As the 2026 Atlantic Hurricane Season begins today, Director of the Tobago Emergency Management Agency (TEMA), Allan Stewart, has emphasised that reducing disaster risks in the future will require a clear focus on sustainable development today.
Mr. Stewart noted that mitigating disaster risks requires a proactive approach rather than a reactive one.
“For example, I would have lived in Hurricane Flora. You may have heard about NERO (National Emergency Relief Organisation). It was a relief organisation set up by the late Prime Minister Eric Williams aftermath to deal with the relief of persons affected. We see that continually happen where we are not sufficiently growing and aligning ourselves perfectly with the risks that we are exposed to and it means that the investment that we do today if we put it into the right places, if you build capacity, build redundancy and stability we will not have to pay so much in the recovery effort.”
Mr. Stewart said shifting from disaster response to risk management will require a review of national laws and policies to make it a reality.
“Our laws need to be changed. I think that the disaster office in Trinidad and Tobago needs to become an authority in the sense that if you are going to move this system forward, you need to be very definite and determined as to what you want to see as an outcome. We cannot just be focusing on the response element, and if you look at how we have been treating disaster management over the years, we pile everything we hope that the cavalry will come to save us.”