Focus must be placed not only on the economic impact of natural disasters on our country, but the economic implications as well.
So says Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment, Marsha Caddle, who added that this is not only in relation to named storms, but high rainfall events which can negatively impact the island especially in areas like the Scotland District, which are vulnerable. She made the comments while delivering remarks during the opening of an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) sponsored presentation and panel discussion on the topic Assessing and Addressing the Impact of Natural Disaster, which took place at the Courtyard by Marriott yesterday.
“There are economic implications that go beyond and quite apart from the actual impact of the event itself... The climate crisis has an effect on the nature of disaster and how we experience it, but it has implications for your entire economic landscape and all of a country’s priorities. So it is not just about there is a disaster, there is an event and what is it that happens in terms of loss of GDP and these kinds of immediate issues, but it is also what we are realising in Barbados and the region – is that it really changes everything about the way that you prioritise, the way you organise your work and really the entire reality of the situation in which you are living,” she said.
Minister Caddle went on to describe climate change is an “existential issue” that requires us to rethink, relook and reorient everything about the way business is done in our countries. Referring to Barbados, Caddle said the country is faced with, the failure over a decade or so to invest in economic infrastructure as well as the worsening climate crisis and as such, she maintained that given all that and the way in which natural disasters have been occurring, it requires a complete reorientation of our the country’s entire public sector investment programme.
“Because of the underinvestment we have seen in infrastructure in the previous decades and because of the fact the climate crisis has meant on the one hand an increase in severity in drought, it means that water and sanitation now have the biggest draw for us in terms of the public sector investment programme. It means that most of where we invest and how we invest is about the climate crisis and is about increasing resilience to natural disaster. It has to be, because it makes no sense to talk about your balance of payments if you do not have a country in which to function, if you do not have citizens who can be productive, if you do not have economic sectors that can continue to thrive,” the minister said.
Caddle said that while five to ten years ago GDP loss as a result of a natural disaster or catastrophic event was only in the region of ten to 20 per cent, today it can be as much as 300 per cent and she lamented, there is a no way to save to replace such loss.
“So it means natural disasters have not just economic impacts, but economic implications and that is also the way we look at the financial system,” she said.
The minister explained that they have also had to relook the financial instruments that are used, as they would not only need immediate liquidity after a severe weather event, but there is a need to build in resilience before events happen. She said government is working with the private sector to carve out a financial sector that includes resilience in the marketplace. (JRT)