In case we were ever inclined to forget, Hurricane Beryl announced the dramatic start of a predictable, annual scramble for Caribbean survival much earlier than has been recorded in an exceptionally long time. This diminishes (or perhaps reinforces), through immediacy, the broader metaphor of fragile socio-economic persistence because at stake are lives, livelihoods, and other assets that assure viability in the face of extreme vulnerability.
Time to painfully recall the admonition of a young Kittitian student in Jamaica, angrily moved by my suggestion that there objectively exists no real reason why some countries of our region consider themselves sufficiently impregnable to declare a notion of sovereignty. Every single year, you see, we are confronted by the threat of devastation and the need to rebuild ahead of another interminable round of potential destruction. In some instances, elsewhere, human conduct in the form of violence and political instability exists as ultimately manageable traits. We can end wars, intervene in conflicts, stand in solidarity against atrocities, and help bring perpetrators to justice, even across borders. We can learn to negotiate, understand each other better, and punish those who thrive on violence and disruption.
However hopeless it may currently appear, the plights of Palestinians, the Sudanese, and Rohingya, there have been paths traced by Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bosnia that indicated resolutions … of sorts. There are also episodic naturally occurring events that defy precise prediction, and we know some of them well right here: earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
Shortly before midnight Sunday, there was a magnitude 3.7 earthquake off Trinidad’s northwest tip barely noticed as we scoured online resources for word on Beryl. In St Vincent, the folks of the village of Fancy, who faced volcanic ash in 2021, now feared surging tides as the winds and rain raged. Yet here we are, as usual, as expected, as officially declared, in “hurricane season.” It flows from our tongues in the midst of cricket commentary, defiant fetes, and political exchanges. Over the weekend, a long-relocated relative quipped about T&T and hurricanes that “they threaten but always avoid,” as if to suggest that avoidance reduces direct and indirect victimisation and involvement. Devastation in Carriacou is our issue in T&T, in the same way a volcanic eruption in St Vincent clearly was, and so will any number of weather events yet unleashed off the west coast of Africa, wherever they land in our neighbourhood … or right here. The statement ought to also invoke an implication of collective responsibility–the stuff of which the regional survival project, aka “Caricom”, was meant to address.
What, therefore, is there to suggest the centrality of this question in our formal processes? Acknowledgement of the growing climate crisis has helped close some ranks. The fact that while we occupy different vessels, we sail on the same ocean or that, in many respects, we share cabin space on a small, brittle vessel negotiating hostile waves. We can orient the narrative in different directions, but it almost always describes susceptibility to extreme outcomes.
How, in the face of this, therefore, is a psychology of “invincibility”–as prescribed by my friend and colleague, Tony Fraser, with respect to cricket–a realistic possibility; and not simply self-delusion of the highest order? This is not to dismiss the prospects for confidence and self-belief–for which we are well known in select areas of public life–but to acknowledge some stark realities including our deficiencies.
And here, in my view, is where the skills of adaptation, change, and mitigation of risks are left to be developed and honed. The suggestion that perils “threaten but always avoid” T&T may further weaken the determination we employ to engage our own survival project and the wider regional rescue. Maybe Beryl has opened an opportunity to reformulate the Caricom agenda, not by supplanting existing areas of concern but by attaching stronger awareness of their survival implications. We have several months left in this long season, and next year it will return. We cannot, as island and coastal states, relocate.
The scientists say that at the current rate, things will worsen. When the postponed Caricom Heads of Government Meeting, initially due this week in Grenada, eventually convenes, it might be useful to ensure this common thread of responsibility to ourselves is inserted. The agenda needs to reflect such urgency through all issues requiring thought and action, and 12 months a year.
