At the recent Jamaica House forum on disaster risk management, Mr. Stanbury disclosed a raft of regulatory initiatives to be taken by the Patterson administration. These include the amendment of the Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management Act to, among other things, confer on the agency the power to order mandatory evacuation of endangered communities ahead of impending disasters. The Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management is also to be given formal oversight authority over parish disaster committees.

The Permanent Secretary also indicated that a meteorological act is to be promulgated in order to 'lift the profile' of the National Meteorological Office, putting its forecasts on par with the regional body in Florida. He says the legislative undergirding of the agency has been suggested by the World Meteorological Organisation.

Another legislative measure required, according to Mr. Stanbury, is the amendment of the Flood Water Control Act to give the Water Resource Authority the responsibility to model, regulate and plan flood water management systems. These functions are to be distinguished from the design and construction of drains and other forms of flood water conduits by the National Works Agency.

ENVIRONMENTAL MEASURES:

The proposed policy and regulatory changes come in the wake of costly disruptions to the country's physical infrastructure from relentless assailing by tropical storms. For example, Hurricane Wilma caused $237 million damage to livestock and crops according to preliminary estimates by the Rural Agricultural Development Authority.

As the hazard reduction policy notes, between May and September 2002, flood rains in Jamaica caused cumulative damage of about $6 billion. Over 90 per cent of this damage was done to infrastructure and agriculture. Placed in perspective, that $6 billion was approximately 26.3 per cent of the total budget for education in 2003 and could have built 12,000 low-income houses to shelter the poor. "Were these monies not spent on disaster recovery, they could have reduced fiscal deficit and advanced growth," the document states.

It also cites the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Ivan in September 2004, when $94.9 million was diverted from government institutions to finance relief activities. The total economic impact of this hurricane is estimated at $35.9 million or the equivalent of 8.0 per cent of the country's GDP for 2003, as assessed by the Planning Institute of Jamaica.

In addition, hazards also directly affect the country's foreign exchange earning capacity at a time when extra resources are needed to finance imports of food, energy, and inputs for the agricultural manufacturing sectors, the hazard reduction policy points out.

The policy also highlights external and global factors that define Jamaica's hazard reduction policy. These include the high capital cost of development as well as reduced availability for insurance in high-capital cost projects which necessitates that appropriate site analyses in relation to hazard vulnerability are conducted for all major projects.

In addition, the upsurge in natural disasters globally, has placed severe stress on external sources of recovery/rehabilitation financing, implying reduced levels of assistance for Jamaica in future catastrophes.

PRIORITIES OF POLICY

The continued loss of reinsurance capacity in the Caribbean and increasing rates of premium owing to increasing disaster-related insurance claims and the policy notes, will severely hamper the recovery capacity of individuals and companies from future hazard impacts/disasters. At the same time, continued population growth will lead to the occupation of more marginal/high-risk areas, thus increasing the likelihood of more severe hazard impacts in the absence of mitigation measures.

A priority of the risk reduction policy is to factor "hazard-vulnerability analyses" into the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process. Where required, hazard mitigation measures are to be incorporated into project design and implementation. Another priority of the proposed policy is the incorporation of a hazard/disaster mitigation component and hazard-risk zoning into physical development plans.

In order to achieve these and other priorities, the hazard reduction policy lists specific tasks such as:

The concept of hazard-risk zoning, when mentioned at the Jamaica House forum, was welcomed by Agriculture Minister Roger Clarke, who advocated the placing of signs prohibiting farming in areas where the environment would be adversely impacted.

He, along with other government officials, also agreed to placing similar signs prohibiting the building of houses in disaster-prone areas as practised in Barbados. Had this been practised here, there would be no Kennedy Groves.

The successful implementation of these priorities will depend on the enforcement capability of regulatory agencies and officials, according to Mr. Stanbury. He rues the less than outstanding track record of agencies and officials. "We have the regulatory authority, but agencies won't cease or stop illegal activities," he told the Jamaica House forum.

"Every incidence of squatting, for instance, is a regulatory failure by planning authorities," he told The Gleaner. "We have to get to a culture of enforcement".

The hazard reduction policy speaks to the need for accountability on the part of regulators - agencies and personnel: "In implementing this policy, stakeholders will be held accountable for the aspects of hazard mitigation implementation assigned to them. Accountability involves the timely and efficient provision of deliverables consistent with clearly-outlined terms of reference. Accountability is also hinged on the provision of access to adequate and appropriate resources for the implementation process."

In addition to accountability, the policy stresses the need for each agency to be adequately funded. "Financial resources for the implementation of the strategy will be achieved through incorporation of hazard-risk management considerations into the budgetary allocations of each ministry as well as other strategic measures to provide sustainable support for the process of mitigation on an ongoing basis," said Stanbury.

Apart from natural hazards, the policy document states that Jamaica is also susceptible to a number of human-induced and biological hazards. Human-induced hazards include large-scale fires, oil and chemical spills, aircraft accidents, accidents involving the transportation of toxic and hazardous waste material on land and sea, large-scale marine and on-land transportation accidents, and terrorism. Biological hazards include SARS outbreaks and pest infestation.

The policy places emphasis on the role of the community in disaster or hazard-risk management. This is to be achieved through the education and mobilisation of the communities as well as involving them in disaster management planning. The latter can be achieved by promoting participatory methodologies such as the disaster imagination game.

The policy notes that with growing recognition of the economic and social costs incurred as a result of repeated damage from natural hazard impacts, of the threat of man-made hazards, as well as the increasing awareness that global concerns such as climate change will impact all countries in the region, hazard-risk reduction has become a priority in the policy agenda of a number of Caribbean countries.

While this awareness is neither sufficiently heightened nor articulated in development decisions, the policy document argues, there has been increasing recognition of the role that hazard mitigation can play in the achievement of sustainable development