Public Private Partnerships to build a Resilient Caribbean Take Flight
How this joint venture is helping fight climate change in the Caribbean
Severe droughts. Unpredictable rainfall. Warming ocean temperatures. Hurricanes. They all have a negative impact on both Caribbean citizens’ well-being and the region’s economy.
When these natural disasters damage crops, farmers face financial losses and consumers pay higher prices; warmer seas can impact fish migratory patterns and availability; and governments are thrown into economic turmoil when they are forced to borrow millions to rebuild communities when hurricanes devastate infrastructure and homes.
“For decades, USAID has worked with Caribbean countries to recover from hurricanes, earthquakes, and crises,” says Clinton White, the Regional Representative for USAID’s Eastern and Southern Caribbean Mission. “While USAID is proud to provide support when disasters strike, we understand that the long-term solution does not lie in humanitarian aid, but rather in strengthening the ability of the Caribbean to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses.”
USAID works year-round to reduce the risk and impact of future disasters in the Eastern and Southern Caribbean. However, to build true resiliency, the Agency knows that it is essential to work with a variety of partners across the spectrum, including the private sector.
“At USAID, we see value in working with the private sector. By leveraging each other’s strengths, the U.S. government and private sector are helping to improve lives, strengthen communities, and promote a prosperous Caribbean,” White explains.
This is where USAID’s Climate Change Adaptation Program (CCAP) comes in, helping promote partnerships between government entities and the private sector. The Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre coordinates the region’s response to climate change. Officially opened in August 2005, the centre is the key node for information on climate change issues and the region’s efforts to manage and adapt. The centre maintains the Caribbean’s most extensive repository of information and data on climate change specific to the region, which in part enables it to provide climate change-related policy advice and guidelines to CARICOM member states through the CARICOM Secretariat.
“Certain tools can help detect weather patterns and aid climatologists and others in the field to better understand the consequences of the changing weather patterns,” explains Keith Nichols, head of the Programme Development and Management Unit at the centre. “One such piece of equipment is the Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR).”
LiDAR is a remote sensing technology that is used to capture highly accurate elevation measurements of the earth’s surface. The system, which can be mounted on an aircraft, uses laser light to scan the ground to generate precise, three-dimensional information on surface shapes and characteristics of both land surfaces and nearshore seabeds.
As a result, the state-of-the-art system is capable of providing critical data for monitoring and planning for physical changes to the region’s land and marine environments. It is especially useful for floodplain, near-shore, and storm surge mapping, drainage, and irrigation designing. A grant from USAID allowed the centre to buy this much-needed equipment.
“This LiDAR equipment can help predict the impact of weather patterns, providing valuable data to Caribbean governments and enterprises and enable them to adapt and prepare for future climate scenarios,” says White. “Approving this grant for equipment was a no brainer.”
LiDAR gets its wings
The centre approached Maya Island Air to see if the airline company would be interested in a public private partnership to further the positive impact and reach of this equipment. The concept: the centre would provide the multi-million dollar LiDAR equipment and the airline would provide the aircraft. A deal was reached.
Victor Vernon, the senior pilot and director of operations with Maya Island Air in Belize, expressed his appreciation for the joint venture during a November 2020 event: “On behalf of Maya, I have personally flown a handful of these special missions and so I have the unique perspective to congratulate the USAID, and its Eastern and Southern Caribbean Office as well as the centre who all made this a common success worth celebrating.”
The captain further noted that “… this is a remarkable achievement for generations to come, which has brought the benefits of science and aviation, transfer of technology, advancements of the region’s human resources through specialized training and learning, regional employment, and the development of a sustainable platform to respond to climate change issues in the Caribbean.”
Maya Island Air sees this venture as an excellent business opportunity to advance and collaborate on regional efforts to continue building resilience to the impacts of natural disasters and changing climates.
With USAID’s support, the centre now has the Caribbean’s first wholly-owned LiDAR system. Obtaining this system, which is used by leading scientific agencies like NASA, enables the centre to assist the region in being better equipped for extreme meteorological events.
This successful public private partnership, made possible through the USAID CCAP, will reach the Eastern and Southern Caribbean, including Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, the Commonwealth of Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago.
The long-term positive impacts of this partnership will be crucial to the Caribbean region as the equipment will be fully rolled out in 2021. “The new technology will give the region decades of climate change data that leaders can use in their decisions to protect the region and the people who live in it,” says White.
About the Author
Ayesha Lett is the Development Outreach and Communications Specialist at USAID’s Eastern and Southern Caribbean Mission, located in Barbados.
