~ Make ‘Cooling Centers’ part of the Resilience Agenda ~
Dear Editor,
Extreme heat warnings are becoming the norm and not the exception. People are dying from the heat. Last year in Europe, extreme heat claimed 20,000 lives between June and August.
Some of the ways to survive extreme heat are limiting outdoor activity, staying hydrated, keeping homes cool, checking on the elderly and young children.
What about the Caribbean? Have we been experiencing extreme heat? Have you noticed a change in the weather? Should we start planning for the future where extreme heat is concerned? I think we should. Better to be prepared and ready rather than dealing with the consequences thereafter.
Europe for example has been warming twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s. The State of the Climate in Europe 2022 report shows that decades of global heating has resulted in extreme heat, drought, wildfires, marine heatwaves, and glacier melt.
Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom had their warmest year on record last year, and the summer in Europe was the hottest ever recorded.
This cannot be considered as a one-off occurrence or an oddity of the climate. The 2022 annual average temperature for Europe was between the second and fourth highest on record, with an anomaly of about 0.79 °C above the 1991–2020 average.
Sint Maarten since 2018 has been in a phase of resilience building after the massive damage caused by Hurricane Irma in September 2017. New buildings have been constructed or re-enforced; human capital has received training; investments have been made in resources and vehicles, and the resilience building is expected to continue as the Sint Maarten Trust Fund still has some funds available to be invested this year and beyond.
As a country, we need to be prepared for other events that will have far-reaching consequences. Climate change is taking a major human, economic and environmental toll according to the report.
The report adds: “Average Sea surface temperatures across the North Atlantic were the warmest on record and large portions of the region’s seas were affected by powerful marine heatwaves. The rates of surface ocean warming, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the southern Arctic, were more than three times the global average.”
Hazards from warmer temperatures, such as rising sea levels and more frequent and extreme weather events, make the Caribbean the most vulnerable sub-region.
As a nation we must continue to build upon our resilience agenda. Public and private sectors as well as Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) need to come together and consider the establishment of “cooling centers” within the community for senior citizens, families with children and other vulnerable members of our community.
Not everyone has an air conditioning unit in their home or could afford the utility bill to run one during extremely warm days/weeks. There are a number of NGOs and other stakeholders who provide services to our senior community who could play a role in transporting these vulnerable persons to “cooling centers” where they could spend a few hours a day until the day cools down and then return to their home.
‘Coolingp prevent heat-related illness. Extreme heat has become a major public health centers’ can be community centers (air conditioned) – a safe location -that could be for example utilized for this purpose where persons find relief from the heat. Senior citizen organizations could compile a list of vulnerable seniors through a needs assessment survey and put this into a database.
‘Cooling centers’ hel concern and can cause a variety of health problems, but heat-related illness is largely preventable. As a nation let’s continue to build our resilience agenda by including other potential hazards as we prepare the country for warmer temperatures in a changing climate.
Roddy Heyliger
