Cab­i­net has ap­proved the cre­ation of a Hu­man­i­tar­i­an Lo­gis­tics and Sup­ply Chain Man­age­ment Unit with­in the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment (ODPM). Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds an­nounced this de­vel­op­ment dur­ing his par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency’s (CDE­MA) 13th Com­pre­hen­sive Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment (CDM) Con­fer­ence, held from De­cem­ber 2-6, 2024.

The con­fer­ence, host­ed by the Gov­ern­ment of St. Kitts and Nevis and CDE­MA, fo­cused on strength­en­ing dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion, cli­mate re­silience, and adap­tive ca­pac­i­ty in the Caribbean. Over 450 glob­al and re­gion­al lead­ers at­tend­ed, dis­cussing strate­gies to en­hance dis­as­ter man­age­ment across the re­gion.

In ad­di­tion to the con­fer­ence, the Sixth High-lev­el Meet­ing on the Im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Sendai Frame­work for Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion 2015-2030 was held. Min­is­ter Hinds high­light­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s progress in im­ple­ment­ing the Sendai Frame­work, not­ing key ini­tia­tives such as strength­en­ing gov­er­nance arrange­ments, es­tab­lish­ing a Na­tion­al Pub­lic Alert and No­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (PANS), de­vel­op­ing Com­mu­ni­ty Flood Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems (CFEWS), build­ing ca­pac­i­ty in Ur­ban Search and Res­cue, and set­ting up a Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter Risk In­for­ma­tion Man­age­ment Sys­tems plat­form.

Min­is­ter Hinds al­so not­ed that, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, Cab­i­net had ap­proved the com­mence­ment of a Na­tion­al Dis­as­ter and Cli­mate Risks As­sess­ment, aimed at en­hanc­ing the na­tion’s re­silience and sup­port­ing its sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment.

The Min­is­ter fur­ther em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS) re­ceiv­ing cli­mate jus­tice through ini­tia­tives like the Loss and Dam­age Fund, stress­ing that ad­dress­ing the cli­mate cri­sis re­quires a glob­al ef­fort.