Championing a Culture of Resilience

In 2017, three of The UWI's locations were inoperable for over three months with its Open Campus site in Dominica almost totally destroyed by Hurricane Maria. The UWI itself, therefore, did not escape the impact or the message of the need for deliberate attention to mainstreaming resilience into our way of working, thinking and living.

The call for The UWI to define its role and commitment as a higher education institution in a transition towards a more resilient society comes at a time when there is mounting concern about the repeated and extensive losses to Caribbean economies and societies mainly from the impact of natural hazards.

There is a clear role for higher education institutions in preparing society through the integration of research, teaching, and action for adapting to a changing climate.

The UWI has a long history of involvement in the area of hazard assessment and management going back to the establishment of the Seismic Research Centre at St. Augustine in 1957 and the Earthquake Unit at Mona in 1985. Efforts to drive the integration of disaster risk management into the UWI curricula were led by the pioneering work of the 1981 Pan Caribbean Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Project (PCDPP) which was the result of a partnership with United Nations Disaster Relief Organisation (UNDRO), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Pan-American Health Organisation/World Health Organisation (PAHO/WHO) and the Red Cross as well as Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Economic Community.

The UWI represents CARICOM's largest single diversified reservoir of competences and expertise that if strategically harnessed can contribute significantly to altering this trajectory of increasing loss of critical and scarce resources. Recognising that it must be on the frontline of this charge to resilience, the University has embarked on a diverse set of initiatives in championing the cause of resilient development in the Caribbean, supported by the Vice-Chancellor himself and academic leaders across the University.

Resilience Working Group

The UWI is in the process of constituting a Resilience Working Group, drawn from the University's renowned leaders in climate science, disaster risk management, environment sciences, social sciences, medicine, law, engineering and management studies, to provide strategic guidance to the University's work in this area of resilience. This group is expected to be inaugurated by the end of May 2018. Meanwhile, work has already begun to strengthen the disaster planning process across all campuses.

Resilience Consultant/Advisor

The Office of the Vice-Chancellor announced the appointment of Mr. Jeremy Collymore as Resilience Consultant/Advisor with effect from November 1, 2017, who will focus on consolidating and operationalising The UWI's commitment to strengthening its capacity to support the Caribbean region in the development of a culture of resilience and resilience planning as part of the continued implementation of its Triple A Strategy.

On September 13, Vice-Chancellor, Professor Sir Hilary Beckles as part of a special team, visited Antigua and Barbuda to assess the hurricane damage and formulate a relief strategy following Irma's destruction.