The Unit­ed King­dom on Wednes­day signed an agree­ment with the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA) that will pro­vide fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance to re­gion­al coun­tries should they be im­pact­ed dur­ing the 2025 At­lantic Hur­ri­cane sea­son that be­gins in June.

“As in the past, we com­mit to re­spond to any CDE­MA re­quest with­in 24 hours re­gard­ing the avail­abil­i­ty of funds, recog­nis­ing the crit­i­cal im­por­tance of time­ly and hu­man­i­tar­i­an ac­tion,” the British High Com­mis­sion­er to Bar­ba­dos and the East­ern Caribbean, Si­mon Mus­tard, said at the sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny.

He told re­porters that the agree­ment al­lows for US$375,000 to go to­wards any hur­ri­cane-af­fect­ed mem­ber states of CDE­MA to pro­vide re­lief and that CDE­MA al­ready has US$50,000 up­front to al­low for a quick re­sponse.

CDE­MA’s Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor, Eliz­a­beth Ri­ley, stat­ed that, in light of the Unit­ed States’ fund­ing cuts to sev­er­al agen­cies, in­clud­ing Unit­ed Na­tions agen­cies that serve the Caribbean, the re­gion has been suc­cess­ful in lob­by­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) to as­sist with ear­ly warn­ing fore­casts.

“We are grate­ful to the Eu­ro­pean Union, which has ex­tend­ed ac­cess to sig­nif­i­cant fore­cast­ing, pre­dict­ing as well as mod­el­ling prod­ucts and satel­lite prod­ucts from the EU sci­en­tif­ic or­gan­i­sa­tions and we have a high lev­el of con­fi­dence that we are in a po­si­tion to en­sure that the ear­ly alert­ing and the fore­cast and pre­dic­tion re­lat­ed to ear­ly warn­ing will be in place for 2025,” she said.

She said de­spite the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion’s bud­get cut to the Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA), the Unit­ed States ad­min­is­tra­tion had pledged to con­tin­ue op­er­at­ing hur­ri­cane hunter air­craft for fore­cast­ing.

CDE­MA al­so signed trans­porta­tion and lo­gis­tics mem­o­ran­da of un­der­stand­ing with Kestrel Ship­ping and Sun­rise Air­ways.

“They ex­pand the lo­gis­ti­cal reach of the re­gion­al re­sponse mech­a­nism and re­flect the col­lec­tive com­mit­ment to safe­guard­ing lives and liveli­hoods across the par­tic­i­pat­ing States,” Ri­ley said.

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, May 28, CMC

CMC/pr/r/2025