Climate Data, delivered: Informing Disaster Risk in the Caribbean

Ahead of International Disaster Risk Reduction Day, we meet local leaders who have partnered with the Climate Investment Funds to transform climate data access in six Caribbean countries. 

Dominica’s Farah Rocque-Carreiere is passionate about her job. For the last 20 years, she has been predicting the future as a weather presenter and meteorological technician. “Our monitoring site is an invaluable resource,” she explains, pointing to a large LCD screen with a map of the Caribbean Island dotted with multiple points representing satellite weather stations. “It acts as an early warning system, giving information in real time. So, if there's a sudden rise in rainfall, we will be able to notify the relevant authorities. It's empowering [the public] as well. You can go on the site and get the information.”

The weather technician works in a brand-new hurricane proof building overlooking the ocean in Jimmit, on the West Coast of Dominica, a small Caribbean island state. The Jimmit meteorological office benefitted from almost $450 million in regional and national resilience investments made possible by the Climate Investment Funds, the World Bank Group, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Overall, the program positively impacted more than three million people in Dominica, Grenada, Haiti, St Lucia, St Vincent & The Grenadines, and Jamaica.

The program focused on delivering weather and climate monitoring tools with associated capacity building for government officials, starting in 2011. The results? More than 400 hydrometeorological stations or related equipment and infrastructure were built or rehabilitated, 250 tools and systems installed, and approximately 10,000 government officials trained on weather, climate, and resilience tools.

“It was an excellent investment, and it really helped us with stepping up our game,” explains Dr. Georgiana Gordon-Strachan, former Project Director of the Program’s Caribbean regional track. “It gave us the tools necessary to do a lot more of the sophisticated types of weather monitoring and modeling that we need to do and that we continue to do. We were able to work through the regional entities and Caribbean countries. It extended beyond the expected reach, and we were able to do a lot more than we were expected to do.”

During the life of the program, and since it closed in early 2024, the region has been battered with major hurricanes and tropical storms, damaging infrastructure, leaving thousands homeless, and even causing several fatalities. Regular drought and flooding events get less attention but can also generate substantial economic loss for communities.

Now that Caribbean nations know more about the climate challenges they face, from extreme weather events to long term changes in weather patterns, they can adapt their national planning and manage disaster risks at the national and local levels. In 2017, Dominica’s forecasters accurately predicted that Hurricane Maria would make landfall as a Category 5 hurricane.

But pre-disaster information only got the country so far in coping with one of the most violent weather events in recent history. Lives were lost and the damage to infrastructure and ecosystems cost millions. Climate finance must accelerate to fully meet the needs of small developing states, notably in Latin America and the Caribbean, the second most disaster-prone region in the world.

As we learn from 16 years of resilience program results and impact in the Caribbean and other vulnerable regions, CIF is looking at new ways to deliver climate adaptation funding at scale and ensure communities are better prepared to withstand the impacts of climate change.