MCR2030 prepares mission in Trinidad-and-Tobago with national and local authorities for disaster risk reduction and management

_{In the picture, from left to right: Senior Disaster Management Coordinator, Ministry of Rural Development and Local Government, Mr. Jerry David; UNDRR/MCR2030 Consultant, Ms. Alana Lewis; Minister of Rural Development and Local Government, Senator the Honourable, Kazim Hosein; Minister of National Security, the Honourable Fitzgerald Hinds M.P.; UNDRR Programme Specialist, Mr. Carlos Uribe; Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM), Major General (Ret’d) Rodney Smart; UNDRR Disaster Risk Reduction Advisor, Dr. Jair Torres; and UNDRR/MCR2030 Technical Advisor, Mr. Clément Da Cruz.}

From the 1st to the 4th of March, representatives of UNDRR’s Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean and the regional team of the Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) initiative met with national and local authorities in Trinidad-and-Tobago and laid the foundations of several technical support activities to disaster risk reduction and climate resilience to be performed in early May 2022.

Together with a rich array of local stakeholders (i.e., Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM); Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service (TTMS), UWI Seismic Research Centre; Central Statistical Office; the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP); Trinidad-and-Tobago’s Red Cross; the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean), the UNDRR delegation discussed the implementation of several activities, including:

• the Climate Risk Early Warning Systems (CREWS) in the Caribbean initiative;
• the CREWS Global Project for Measuring Effectiveness of Early Warning Systems (EWS) in Small Island Developing States (SIDS); and
• support on the design and finalization of Trinidad and Tobago’s Governance Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction and Management (the Comprehensive Disaster Management Policy and Country Work Programme).

With these initiatives, the UNDRR/MCR2030 delegation aims to strengthen support to Trinidad-an-Tobago’s in achieving the targets and objectives set within the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, as well as promoting linkages between national strategies for disaster resilience and local level actions, namely via MCR2030’s support to the mission.

More specifically, MCR2030 is to advise the Tobago’s House of Assembly, via Tobago’s Emergency Management Agency (TEMA), in the elaboration of a local strategy for disaster risk reduction and resilience. MCR2030’s regional team will provide technical assistance in the use of UNDRR’s Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities, as well as the Scorecard’s Disaster Displacements Addendum (marking the world’s pilot of this new tool). On the 3rd of March, the UNDRR/MCR2030 delegation met with Mr. Allan Stewart, Director of TEMA, to plan the activities to be carried out in early May 2022 and discuss their logistics.