The volcanic ash from the La Soufriere Volcano that landed in Barbados three months ago caused almost $90 million in damages.
That is according to Minister in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Investment, Marsha Caddle, who said a recently completed loss and damage assessment to determine the extent of the damage caused by the ash estimated it to be in the region of $87 million.
She said this was another example of the significant amount of money that was required if a small island developing state such as Barbados was to properly prepare and mitigate against natural disasters and the climate crisis.
“We had as you would recall in April the La Soufriere Volcano erupting on the island of St Vincent and we just had our provisional loss and damage assessment from the ashfall in Barbados and we estimate that initially at $87 million for an event that related to ash falling for a couple days,” Caddle told President Designate of the United Nation’s Climate Change Conference (COP 26), Alok Sharma and other members of his team moments before a brief tour of the Richard Haynes Boardwalk this afternoon.
“I say that here because we clearly have to do the work of isolating what is the disaster and climate-related expenditure that we as a Government have to make. And we are starting to work on doing that, to be able to say that this is what we have had to spend that is related to recovery from disaster and the climate crisis or preparation and adaptation to the effects of the crisis, because it’s important for us to be able to demonstrate that this issue requires huge levels of investment, huge amounts of fiscal space.”
Earlier this week during Parliament, Minister in the Ministry of Finance Ryan Straughn disclosed that over $22 million had been approved to cover the cost of the cleanup of ashfall.
He said the $22 153 875 was to reimburse ministries, departments and state-owned enterprises that participated in the clean-up.
Those monies were approved in a supplementary to the 2021-2022 Estimates of Expenditure that went before the House of Assembly on Tuesday.
Speaking to the issue of climate change, Caddle said the Roof to Reefs Programme (R2RP) which was conceptualized by the current Government was a critical component in the country’s fight against the climate crisis.
In fact, the minister said she believed that had a similar project been implemented earlier, significantly fewer roofs would have been damaged by Elsa.
“I think that a significant number of roofs would have been saved if we had had a programme before,” Caddle maintained.
“I think the Prime Minister said earlier that the reason that we came up with the R2RP is that the first thing we realized is that we need to bring this resilience conversation down to where it matters; at the level of the household, at the level of the community, at the level of farmers and industries. But we really have to start at the level of the household and what Hurricane Elsa showed us with the over 2400 homes damaged is that the issue of resilience to hurricanes, to the worsening of the gases and climate is something that hits at the very heart of what matters to Barbadians and to people who have to live with the effects of the climate crisis everyday.” (randybennett@barbadostoday.bb)
