A history of hurricanes: The evolution of the Caribbean’s storm response strategy

The first recorded hurricane in the Caribbean hit Hispaniola in 1495, during Christopher Columbus’ second voyage to the island. Described as “violent” by the Europeans, the storm rattled the fleet but was nothing new to the indigenous Carib and Taino people who named it “huracan”. More than five centuries later, there are a lot more tools at the region’s disposal to deal with the aftermath of storms, but there are also a number of unaddressed issues that continue to affect the scale of the devastation, such as substandard housing, inadequate medical infrastructure and lack of a co-ordinated global consensus on how to treat climate refugees.

Infrastructure innovation

There have been five category 5 hurricanes in the last four Atlantic hurricane seasons. The history of the Caribbean is a history of resilience and rebuilding as storms lay waste to the islands year after year, but many in the region are still living in shanty town conditions little better than the huts of their ancestral predecessors. When Hurricane Maria hit Dominica in 2017 it wiped out 90 per cent of the island’s structures, not only reducing homes to rubble but also obliterating the infrastructure necessary for basic services such as electricity, water and sanitation.

Innovation in this space, aided and propelled by advances in technology, has led to more storm-resistant structures hitting the market. There are now hurricane-proof homes, hurricane-proof greenhouses and hurricane-proof windows, all capable of withstanding category 5 winds. But these innovative designs are out of reach for most homeowners whose household income barely stretches to cover a mortgage.  According to the University of Alabama, a hurricane-fortified home (as classified by the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety) sells for 7 per cent more than an average property. And building homes from sturdier material, such as concrete, costs about 15 per cent more than wood frames, according to experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As the market grows, it’s likely that increased competition will drive down prices but safe and resilient housing remains inaccessible to the average citizen in the short term.

Climate refugees

Most of the structures in Grand Bahama and the Abaco Islands of the Bahamas were no match against the fury of category 5 Hurricane Dorian when it pounded the Bahamas in September. Extreme flooding, sea surges, high winds and lashing rain made hundreds of homes uninhabitable and completely destroyed Haitian shanty towns in those areas.

When the storm finally passed, around 70,000 were left homeless. Those lucky enough to have family and friends with a spare room managed to get a roof over their heads but others were forced to rely on overcrowded shelters in Nassau or leave the country entirely (heading to neighbouring Caribbean countries, the United States or Canada). Suddenly these climate refugees weren’t just a Bahamian problem, but a global concern.

Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland visited Bahamian Prime Minister Dr Hubert Minnis in early October and took the opportunity to highlight the problem of hurricane evacuees, saying: “I believe this is a global challenge, and one of the issues which has been really important for us is to consider how climate change is making more climate refugees, and trying to deal with that by being able to create sustainability in each state to enable people to stay home.

“This isn’t just an issue for the Bahamas. This unfortunately is a global issue. Every country is going to have to think together as to how we do this.” For small Caribbean islands, infrastructure, health and housing are already overburdened by rising populations. Extreme weather events do not cause these problems, they exacerbate them. Enabling climate refugees to stay in their home countries is the work of decades and must occur year-round, rather than in the immediate aftermath of headline-hitting events that draw attention in the short-term but quickly fall out of focus.

The World Bank estimates that climate change could force over 140 million people to migrate by 2050 and termed it “a looming human crisis”. But the prediction is not entirely dire. The Bank also predicts that “robust development planning at the country level” could reduce this figure by as much as 80 per cent, or more than 100 million people.

Robust development planning requires resources, however. While Small Island Developing States are among the most vulnerable to environmental risk, they are also the least financially equipped to deal with those risks. External development financing, combined with clear long-term strategising, is key. Saint Lucia has made strides in this area with a 10-year National Adaptation Plan which runs until 2028 and addresses infrastructure and spatial planning deficiencies.

The country also recently became the first in the region to partner with the World Economic Forum to develop a Country Financing Roadmap to help meet its Sustainable Development Goals.

Addressing the climate refugee crisis is a battle that must be fought on two fronts. In-country planning is vital but the reality is that, for coastal communities and low-lying islands, fleeing across a border is sometimes the only option, at least in the short-term. Each country has its own legal definition of what constitutes a legitimate asylum seeker but these rarely take into account people displaced due to weather.

Environmental migrants do not enjoy the same protections and rights as victims of war or political unrest – partly because climate change is a controversial and complicated topic, partly because the political climate is shifting to protectionism and borders becoming more rigid. Discussions at the United Nations and other global bodies frequently touch on climate migrants but, as evidenced by the furore over Dorian-displaced Bahamians trying to obtain entry to the United States, little progress has been made. As each hurricane season brings more and more category 5 wrecking balls, international inertia is no longer acceptable.