Ronald returns

At one of Jamaica’s darkest hours, global disaster expert Ronald Jackson has returned home under a United Nations assignment to help steer recovery from Hurricane Melissa, the most destructive storm in the island’s modern history.

Melissa struck Jamaica on October 28 as the most powerful system ever to do so, claiming at least 15 lives. It damaged more than 120,000 buildings, displaced 90,000 people and left losses estimated between $962 billion and $1.1 trillion.

Now five years into leading the United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery for Building Resilience Team in Geneva, Switzerland, Jackson is in Jamaica as part of the UN’s response to a request from the prime minister for support.

“I arrived to join my UNDP Resident Representative here to support UNDP’s recovery efforts,” Jackson told The Gleaner on Monday. “Not just focusing on UNDP’s own value proposition and offer, but to bring system-wide coordination and cooperation to the government’s efforts to recover.”

UNDP Mission

Jackson and his team will spend three to four weeks in Jamaica – Jackson himself for two – working with the Planning Institute of Jamaica and other agencies to design a comprehensive recovery framework that looks beyond short-term relief.

“This event, though quite tragic and impacting so many of our countrymen and women, also provides an opportunity for us to try to do things differently – to look at where we settle, how we settle, what we build, how we build,” he said. “At the end of the mission, we would have galvanised support around a system-wide recovery agenda that moves from consensus to operationalising a framework and strategy.”

Jackson’s assignment comes as international agencies including the World Bank and the UNDP, have called on Jamaica to use the devastation to “reimagine” its development path.

World Bank Vice President Dr Susana Cordeiro Guerra, during a visit to Kingston last Friday, praised Jamaica’s preparedness and announced that its US$150 million (J$24 billion) catastrophe bond had been triggered, unlocking funds for reconstruction by December 1.

“This is not only about building back, but building back in a better and more resilient way,” Cordeiro Guerra said, adding that Jamaica now has a chance to “set a new benchmark” for recovery across the Caribbean, a view echoed by UNDP Resident Representative to Jamaica Dr Kishan Khoday.

Prime Minister Dr Andrew Holness has also cautioned that the recovery phase will demand “difficult questions” about urban and coastal planning. “Should Black River be where it is? How do we build a resilient town in Black River? What are we going to do with Falmouth? What are we going to do with the hospitals? Should we rebuild these hospitals with zinc roofs? And schools?” he asked last week.

For Jackson, the benchmarks for reconstruction mean changing how Jamaica conceives and invests in resilience. “Resilience is not just about an individual,” he said. “It’s a system. We have to build institutional systems that can deliver not once, but over and over, not just now but in the near and distant future.”

That thinking reflects Jackson’s recent UNDP essay on “Rethinking How We Invest in Disaster Risk Reduction,” which argued that disasters are not “natural” but the product of how societies develop and expose themselves to risk. Jackson believes recovery investments must reduce future vulnerabilities, not replicate old weaknesses.

“We cannot continue to fund the consequences of disasters without addressing their construction in the first place,” he wrote in October. “Risk is socially, politically and economically constructed - and this is where the investment challenge lies.”

Jackson said Hurricane Melissa exposed long-recognised weaknesses in housing and settlement patterns, especially communities near morass and other ecosystems that store floodwater later released into rivers and the sea.

“You have to look at some of the settlements- where they’re located, what has happened over time in terms of the level of exposure ... especially those that are coastal,” he explained. “The age of the buildings and some of the infrastructure in these settlements would raise some concerns.”

Multi-Hazard Plan

Jackson note that the recovery plan will address both physical reconstruction and institutional reform, even as he acknowledged Jamaica has “matured in some areas”.

“We have to use this as an opportunity to begin to set the institutional systems that will allow this to go beyond simply a Hurricane Melissa recovery, but build that resilient pathway.”

That means strengthening the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management (ODPEM), the country’s main disaster agency, which Holness moved to his office days into the response amid criticism that the administration undermined its effectiveness.

Jackson, who led ODPEM for seven years before heading the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) in 2013, declined to assess its current state, noting he left more than a decade ago. He stressed, however, that institutional renewal must be part of recovery.

“It’s not unusual sometimes for systems to go below standard expectations,” he said. “We are focused on seeing how we can assist with getting it back to where it needs to be.”

Last week, Holness conceded that the capability and prominence of the ODPEM “was not as it was in previous times”. He said one of the problems is uncompetitive salaries for top posts.

Meanwhile, as climate volatility deepens across the region, Jackson warned that Hurricane Melissa should be treated not as an anomaly but a sign of what lies ahead. “We have to recognise that there are also warning signals from Hurricane Beryl,” he said, referring to a storm that devastated Jamaica’s southern coast last July and seen by experts as another example of how climate change is increasing the frequency of intense storms.

“We see the potential for a turbulent future. The objective is to come up with a plan that begins that process to counteract what could be a turbulent future with some of these storms.”

That plan, he said, will be multi-hazard, addressing not only hurricanes but floods, droughts, and slow-onset climate impacts.

“It has to be multi-hazard. In this era of climate, you have to also look at slow-onset issues,” he said. “UNDP has a track record in many different places where we’ve helped build national systems. We want to work closely with stakeholders to bring a multifaceted approach to resource and deliver on short, medium and long-term objectives.”

The Jamaica assignment carries deep personal significance, Jackson said.

“I’m here as part of a UN system, but I cannot erase my own history, my heritage, my background,” he said. “To be here at this moment to support my country means a tremendous amount to me. Having seen it here and in many different fora has prepared me to help the country again from another vantage point.”

Expert Endorsement

Over a career spanning three decades, Jackson, 54, has shaped disaster management across the region — from leading Jamaica’s response to crises in the 2000s to steering CDEMA through hurricanes Irma, Maria and Dorian.

At the global level, Jackson has been central to shaping the UN’s approach to disaster recovery and resilience. Under his leadership, the Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery Team led the conceptualisation of the agency’s Risk-Informed Development framework and spearheaded the rollout of the Urban Futures Programme, which helps cities plan for climate and hazard resilience.

A long-serving member of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction’s advisory panel on its Global Assessment Report, Jackson has also directed recovery planning and post-disaster assessments in countries including Lebanon, Pakistan, Ukraine, Gaza, Afghanistan, and across Africa and the Caribbean. Under his leadership, the UNDP provided technical capacity support for the creation of the global loss and damage fund, a landmark outcome of recent UN climate negotiations.

Those experiences will be crucial to Jamaica’s recovery, said disaster mitigation specialist Dr Barbara Carby, whom Jackson succeeded as ODPEM head. She called his involvement “an excellent choice.”

“He’s already familiar with Jamaica and its systems and he will be able to bring insights regarding integrating risk reduction into the recovery programme. The UNDP has been a long-time partner with Jamaica. The whole thing will come together really very seamlessly,” she said.

jovan.johnson@gleanerjm.com