Elections, Melissa, and Escazú

The Caribbean region is emerging slowly and painfully from a torrid season of elections, and an equally intense hurricane season – whether or not some believed they were affected by either.

It’s now evident there remain open wounds associated with combative politics, negative instincts related to transparency and social cohesion, and the consequential collective ability/inability to efficiently confront seemingly overwhelming challenges.

Westmoreland, Jamaica (Dec 2025)

For guidance on unravelling such connections we should spend time examining things such as institutional environment, political culture, and the impacts of an indisputable culture of official secrecy.

For this reason, today’s thoughts invoke the requirements of an international treaty – the Escazú Agreement which mandates public rights to access environmental information, participation in decisions, and social justice in environmental matters.

Escazú does not stand alone. There is Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target 16:10 which calls for “ensuring public access to information and protecting fundamental freedoms.” In many of our countries, today, there are also access to information laws, and other legislative provisions.

The impact of Hurricane Melissa on Jamaica on October 28 provides us with an example of seasoned hands, on all fronts – politics, crisis, and nominal commitment to the free flow of official information – attempting to come to terms with the urgency of one of the biggest disasters in Caribbean history.

This is a country considered to provide the rest of us with a gold standard when it comes to institutional arrangements addressing perils, emergencies, and disasters – both natural and human-originated.

Post-hurricane fish prep at Border, St Elizabeth/Westmoreland

However, depending on whom you question today, including those directly exposed to catastrophic damage in the country’s southwestern areas since October, there are mixed reviews regarding overall performance.

Attorney, Debbie-Ann Gordon (a Westmoreland native) surmised in a December 7 Jamaica Gleaner column: “Recovery must address long-standing vulnerabilities: irregular land tenure, inadequate infrastructure, fragile housing, and limited economic options. Hurricane Melissa did not create these issues; it exposed them.”

Meanwhile, there is hardly a comparative regional example of the island’s extensive planning and ameliorative institutional landscape. Its Disaster Risk Management Act, for example, prescribes a multipartite Disaster Risk Management Council.

This mechanism impressively coalesces a wide variety of sectoral and inter-sectoral interests. This results not only from the good sense of bringing all hands on deck, but from past experiences in which multipartite arrangements supported by state financial, administrative, functional, and regulatory assets were systemically absent.

As is currently unfolding, there appear to be gaps between the existence of well-designed, well-intended, thoughtful state mechanisms, and timely, tangible requirements on the ground.

Contrastingly, private sector involvement in recovery among island businesses of all categories, has generally met the standards of urgency, data-focused, and strategically targeted. Civil society organisations are also significantly chipping in from at home and abroad.

“We are nowhere near the end … but we are doing the right things, taking an all of society approach and smashing the silos together when we confront them,” says Lisa Soares Lewis, who is leading the private sector Emergency Operations Centre (EOC).

What's left of the sprawling Black River Market

Journalist Dionne Jackson-Miller has meanwhile diligently applied extensive scrutiny to a mandated Disaster Risk Management Council which, as everyone concedes, provides the best opportunity to bring an extensive selection of voices to the table … but which last met in June!

Follow Dionne Jackson-Miller on YouTube

However, I think it would be wrong to assume the worst intentions on the part of anyone involved – whatever the political finger-pointing. There are, in fact, important sub-committees and agencies of the state actively and diligently engaged.

However, someone I met in Kingston – with September third’s general election as a persistent backdrop – advised, sadly, that I encounter Westmoreland from neither side of “both fences.”

Think now of recovery efforts in countries such as Dominica and The Bahamas hit by Category 5 hurricanes in 2017 and 2019 respectively; and others such as Antigua and Barbuda, and the Grenadines that have witnessed serious impacts over recent years.

There had been precautions regarding “both sides of the fence” in all of these. Here, in T&T, there is every indication that we can fall prey to such a vulnerability (as we are), even as we do not quite boast anything near Jamaica’s organisational, regulatory, or administrative capacity in such matters.

The margins of the Belém Conference of Parties (COP30) on climate change considered the role of greater official transparency and social cohesion when confronting phenomena associated with the climate crisis. More than once, Melissa was identified by name and location.

At the CARICOM Pavilion at COP30, Belém

In Latin America and the Caribbean, relevant attention in this area of interest turned to the Escazú Agreement which entered into force in 2021.

T&T is yet to sign. Jamaica has signed but not yet ratified. Maybe there are lessons yet unlearned.