The Fifth (5th) Meeting of the CDEMA Council of Ministers will convene on Friday, June 27, 2014 at the Hilton Hotel in Barbados. The meeting will be attended by Ministers and Permanent Secretaries with responsibility for disaster management within the CDEMA Participating States. The Council is the highest level decision making body in the CDEMA governance structure and will discuss several key matters requiring their approval and endorsement for implementation by the CDEMA Coordinating Unit and Participating States.

Considering the prevailing economic situation across the region, financing the operations of the CDEMA Coordinating Unit (CU) is among the main items on the Agenda. The Council will review the agency’s financial status and look in particular at options for sustainable financial including the results of a feasibility study on the establishment of an endowment fund and the recommendations from a market research on fee based services that the Coordinating Unit could offer. Also on the table for discussion is the organizational restructuring of the CDEMA CU.

One of the standing agenda items is “Operational Matters and Readiness”. This focuses on the agency’s primary responsibility, which is, coordinating regional response to disasters affecting its Participating States. This meeting will discuss the status of readiness for the 2014 Hurricane Season and the 2013-2014 emergency events including the December 2013 rains which affected St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Dominica and Saint Lucia.

Preceding the Meeting, there will be a symposium on Thursday, June 26 on the Integration of Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction.