UNITED NATIONS, CMC – The United Nations’ (UN) World Food Programme (WFP) says a new UN-backed humanitarian logistics hub and training centre in Barbados is aimed at strengthening emergency preparedness and response across the Caribbean.

The WFP said the facility is a partnership between the UN agency, the Barbados government and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), and will be located at the Sir Grantley Adams International Airport.

“Once up and running, the hub will support air and sea operations and serve as a prepositioning and response centre, as well as a shipment point for relief items,” WFP said.

“The Caribbean islands are right on the frontlines of climate change. As hurricanes become more frequent and severe, we need to be fully prepared so that lives are saved, livelihoods are defended and hard-won development gains are protected,” said WFP chief David Beasley who joined the Prime Minister Mia Mottley, and CDEMA executive director, Elizabeth Riley, for the ground-breaking ceremony.

“This facility will ensure our partners across the region can serve the people of the Caribbean even more effectively in times of need,” he added.

WFP said Caribbean countries are highly exposed to natural hazards such as hurricanes, storms, floods, droughts and volcanic eruptions.

It said that over the past seven decades, 511 disasters worldwide have affected Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and that more than half, 324, occurred in the Caribbean, where economies suffered six times more than larger countries.

It said the construction of the hub was funded in part by Canada, the European Union and the United States.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said 22 emergency response, coordination and government officials from a wide cross section of agencies in St Lucia are now more equipped to respond to natural hazards, including storms, flooding and landslides, with focus on information management.

“With Caribbean countries, including St Lucia, being highly vulnerable to endemic hazards that pose significant risks to lives and livelihoods, continuous support, especially in data collection and analysis, is critical to ensure more coherent, rapid, and effective response,” OCHA said in a statement, announcing that it had facilitated training for the stakeholders through the United Nations Office for Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean.

OCHA’s Information Management Assistant, Randy Warner, said that the paucity of data has significantly challenged and, in some instances, hindered effective emergency response.

“I cannot emphasize too much the importance data plays in informing response action and improving the quality of humanitarian interventions,” he said.

To bridge these existing gaps, OCHA said the workshop sought to identify opportunities for enhanced coordination during emergency response; improve knowledge and technical skills in information and data management; and enhance capacity for reporting and assessments based on global and regional best practices.

OCHA said the highly interactive session exposed participants to relevant online tools, including data and information management platforms, and equipped them to create visualizations to speed up analysis and improve evidence-based decision-making.

Consultant with the National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO) in St Lucia, Lucius Lake, noted that, despite his decades of experience and expansive training in emergency response, he found the workshop to be useful, particularly with respect to information and tools for strengthening data and statistical systems.

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure,” he said.