Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Pen­ne­lope Beck­les, who holds re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the en­vi­ron­ment has cau­tioned that Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems, while ef­fec­tive, come with com­plex­i­ties and costs.

She was speak­ing at a COP28 side event yes­ter­day in Dubai at the Cana­da Pavil­ion ti­tled; Min­is­te­r­i­al Pan­el Dis­cus­sion on Leav­ing No One Be­hind: Col­lab­o­rat­ing to Scale Up Ear­ly Warn­ings for All by 2027.

The dis­cus­sion came as a new Unit­ed Na­tions (UN) re­port re­leased yes­ter­day found that 101 coun­tries now have some sort of Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem in place, up six from last year and dou­ble the num­ber in 2015.

The UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, An­tónio Guter­res, in­tro­duced the Ear­ly Warn­ings for All ini­tia­tive in 2022 with a vi­sion to es­tab­lish an ef­fec­tive ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem for every per­son on earth by the end of 2027.

The pan­el yes­ter­day al­so in­clud­ed Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank (CDB) pres­i­dent Dr Hy­gi­nus ‘Gene’ Leon and Min­is­ter with­out Port­fo­lio in the Min­istry of Eco­nom­ic Growth and Job Cre­ation in Ja­maica Matthew Samu­da.

In her con­tri­bu­tion, the Min­is­ter al­lud­ed to the ex­pense of Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems but al­so went fur­ther in say­ing that the sys­tems re­quire main­te­nance and fi­nan­cial back­ing. She said, “Even as we speak of pol­i­cy, sim­i­lar­ly to talk­ing about your 2030 agen­da or your Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals, there are time­frames when the is­sue of fi­nanc­ing is al­ways very crit­i­cal. That, of course, is one of the chal­lenges for Small Is­land De­vel­op­ment States (SIDs) so you es­tab­lish your Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems which needs con­tin­u­ous up­dat­ing, which needs reg­u­lar main­te­nance be­cause you have to se­lect sites that are them­selves of­ten very chal­leng­ing.”

She added that build­ing Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems of­ten takes place on sites that are go­ing to in­crease cost and she says that is a ma­jor is­sue for SIDs.

Min­is­ter Beck­les al­so warned rur­al com­mu­ni­ties need to be in­clud­ed in the con­ver­sa­tion when it comes to Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems. Beck­les went fur­ther in say­ing, “While in T&T we can talk about rel­a­tive­ly good cov­er­age as it re­lates to in­ter­net ac­cess and cov­er­age as it re­lates to tele­com, there are still rur­al com­mu­ni­ties that don’t al­ways have the ben­e­fit of those kinds of as­sis­tance so there is a re­la­tion­ship be­tween your Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems and the ex­tent to which time­ly, ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion can reach to all com­mu­ni­ties.” She called for prop­er link­ages be­tween mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of ear­ly warn­ing that are used by rur­al com­mu­ni­ties.

Dr Leon in his con­tri­bu­tion said we must see Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems as the en­tire­ty of what we are try­ing to avoid, at what cost, what is with­in our con­trol and what is not with­in our con­trol. “That is where the re­al strength and pow­er of Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems come to play,” he said.

He says the CDB takes a frame­work per­spec­tive on Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems which is bro­ken down in­to da­ta on which you can base your de­ci­sion-mak­ing ca­pac­i­ty, then how to use that da­ta to be able to pre­dict, mod­el and en­able us to form de­ci­sions. Then, ul­ti­mate­ly, he says it comes down to dis­sem­i­na­tion through com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pol­i­cy stand­points. “Ir­re­spec­tive of how well you can mod­el, how you can pre­dict, if you are not able to craft and im­ple­ment poli­cies that would al­low that mod­el­ling to be ef­fec­tive then you have no way of con­trol­ling or meet­ing the out­come that you are look­ing to do,” Dr Leon said.

He says the CDB looks to fa­cil­i­tate gaps that ex­ist in each of those ar­eas. Dr Leon says what makes the dif­fer­ence be­tween the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties coun­tries face and the out­come they are look­ing to es­tab­lish is the “pos­si­bil­i­ty and ca­pa­bil­i­ty of re­silience.”