to­ry.

This is a coun­try con­sid­ered to pro­vide the rest of us with a gold stan­dard when it comes to in­sti­tu­tion­al arrange­ments ad­dress­ing per­ils, emer­gen­cies, and dis­as­ters—both nat­ur­al and hu­man-orig­i­nat­ed.

How­ev­er, de­pend­ing on whom you ques­tion to­day, in­clud­ing those di­rect­ly ex­posed to cat­a­stroph­ic dam­age in the coun­try’s south­west­ern ar­eas since Oc­to­ber, there are mixed re­views re­gard­ing over­all per­for­mance.

At­tor­ney Deb­bie-Ann Gor­don (a West­more­land na­tive) sur­mised in a De­cem­ber 7 Ja­maica Glean­er col­umn: “Re­cov­ery must ad­dress long-stand­ing vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties: ir­reg­u­lar land tenure, in­ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture, frag­ile hous­ing, and lim­it­ed eco­nom­ic op­tions. Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa did not cre­ate these is­sues; it ex­posed them.”

Mean­while, there is hard­ly a com­par­a­tive re­gion­al ex­am­ple of the is­land’s ex­ten­sive plan­ning and ame­lio­ra­tive in­sti­tu­tion­al land­scape. Its Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment Act, for ex­am­ple, pre­scribes a mul­ti­par­tite Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment Coun­cil.

This mech­a­nism im­pres­sive­ly co­a­lesces a wide va­ri­ety of sec­toral and in­ter-sec­toral in­ter­ests. This re­sults not on­ly from the good sense of bring­ing all hands on deck, but from past ex­pe­ri­ences in which mul­ti­par­tite arrange­ments, sup­port­ed by state fi­nan­cial, ad­min­is­tra­tive, func­tion­al, and reg­u­la­to­ry as­sets, were sys­tem­i­cal­ly ab­sent.

As is cur­rent­ly un­fold­ing, there ap­pear to be gaps be­tween the ex­is­tence of well-de­signed, well-in­tend­ed, thought­ful state mech­a­nisms, and time­ly, tan­gi­ble re­quire­ments on the ground.

Con­trast­ing­ly, pri­vate sec­tor in­volve­ment in re­cov­ery among is­land busi­ness­es of all cat­e­gories, has gen­er­al­ly met the stan­dards of ur­gency, da­ta-fo­cused, and strate­gi­cal­ly tar­get­ed. Civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions are al­so sig­nif­i­cant­ly chip­ping in from at home and abroad.

“We are nowhere near the end … but we are do­ing the right things, tak­ing an all of so­ci­ety ap­proach and smash­ing the si­los to­geth­er when we con­front them,” says Lisa Soares Lewis, who is lead­ing the pri­vate sec­tor Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (EOC).

Jour­nal­ist Dionne Jack­son-Miller has mean­while dili­gent­ly ap­plied ex­ten­sive scruti­ny to a man­dat­ed Dis­as­ter Risk Man­age­ment Coun­cil which, as every­one con­cedes, pro­vides the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to bring an ex­ten­sive se­lec­tion of voic­es to the ta­ble … but which last met in June!

How­ev­er, I think it would be wrong to as­sume the worst in­ten­tions on the part of any­one in­volved—what­ev­er the po­lit­i­cal fin­ger-point­ing. There are, in fact, im­por­tant sub-com­mit­tees and agen­cies of the state ac­tive­ly and dili­gent­ly en­gaged.

How­ev­er, some­one I met in Kingston—with Sep­tem­ber third’s gen­er­al elec­tion as a per­sis­tent back­drop—ad­vised, sad­ly, that I en­counter West­more­land from nei­ther side of “both fences.”

Think now of re­cov­ery ef­forts in coun­tries such as Do­mini­ca and The Ba­hamas, hit by Cat­e­go­ry Five hur­ri­canes in 2017 and 2019 re­spec­tive­ly; and oth­ers such as An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, and the Grenadines that have wit­nessed se­ri­ous im­pacts over re­cent years.

There had been pre­cau­tions re­gard­ing “both sides of the fence” in all of these. Here, in T&T, there is every in­di­ca­tion that we can fall prey to such a vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty (as we are), even as we do not quite boast any­thing near Ja­maica’s or­gan­i­sa­tion­al, reg­u­la­to­ry, or ad­min­is­tra­tive ca­pac­i­ty in such mat­ters.

The mar­gins of the Belém Con­fer­ence of Par­ties (COP30) on cli­mate change con­sid­ered the role of greater of­fi­cial trans­paren­cy and so­cial co­he­sion when con­fronting phe­nom­e­na as­so­ci­at­ed with the cli­mate cri­sis. More than once, Melis­sa was iden­ti­fied by name and lo­ca­tion.

In Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean, rel­e­vant at­ten­tion in this area of in­ter­est turned to the Es­cazú Agree­ment, which en­tered in­to force in 2021.

T&T is yet to sign. Ja­maica has signed but not yet rat­i­fied. Maybe there are lessons yet un­learned.