By Wazim Mowla*

CBP AMO agents deliver food and water to severely damaged Fox Town on the Abaco Islands in the Bahamas, in the aftermath of Hurricane Dorian Sept. 6 2019 / Wikimedia / Public domain / https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:CBP_Food_and_Water_Delivery_to_Bahamas_after_Hurricane_Dorian_(48693139732).jpg

Hurricane Dorian, which lashed the Bahamas for 68 hours in early September, revealed the severe limitations on Caribbean countries’ ability to  respond to increasingly brutal storms – an awareness that appears likely to contribute to greater regional cooperation.  Wind gusts of 220 mph, up to 15 inches of rain, and storm surges 23 feet above sea level caused more than 50 deaths, and 600 people are still missing a month later. Although the Bahamas opened 14 of its main islands for tourism soon after the storm, the economy has suffered major setbacks.  An estimated 80 percent of the fishery infrastructure is damaged in Grand Bahama, and close to 100 percent on Abaco Island. The country also suffered a large oil spill – more than 5 million gallons.

• Dorian’s destruction is not without precedent in the Caribbean. Hurricanes Maria and Irma two years prior caused a combined total of $140 billion in damages and killed more than 3,000 people. While hurricanes have always afflicted the region, warm ocean temperatures in the Atlantic – raised by greenhouse gases trapped in the water – have made them more likely to develop into a category 4 or 5.

Caribbean countries were quick to respond to the Bahamas’ needs both individually and through the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) institutions. Individually, the national governments provided $1.7 million for recovery efforts and medical supplies. Some also sent soldiers, officers, and personnel to the Bahamas, including 100 soldiers from the Trinidad and Tobago Defense Force and 120 members from the Jamaica Defense Force. Others placed police officers on standby Bahamian internal security needed them and sent small teams of technicians to help restore water, medical, and phone systems.

• As a regional collective, CARICOM also provided assistance. The Regional Security System, based in Barbados, dispatched more than 30 officers to the Bahamas; the Caribbean Development Bank issued $200,000 for relief aid with a $750,000 loan soon to come; and the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) coordinated relief updates and logistics. The University of the West Indies has provided psychological, family, and social support and medical assistance to victims and evacuees.

These actions, however, fall far short of the Bahamas’ needs. Karen Clark & Company’s risk modeler estimates that the country will face close to $7 billion in damages alongside the already high volume of missing persons. On its own, the region does not have the capacity or the financial capabilities to assist more than it currently has. For example, the Caribbean Development Bank’s total of $1 million is already matched or dwarfed by countries outside the Caribbean. India provided $1 million to the Bahamas after Dorian (separate from a $150 million line of credit, announced at an India-CARICOM summit Prime Minister Modi held in New York last month, for cooperation programs to combat climate change).  USAID and the Department of Defense have pledged a combined $34 million. Relief efforts are further stunted because countries in the Caribbean have relatively small populations and limited economies, so they cannot expend large sums of resources or personnel to the Bahamas.

Dorian has overall benefited regional unity and cooperation, even though some neighbors have criticized Nassau’s decision to forcibly repatriate Haitian migrants living in camps destroyed by the storm. In addition to expressing solidarity and providing assistance, CARICOM countries appear to be moving toward a consensus about the implications of climate change for their region, possibly creating a new, almost existential area of cooperation among them, including a strengthening of decades-old – and under-utilized – mechanisms such as the Regional Security System (RSS). At the moment, only seven of the fifteen full member-states in CARICOM have signed the RSS agreement. CARICOM alone isn’t going to sway international opinion on the urgency for combatting climate change, but greater unity among its members will certainly help. Hurricane Dorian will not be the last strong storm to devastate the region.

October 21, 2019

* Wazim Mowla is an MA candidate in the School of International Service and Research Assistant at the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies.