Honourable Francine Baron on panel - ODI conference ‘Building Back Better: a resilient Caribbean’

The Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit has called on the international community to scale up investments in building climate change resilience.  ‘In order to build resilience to climate change, island-states like Dominica require significant investments in residential and public buildings, infrastructure, agriculture, tourism, and utility services – water, electricity, telecommunications’ (One Summit Paris, France, 12 December 2017).

‘Building Back Better: a resilient Caribbean’, was an event convened by Overseas Development Institute (ODI) in London on Tuesday 30th January 2017.  Decision-makers and the world's leading experts on recovery and reconstruction in the Caribbean discussed the policies needed at the national, regional and international level to avoid future losses. The event was well attended and included representatives from the Government of Dominica, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the United Nations agencies, Caribbean disaster management bodies, global charities, the UK’s Cabinet Office, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and American emergency and infrastructure experts from US academic institutions.

A high-level panel set out their priorities for making 'Building back Better' a reality.  On the of panel of speakers were Dominican Born the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland - the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Hon Francine Baron - Minister of Foreign and CARICOM Affairs, Dr Ronald Jackson - Executive Director of the Caribbean Disaster Management Agency (CDEMA), Dr John Twigg - Principal Research Fellow in the Risk and Resilience programme at ODI and James Cameron - partner at Systemiq and international lawyer, policy adviser and entrepreneur.

The Hon Francine Baron highlighted the challenges faced in accessing committed funding and the need for the creation of a national disaster committee chaired by the highest executive authority in order to deal with these issues. 

Acting High Commissioner, Janet Charles, accompanied, Minister Baron at the event.

Full details of the event can be viewed in the videos below.