Hur­ri­cane Beryl has en­tered the his­to­ry books as the strongest hur­ri­cane ever record­ed in the At­lantic Ocean dur­ing the month of June.

The oc­cur­rence of such a pow­er­ful storm ear­ly in the hur­ri­cane sea­son was in­evitable as cli­mate change con­tin­ues to cre­ate more ex­treme weath­er events. How­ev­er, what is not in­evitable is that peo­ple need to die or suf­fer be­cause of these weath­er events.

In­deed, a suc­cess sto­ry in the midst of the de­struc­tion in­flict­ed by Hur­ri­cane Beryl on the is­lands of the Caribbean is that few­er peo­ple died com­pared to sim­i­lar past hur­ri­canes, such as Hur­ri­cane Maria in 2017 or Hur­ri­cane Ivan in 2004.

This is the re­sult of years of in­vest­ment in strength­en­ing ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems by the Caribbean na­tions and sup­port from re­gion­al bod­ies such as the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency, the Caribbean Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the Caribbean In­sti­tute for Me­te­o­rol­o­gy and Hy­drol­o­gy, as well as the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WMO) Hur­ri­cane Com­mit­tee and WMO des­ig­nat­ed Re­gion­al Spe­cial­ized Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Cen­ter for trop­i­cal cy­clones, op­er­at­ed by the US Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter.

We must con­tin­ue to strength­en mul­ti-haz­ard ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems in the Caribbean, through ef­forts such as the re­cent­ly an­nounced Cli­mate Risk Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tems (CREWS) Caribbean 2.0 project, if we are to achieve the goals of the Ear­ly Warn­ings for All ini­tia­tive by the end of the year 2027.

Nev­er­the­less, while dis­as­ter deaths are on a down­ward trend, the cost of dis­as­ters is grow­ing. In­creas­ing so­cial and eco­nom­ic costs is a prob­lem that all coun­tries face but is most acute­ly felt in Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS).

It might be months be­fore we know the to­tal cost of the dis­as­ter caused by Hur­ri­cane Beryl, but ear­ly in­di­ca­tions point to an ex­treme­ly cost­ly dis­as­ter. Beryl af­fect­ed over 11,000 per­sons in the Grena­dine Is­lands of Grena­da and St. Vin­cent, dis­rupt­ing lives, liveli­hoods, and life chances. In St. Vin­cent and the Grenadines, re­port­ed­ly 90 per cent of homes on Union Is­land were de­stroyed or se­vere­ly dam­aged.

While some coun­tries can re­duce their dis­as­ter ex­po­sure by mov­ing eco­nom­ic as­sets away from shore­lines, this is not an op­tion for small is­land states that are ful­ly ex­posed. This means their on­ly vi­able op­tion is to en­hance so­cial and eco­nom­ic re­silience as well as the phys­i­cal re­silience of their homes, busi­ness­es, and in­fra­struc­ture.

The re­cent­ly adopt­ed An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Agen­da for SIDS is a pow­er­ful po­lit­i­cal in­stru­ment that along with glob­al part­ner­ships, such as the Coali­tion for Dis­as­ter Re­silient In­fra­struc­ture (CDRI), can be an in­valu­able re­source to such coun­tries, sup­port­ing re­sult de­liv­ery un­der re­gion­al­ly dri­ven im­per­a­tives such as the Com­pre­hen­sive Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Strat­e­gy in the Caribbean. The UN Of­fice for Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion has been work­ing with CDRI to help coun­tries stress-test their in­fra­struc­ture sys­tems and iden­ti­fy vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.

And while in­te­grat­ing re­silience in­to new in­fra­struc­ture adds around 3 per­cent to the over­all in­vest­ment costs, this amount is mi­nus­cule com­pared to the long-term ben­e­fits gained in re­duced dam­age and ser­vice dis­rup­tions.

Re­search from the Glob­al Cen­ter on Adap­ta­tion has shown that re­silient in­fra­struc­ture could de­liv­er up to $12 for every dol­lar in­vest­ed.

De­spite this great re­turn on in­vest­ment, fi­nanc­ing, in­clud­ing for re­silient re­cov­ery is a bur­den for many de­vel­op­ing coun­tries, es­pe­cial­ly SIDS that are al­ready sad­dled with large debts and have lim­it­ed fis­cal space. That is why de­vel­oped coun­tries must keep the promis­es they made to dou­ble cli­mate adap­ta­tion fi­nanc­ing to at least $40 bil­lion a year by 2025 and ad­e­quate­ly cap­i­tal­ize the Loss and Dam­age Fund.

This is on­ly fair con­sid­er­ing that coun­tries, such as those in the Caribbean, con­tributed the least to the cre­ation of the cli­mate cri­sis but con­tin­ue to pay the great­est costs.

We hope that the true lega­cy of Hur­ri­cane Beryl will not be its record-break­ing strength or the amount of de­struc­tion it caused, but that it was a turn­ing point for the world. We need to piv­ot from pas­sive­ly ac­cept­ing that dis­as­ters will oc­cur to ac­tive­ly pre­vent­ing them through in­vest­ment in dis­as­ter risk re­duc­tion. Oth­er­wise, every hur­ri­cane will in­evitably lead to dis­as­ter.

*By Eliz­a­beth Ri­ley is the  Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (CDE­MA), Pro­fes­sor Ce­leste Saulo is the Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WMO), and  Ka­mal Kishore is the Spe­cial Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the UN Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al for Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion and Head of the UN Of­fice for Dis­as­ter Risk Re­duc­tion (UN­DRR).

By Eliz­a­beth Ri­ley, Ce­leste Saulo and Ka­mal Kishore*

BRIDGETOWN, Bar­ba­dos, Aug 5, CMC

CMC/er/cs/kk/ir/2024